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Our view at Stack - Teachable’s is an online training platform and it's key features include an intuitive course builder, rich multimedia lectures, and powerful sales and marketing tools. It offers flexible pricing options, advanced analytics, and student management capabilities. Additionally, it provides great customer support and mobile accessibility

Using AI to create parts of your course can be a speedy and efficient way to get organized and ready to launch a final product. With Teachable’s integrated AI course generator, you can easily have a concise course outline in seconds.

While there are many different tools that can be specifically beneficial to creators, it’s also true that the genius of AI is limited to the depth of instructions that it’s given. It’s a skill in and of itself to know what questions to ask and which directions to give the AI so that it produces the best results possible. If you want to improve the quality of its output, then look no further than the prompts that you’re inputting. Luckily it’s pretty straightforward to learn how to up your prompt game. Read on to find out how!

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Best practices for using AI

If you’ve never used AI before, you might not know what to expect. Here are our tips for creating the best prompt possible for AI.

Get clear on your intention

Having a specific goal in mind for what you’re creating is essential for you and the AI tool you’re using. What do you aim to teach with your course? What value will your students gain from this course? What specific skills or understanding will they walk away knowing after completing the course? Consider these questions when setting your intention.

Share your intention with the AI

This is a simple but important step. The more information that you include in your prompt, the more on-target the output will be. AI is looking for your intention, so clearly stating it is a helpful way of getting more specific results. This can be as simple as starting the prompt with “Today we are creating a course outline that focuses on XYZ.”

Be as specific as possible

Specificity is key to helping the AI understand what you’re looking for. For example, if your course has to do with teaching others how to improve their mindset you can get very specific. Instead of prompting with “Write a course outline about improving your mindset” try using something like “Write a course outline that explains what mindset is, how it impacts your daily life, and how to replace negative subconscious beliefs with positive ones.” This will provide an output that gives you a lot more to work with.

Details, details, details

It’s likely you have some idea of how long you want your course to be. So include what subtopics are essential to include, and/or any niche-specific language that needs to be included. Tell the AI all of this in your prompt!

Double-check your prompt for errors

It may seem obvious, but checking for spelling and grammar errors can go a long way in ensuring that the AI is receiving information that is as clear and concise as possible.

Revise and revisit

Keep in mind that you can revise the first or second (or more!) prompts that you input to get a more specific and aligned output. Play around with tweaking the prompts and you’re likely to get even better results. You can do this by changing verbs, rephrasing certain words or sentences, and adding more details about the overall goal or intention of the course.

Example prompt for using AI

You can input as many details as you want, but make sure to include these essentials:

• Who is the course for? (You can include a problem that your audience is experiencing that the course will help solve)
• What is the overall aim of the course?
• What are the learning objectives that each module will cover? (It’s okay if you don’t know every single one!)
• Optional: length of course and any niche-specific language that you’d like to include

For example, instead of inputting “Create a course outline for doing a yogic headstead” this prompt will give you a much more concise output: “Create a course outline for a 4-week course for beginner yogis on how to build muscle tone and balance so that they can do a headstand. This includes learning poses that increase balance and strengthens the core muscles. It also focuses on the mental aspects of overcoming fear to practice the inversion.”

Try it yourself

As with anything new, learning to hone your prompts is a skill! Keep at it and before you know it, you’ll be generating outputs that were better than you could have imagined on the very first try. Then, take what AI gives you and make it your own so you stay true to your brand.

If Teachable is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Teachable’s is an online training platform and it's key features include an intuitive course builder, rich multimedia lectures, and powerful sales and marketing tools. It offers flexible pricing options, advanced analytics, and student management capabilities. Additionally, it provides great customer support and mobile accessibility

Amembership website can be a very lucrative way to expand your online product selection, provide more value to your students, and increase your profit. And what’s best is that this business model works for so many different industries and niches, that any content creator can find a way to take advantage of it.

Let’s talk about how a Membership product can complement your online courses or digital downloads, and why you might want to consider creating one.

5 ways a membership website can complement your online course

What is a membership?

A membership is a business model where customers pay a fee for content that’s exclusive to the membership. That fee can happen on a monthly, quarterly, annual, or any other cadence schedule.

There are many different successful businesses in various niches that operate on a membership or subscription basis. Netflix, HBO Max, and BossBabe (a business membership for women entrepreneurs) all fall under the membership website umbrella.

Why create a membership website to accompany your online course

Most often content creators opt for either creating an online course or running a membership. However, there are many benefits to creating both—an online course, and a membership to accompany the course.

