How to Market your Online Courses

​It can be challenging to transfer both courses and marketing over to digital platforms. Furthermore it can be difficult to know which channels to make us of and how it should be implemented. In this blogpost I will give you some tips on how you can market your online courses – online!

First step to online marketing: Website

The best place to start to market your online courses on digital platforms, is by creating your own webpage. A webpage is the ultimate place to present your courses and what you have to offer. In addition it makes it easy for potential delegates to find what they are looking for. Many people also visit a providers’ webpage to check if they look reliable and trustworthy. If you don’t have a webpage, it looks messy or is hard to navigate, this can lead to you seeming like an untrustworthy training provider.

Why is having a website important?

For online courses the webpage is the most important tool to give the delegates an introduction to what the different courses contain. But also as an entryway to the courses. Another important aspect to having a webpage is being able to post teasers of the courses. Having a platform where the delegates can see parts of the course before deciding to buy, is important. If you are doing live online courses, it can be useful to record some snippets of your teaching and post to your webpage so potential delegates can see what you have to offer!

What should your website contain?

When you have a training business, it is important that your webpage contains all available information about the content of your courses. Furthermore it needs to have the available dates and the possibility of registration. It is possible to get entries to your courses directly through your webpage by using an integrated registration system. You can have the registration system and course calendar seamlessly integrated into your website. This will make the appearance of your website flawless. Then potential delegates can see that you are a serious provider!  If you want to learn more about how you can get a registration system and course calendar on your website, click here.

A webpage is also the starting point for many forms of marketing on various digital platforms. If you i.e want to advertise through Facebook, you need a webpage to have as a landing page for the ad. This also applies when you advertise through Google. Creating a webpage is easier than you think, and it also doesn’t have to be expensive. You can purchase a domain for about $10 a year. And there are many providers of webpage builders that have a lot of great premade themes. The only thing you have to do is fill in your specific information and add your photos, then you have your own website!

Purchase a domain and Webhotel

To purchase a domain and web hotel (you need both to get a functioning domain) you can Google your way to a provider, or use one of the ones I have listed below:

•   Domain.com
•   Hover.com
•   Namecheap.com

Good alternatives for webpage creator-pages

I have gathered some webpage creator pages that offer templates and are easy to work with:

•   Shopify: Shopify is the best option for you if you are selling your courses straight through your own webpage without any external signup forms or course calendars. Shopify makes it easy to build a website and is easy to use for visitors when it comes to navigation. Additionally it is easy to integrate payment methods to Shopify.  https://www.shopify.com/
•   Wix: Wix is also a website builder with premade templates, but Wix has more available functions and is a good fit for you if you are using your website with integrated signup forms. I really like the variety and the look of the layouts on Wix, and you can also browse the layouts by your type of business, which is really handy! https://www.wix.com/
•   WordPress: WordPress is a good platform for making websites. Even though WordPress originally is a blog platform, this can easily be used for websites as well. You can make a page for free, which makes this a budget-friedly alternative! Even though Wirdpress hase some premade templates, I would suggest downloading a plug-in page builder which gives you more options in regards to layout and visual page building. https://wordpress.com/

In the rest of this post I will take you through the different platforms you can use for your online marketing.

One of the best platforms for online marketing: Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is the advertisement tool and campagne builder created by Facebook. When you create ads through Facebook Ads, your ads are shown to potential customers on Facebook and Instagram.

The good think about Facebook Ads is that you can segment based on age, gender and location, but also on interests! By this I mean that if you are doing cooking classes, you can segment on people in your region that have listed cooking as one of their interests on Facebook. This makes ads on Facebook a cost efficient adformat. Because you know you will reach potential delegates that are interested in your types of courses.

By advertising through Facebook you can also make you ads come to live by using the carousel image function, or videos! This can make marketing your online courses more interesting for potential delegates.

Making ads in Facebook is really simple, and if you can make a post on your private Facebook or Instagram account, you can make a Facebook ad. If you want to learn more about how to make ads on Facebook, take this course.

When using Facebook Ads, it is really important that the Facebook page connected to your training business is up to date and easy to navigate. Facebook also has a course on how to make a good Facebook page, that might be worth to take a look at.

An important part of digital marketing: Google Adwords and SEO – organc vs paid search

Google Adwords is the advertisement system from Google, and is a great plave to market your online courses. Anyone can place bids on adpacement connected to specific keywords. If you are doing HR-courses, you can bid on keywords such as “HR-courses London”. Then your website will appear as the top three results when potential delegates Google those keywords. If you want to learn more about Google Ads you can do so here.

Google also has an organic search function, as you may know. These results are the ones that show up underneath the ads. And here you can’t pay for a placement, Google ranges what websites have the highest quality result to the words you are googling. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about designing your web page, with text, photos and information, in such a way that Google ranges you website as the number on in your area of expertise. Managing SEO is no easy task, it is time consuming and has to permeate everything you do and post to the website. If you want to learn more about SEO you can read the Google SEO beginner guide here.

Advertising on social media

Advertising on social media is a great way to reach people you know are interested in what you do! It is also a great way to make communities of people that have the same interests. On social media you can post interesting articles and other content that you know your followers will enjoy. If you want to learn more about how to market your online courses via social media I would suggest doing HubSpot’s social media course here. This will give you a better understanding of the different social media platforms, as well as how you in the best way can use each platform to promote your training business.

Take your marketing to the next level: Inbound Marketing

For those of you that really want to take your marketing to the next level, inbound marketing is the way to go! Both advertising through Facebook and Google are defined as “outbound marketing”, that is to say marketing that reach out to potential customers. Whereas inbound marketing is about attracting the customers by offering them valuable resources and information. This can be relevant blog posts about your courses, or useful posts on social media with links to interesting articles or other content that is relevant to you potential delegates.

A useful course to take if you are interested in inbound marketing, is HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing certification. By taking this course you will get a introduction to all aspects of the inbound methodology. There is a lot of useful information in the short and concise videos through the course! You also don´t have to take the whole certification. HubSpot have a lot of useful shorter courses about e-mail marketing, content marketing and contextual marketing to mention a few relevant ones.

I hope this post gave you more information about how to market your online courses through online platforms! I know it can be challenging to begin advertising with unfamiliar platforms, but when you have gone through it a couple of times, it will seem really easy.

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