Transcription
Hey there. So today, I thought we'd do something a little different and have a brainstorming session. So that you can figure out where you want to play, what playgrounds you want to be in, and which ones you want to avoid. So let's get to it.
Welcome to the Course Creators HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host, Julie Hook.
So glad you're here. It's episode 232, and first thing I want to mention actually is I appreciate you still listening. The episodes have been a bit sporadic here lately because I have been working so much, which is a wonderful challenge to have, but it's making it tough to be regular with this podcast. So I appreciate you sticking with me, digging up the podcast. I think there's something about Apple podcasts; it doesn't load episodes if they're too far apart. So if you can come find me if you're not getting the episodes downloaded, I'd appreciate it. So thanks so much, and for being patient with the scheduling.
But let's get into the fun stuff today, which is that I want to talk about how you are marketing your course and give you a bit of a brainstorming list so that you can figure out exactly how you want to do it.
I used to think that if I just learned enough, took enough course marketing courses, that I'd be able to figure out the best one, and I could use that, and everything would be great. Well, I learned a lot along the way of this process, and the big thing is is that there is not a best way to market your course. There are some ways that work better for certain audiences than for others.
So what I mean by that is, let's say you really want to work with a corporate audience, then being on TikTok is probably not the place you want to be. Being on LinkedIn may be the place you want to be to connect with that kind of audience. So there are places that are better than others, better playgrounds for you to hang out in, and we'll talk about that a little bit as we go. But here is a list of things that you can focus on to market a little bit better for your online course.
So I've got, looks like, 10 things on this list, and we'll do it a little differently this week. I'm going to give you all 10, and then I'm going to talk about them so you can have them sort of mulling around in the back of your mind.
So, number one is content marketing. Number two is email marketing. Number three is collaborating with influencers and affiliates. Four is offering limited-time discounts or bonuses. Five is utilizing testimonials and social proof. Six is running paid advertisements. Seven is hosting webinars or live demos. Eight is optimizing your landing page. Nine is creating a referral program. And 10 is leveraging social media. And there is a reason why that is the last one I mentioned; we'll get into that in just a little bit.
Okay, now that we have the list, let's dig in a little further on what I mean. So one of the things I want you to think about tonight is to imagine these different ways of marketing as different playgrounds that you can go hang out in. And some of them are the deluxe playgrounds with the amazing, elaborate, uh, slides and really cool toys, and some of them are more basic. And you get to decide which ones you want to hang out in, which ones fit you better, which ones you like, and which ones you're like, "Don't like this one so much."
So part of the challenge, though, I will tell you, and I see this quite often, is not giving the things that you're trying enough time to actually work. And by that I mean, if, let's say you're posting somewhere and you're only getting five or 10 people looking at a post, that's not a good test to know if the playground is any good because you're just not getting in front of enough people. So we want to figure out what's the easiest and fastest way to get you in front of a lot of the right people. And if you can get that figured out, that will be the gold standard; you're at a great place to keep building and scaling and getting in front of new potential students.
Okay, so let's go through our ideas here. First one, content marketing, and I love this one because you want to be a teacher, so show your audience basically how much you know; share free resources. So this is your, your downloadable guides and your ebooks, and offer them as lead magnets for email marketing, which is number two. You might also want to be doing videos or tutorials on YouTube. You can even do them on some of the other social accounts because there's something powerful about people either hearing your voice or seeing video; they get to connect with you on a whole different level. And then the last thing is writing blog posts related to what your topic is, and it helps establish authority and kind of drive organic traffic. So when somebody comes to your website to check you out, is there good information there for them to find out about you? Is there stuff for them to either binge listen to or binge watch? So I would also put podcasts into the content marketing space. So if you love to talk about your topic, maybe you want to do a podcast. And you don't have to do all of these; like pick your favorite place to share your content and do that. So maybe if you like to write, you're doing blog posts on your website, and then you're going to go over on Substack and write. So figuring out how you want to content market is a great place to get started.
And then number two is email marketing, which probably should be number one actually, because it is the one thing I want you to do no matter what. It's the only thing I require of the students that I work with is that you get into this regular habit of doing email marketing. And the reason is you need to stay connected to your audience. When you are finding people, they may not be ready to buy right at this moment, but you want to build that connection; you want to stay with them; you want to keep moving them forward; keep them interested in what you're doing. And email marketing is the best way to do it because you own the list, and you can send out as many or as few emails as you want. You can build this credibility and authority by the things that you share. So email marketing, top of the list; everybody needs that one checked.
Number three is collaborating with influencers or affiliates, and this is sort of related—I'll talk a little bit about this—related to number nine, which is the referral program. And these are all ways that you work with other people's networks. So you are connecting with their audiences, and I like to think of it as being a resource and a helper for their audiences, and more than likely in a way that is different than what the influencer is doing. So you're compatible; we talked about this a little bit in previous, uh, episodes. So if you—I—I'll link to some of those so that you can catch what I'm talking about there, but it's a way to capitalize on the fact that somebody else already talks to your audience, so why not expand that out and you talk to them too.
Okay, number four is offering limited-time discounts or bonuses, and I will say I really do think this is an effective way to market. I think that there is a segment of the population that jumps when, when you offer discounts, when you offer bonuses; they will sign up when they normally wouldn't. So the more lucrative you can make those, the more exciting, and the more limited they are—that's why it says limited time—the more successful you will be with that strategy.
