This is not only a great opportunity for people who want to learn but also for people who want to teach. If you have a particular skill or knowledge about something, you can easily monetize it. But as easy as it looks to create a course, advertising it to gain more conversions is a whole different story. With tougher competition, it's not easy to stand out with your course, so most advertisers turn to online course advertising.
With this blog, let's discover advertising techniques you can use to market online courses and make them stand out.
Advertise Now
What Online Courses Advertising is All About
Picture this: After months of effort, you just finished creating your online course. All your knowledge and experience are packed in a bundle, ready to see the light of day. But there's a problem. Aside from a few close people, nobody knows about your course yet. It's out in the open for everybody, but nobody's buying it. There have been no impressions, clicks, or conversions.
The good news is that there's a solution to that. To bring your online course to the spotlight, you need to advertise it to the right people. Once it starts getting seen by people who need it, your conversions will automatically skyrocket, and the right people can then benefit from it.
Let us first clarify that there's no timeline when it comes to online courses advertising. You can do it months before the launch to create hype, or you can do it after the launch. What matters is how you're able to grasp your audience and how efficiently you're reaching them. After all, we don't want to exceed the marketing budget, do we?
Advertising Techniques for Your Online Course
Craft your ideal student persona
Who are the ideal students for whom you created your course?
Student persona creates a detailed picture of exactly who you're selling to. Here you learn about your target audience, their pain points, challenges, goals, and ambitions. This will also include their demographics like age, gender, income, education level, and other things like their interests and how they behave online.
Having all this information will help you create targeted and personalized ads that cater specifically to them. For instance, an ideal student for a stock market course will either be a finance student, a business professional, or simply someone who wants to start trading and learn more about it.
What's your UVP?
UVP, or unique value proposition, is a quality that differentiates your business from others. Education businesses often use it as a form of statement to present how their online course ads is superior to others. For instance, this can include live classes, guest teachers, free trials, money backs, free resources, etc.
So, make sure your UVP explains the courses' unique benefits and offerings. Use it throughout your education ad campaigns to ensure consistency and harmony.
Invest in paid ads
Paid advertising is probably the best way to get your course noticed quickly. You don't need to work on building an audience. All you need to do is choose the keywords you wish to rank for and bid on them. You can also set your targeting criteria keeping in mind your ideal student, and your ads will then get displayed accordingly.
The best way to invest in paid online course ads is by partnering with an ad network. They provide you with a single interface to manage, track, and optimize all your campaigns.
Advertise on socials
Social media has now turned into a place for users to discover new businesses, verify their reviews, and directly connect with them. Your competitor is probably there, too, making it twice as essential to establish your presence.
There are two things you can do to promote on social media platforms:
- Organically establish your presence by finding your target audience and directly connecting with them.
- Run paid ads on multiple platforms for your online course.
In a sense, social media is a more direct approach to your audience.
Put email ads to use
Every second business uses email advertising for promotions, mostly because they are practically free to use.
Promotional emails are designed in a way that promotes your online course and lists its features, benefits, outcomes, and quick links that direct users to the website. You can also easily segment your audience and create separate email lists for each. This makes it easier to send out different promotions later depending on the stage of the consumer's journey.
Generally speaking, they encourage users to make a course purchase, opt for a free trial, or re-engage them after a purchase. They can be a great way to reach a large number of audience in one go.
Tie up with influencers
The power of influencers is unmatched when it comes to online course promotion. Over time, they have established themselves with a great deal of loyal followers who look up to them for information and recommendations. You can leverage their presence for your online course advertising.
Just make sure you collaborate with influencers in the relevant niche to reach the right audience. For example, if you're promoting a finance course, then finance influencers will be the best option. But if your course is about gardening, then floral influencers should be your pick.
Reach out to podcasters
Everybody is tuning into podcasts more and more every day, providing businesses with a solid opportunity to advertise there, too.
Podcast ads can be placed either in the beginning, the middle, or in the end. You can also get the podcast host to read it out, making it look more authentic and convincing. For online courses, educational and informative podcasts work the best as their listeners are often prone to learn something new and absorb more information.
Other Promotional Strategies to Try Out
Promotions aren't always limited to advertising networks. Multiple aspects of it work at different times, and all you need to know is when to use it. Let's discuss them briefly.
SEO: SEO or search engine optimization is your answer if you're looking for long-term growth. There's only so much you can spend on online course advertising. SEO builds your presence and maintains it so that when a user searches for something, your website pops up. Once search engines start seeing you as an authoritative site, your organic results will boost significantly.
Create a nurture sequence: If you're advertising to people randomly, chances are that you'll miss out on a lot of leads. Nurture sequence is a guide that divides your audience based on how well a consumer knows your business and how likely they are to purchase your online course. Using this nurture sequence, you'll know when to educate people about your course, when to provide social proof, and when to send an irresistible offer.
Start an affiliate program: Affiliate programs are your way to promote and spend only when you get a successful conversion. Education campaigns have always leaned towards affiliate marketing, where people promote the course in return for a commission. If someone makes a purchase using their unique affiliate code, businesses have to pay the affiliate. This ensures that you stay profitable throughout.
Create YouTube videos: YouTube has always been the most suitable platform or educators to find their breakthrough. You can start posting your videos, or snippets of them, on your platform and then direct them to your course. Keep doing this consistently to find results in the long run.
Conclusion
Online course advertising is no different from other forms of advertising. All you need to do is thoroughly understand your audience, choose appropriate advertising methods, and opt for other supplementary promotional techniques to invest in your long-term growth. From using e-learning PPC ads to advertising via emails and influencers, there are plenty of options for you to try. Stick to one and keep optimizing it. Switch it when it doesn't perform as well. That's how you keep a steady online course advertising strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is online course advertising?
Ans: Online course advertising refers to the promotion of online courses and other educational materials by targeting ads to relevant audiences.
What are the most popular online course advertising methods?
Ans: PPC advertising, social media advertising, email advertising, and influencer advertising are some of the most popular online course advertising methods.
Which is the most affordable advertising method?
Ans: PPC advertising is the most affordable online advertising method as you can set a limit on your spending and choose bids and targeting criteria accordingly.
Is the education market competitive?
Ans: Yes, the education market is competitive, as many people want to monetize their knowledge and experience. To stand out, you need to advertise your business by highlighting its unique value proposition.
Can I use emails for advertising?
Ans: Yes, you can use emails for advertising by placing your ads in the body of newsletters or sending promotional emails straight away.