Number five is utilizing testimonials and social proof, and this one I'll be honest, I struggle with a little bit, and I'm going to do a whole episode about this at some point because I will be honest, I skip over testimonials. I don't 100% believe that they are always honest or effective, and I think case studies are a little bit better. But I do know that there are a lot of experts who say that social proof is what works for them, so you need to experiment; try it out with your audience; get some real legitimate testimonials and social proof and see if they make a difference when you're doing different offers, different promotions, if you have them versus not having them at all. I know it makes a difference if there's nothing, so you want to have some, but the piece that I'm a little bit, um, wondering about is if—I'm sure you've gone to the sites where they have, you know, 50 different testimonials, and the quantity alone is supposed to be impressive, but I, I guess I'm just too skeptical; it doesn't always work for me. So anyway, try that one out; experiment with that one.
Number six is run paid advertisements, and this one I'm always hesitant to recommend, especially early on, because I'll be honest, it is hard to do paid advertisements well because if you think about it, you have to figure out the messaging that works. You're paying to get in front of people and have, let's say Facebook show your ad to someone, and they have to catch the person at the point where they're interested in what you're doing and hopefully interested enough to buy so that you can make some money back in the process because you're spending money, and it's, it's tough. So I do want to say I'm going to put a link to my favorite training on getting started; it's from Z Buckler, and it's only $25, and it is a great way to get started with paid advertising. He keeps it pretty simple, and you can not only do ads for—what's the goal is actually to build your email list, so I love that even more—and then you will get the sales later, but he teaches you how to build your email list with ads and then continue from there. So it's an, it's an inexpensive program, so I'll have that link for you if you're really thinking about paid advertisement, um, definitely start there. And what I do love about that is it is a quick way to get traffic. If you have the budget, you can buy advertising, and you can have hopefully targeted people seeing your offers and seeing what you're sharing very, very quickly. So that's my favorite part of paid advertising.
Number seven is hosting webinars and live demos; anything where, maybe it's a Facebook Live, anything where you're showing up live to get to connect with people and sharing content with them. I love these concepts; I think it's getting tougher and tougher in some ways to get folks to show up. So I'm big on giving them incentives to either show up or incentives to watch replays. I get frustrated, I'll be honest, as a consumer when somebody says, "Yeah, there's not going to be any replays," because I know how busy I am; I'm, I don't have time to show up for your thing at your time, but if it's good enough, I will watch the replays. Sometimes I fast-forward through parts of the replays, but I will watch them if they are enticing enough. So depending on your audience too, you know, if you have working moms who are crazy busy and cannot show up at, uh, 6:00 p.m. for your webinar, give out a limited-time replay so that they could watch later.
And then number eight, optimizing your landing page. So when I think of landing pages, that's kind of an umbrella term for me, and it includes things like your opt-in pages where people are opting in for your email newsletter. Landing pages for me also include sales pages where they're finding out about your program and buying your stuff. So optimizing those pages to be even better is one of the big things we do as part of the Launchpad coaching program. So you can come to one of the live sessions, say, "I'm working on my landing page," we will pull it up and give you all kinds of suggestions on how to improve them. There are a ton of things that you can do to improve your conversions, and I actually even give away a landing page that has gotten me crazy high conversions when you sign up. So, so if you are interested in that, come join us for the Launchpad coaching, and I'll put that link in here too so that you can jump in. It's a great way to get support because I keep it a very small group because I want to be able to support you. Okay, that's number eight, optimizing your landing pages.
Number nine is creating a referral program, and I actually have several folks right now who are at, at this point where they are ready to do this. It is a bit of an undertaking, and there's some stuff to learn, and you have to put some tech pieces in place, and then you also have to put some content in place for referrals to use. So, for example, when I send out swipe to my affiliates—swipe copy is what it's called—and it's basically like, "Here's an email that you can share, and here's your link, and here's a social media post that you can share," and what they end up doing is they use that link with the content that I give them for their audience, and then if someone purchases, they earn revenue on the back end of that. So it's a bit of a technical—it's, it's not a sit down and do this in an hour kind of project; it's a bigger project. And I'm thinking about doing a more elaborate course on this one; I just have to figure out how to do that and still get enough sleep. So keep your ears open; we may have that coming.
And then number 10 is to leverage social media platforms, and I put this one at the bottom because I keep seeing the results from social media dropping off, and I keep seeing people saying, "I don't want to be on Facebook anymore; I don't want to be on social media anymore." And so the more that that happens, the tougher it is to get in front of the right people. So it's definitely not the way it was when these sites first came out, but there are people who are able to do this successfully. So it really, I think, depends on your audience, depends on how you want to connect with folks, and whether or not your audience wants to be in that playground. So depending on what you're doing, they may or may not want to be there. And sort of a side note, there's some th-sites that get grouped into social media that aren't really social media, and one of those is YouTube because I think YouTube—one of the things I love about it is that the content lasts forever. So it's not like Instagram where 24 hours from now the post that you just made is gone; the YouTube videos can keep sending you traffic. So that is also good. And then another one is Pinterest, and Pinterest also is a long-term marketing concept; it's not going to be fast, instant traffic, but the things that you are pinning hang out—it's more of a search engine. And there's also an episode about Pinterest that we've done in the past, so I will link to this one so you can, if, if you're like, "Ooh, maybe my audience would be there, and maybe that is a playground that I should be in."
So I hope this gave you some brainstorming ideas. If you're wondering still, "I wonder where I should be playing," join us for Launchpad coaching; I will give you my advice specifically targeted to your audience. Thanks for being here, and I hope you like this episode. Have a wonderful week, and I'll talk to you again soon.