Let’s discuss some of the key benefits of why that’s a good idea for your business:

The memberships make for a good upsell

As a business owner, you want to make sure that you have as many valuable offers available for your audience as possible to maximize your profit. Upsells are one of the most effective strategies to increase your profit. And a membership can be a fantastic upsell for people who are interested in your offers.

Add a paid tier to your online course

Another very effective way you can use a membership to increase your online course business profit is to use it to add tiers to your pricing.

Let’s say you sell an online course about product photography. Here’s how you can break down your pricing into tiers:

• Tier 1: for $200, students get access to course material
• Tier 2: for $500, students get access to course material + one-off 30-minute consultation with you
• Tier 3: for $900, students get access to course material + one-off 30-minute consultation with you + access to an exclusive membership site

With one course alone you can create many more opportunities to increase your profit. Plus an opportunity to provide your students with more value. You can learn more about how to easily do this on Teachable with our Membership product.

Engage your audience with ongoing challenges

One key component of a membership is often the sense of community it creates. This is often  community of people who are all interested in the same topic and are seeking to find solutions to their problems is a very powerful tool.

Running memberships can help you to engage with your audience in a much more personal manner, and you can help them accomplish their goals by offering ongoing challenges.

For example, let’s say you sell online courses teaching people how to achieve various fitness goals like a handstand, a split, etc. You could create a membership option, where every month students can participate in fitness challenges based on your fitness programs. Plus, if you allow them access they can communicate with one another and share their highs and lows on their journey.

This will allow your students to utilize the course materials you offer much better, find a supportive community of like-minded people, and have a way to receive guidance from you.

Keep your students accountable

Another wonderful way to use a membership is to use it as an accountability system. The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) found that if you’re committed to someone and have an accountability appointment with them, you’re 95% more likely to accomplish your goals.

When you sell your online courses you’re really selling a transformation or a promise of a transformation. A membership that serves as an accountability system is a great way to deliver on that promise. It can also help increase overall student satisfaction with your programs.

You can also offer your time as an accountability buddy through your membership. Or you can connect your students through the membership and take on the role of an accountability matchmaker.

Provide a place for students to connect and network

Depending on what industry you’re in, you can utilize a membership as a way to connect your students to one another. This can also help them find work and other opportunities.

For example, if you’re teaching online courses on web design and development. Your courses provide a way for people to learn a skill, and a membership product could provide tools to find a job or build a career with their newly learned skills.

So, within your membership, you could offer multiple benefits. Like coaching sessions with you, networking events, a job board, and other valuable materials to help people utilize the skill they just learned.

Membership examples

Let’s take a look at a few great examples of successful membership websites that complement other parts of the creator’s businesses:

The Virtual Savvy

The Virtual Savvy offers online courses that teach people how to build their virtual assistant businesses. After listening to their community, they decided to add a membership site for $47/month where they offer additional useful training for their members.

When you join their membership website, you get access to all the previous content, as well as every new training that they add every month.

Allasyummyfood

Allasyummyfood is another great example of a content creator using a membership website to complement their online courses. They sell courses on making cakes and individual live cake-baking workshops.

In addition to that, they have a membership website where members get access to a community, new recipes, and live sessions with the founder every quarter.

Live Richer Academy

The creator of The Budgetnista doesn’t sell online courses, but she does sell books on personal finance. And in addition to that, she has created a membership website that gives people a place to learn about finance and build wealth and find like-minded people.

Membership website models

So, as we already briefly touched on before, there are many different ways to run a membership website. You can offer different forms of content and choose to engage your community in multiple ways:

• A fixed membership period: This type of membership works best for limited-time challenges, like 30/60/90-day fitness, wellness, or personal finance challenges. People pay a membership fee for the duration of the challenge to get access to content, accountability system, and everything else.
• Product membership: This type of membership provides the members with access to exclusive content. It’s often delivered in small chunks, giving people time to process the content before receiving a new update.
• Coaching membership: This type of membership gives the members access to the creator, either in a coaching or accountability format.

Depending on your content, niche, and business goals you might choose to mix and match all these membership types and offer your audience a little bit of everything. There are really no rules as to how you have to run your membership. So it’s best to choose a model that works for your business.

How to keep your members engaged

Creating a membership website and onboarding new members is just the start. You want to make sure that your members are engaged and get value out of their subscriptions. Here’s how you can do that:

• Engage with them: It’s essential to engage with your community and show up consistently. You can share valuable, inspirational, or motivational short-form content, answer questions or simply offer encouragement where needed.
• Refresh content: A successful membership website always offers new, valuable content. So, make sure that you’re supplying your members with regular new content in the form of webinars, blog posts, YouTube videos, workshops, and everything in between.
• Run challenges: If it works with your niche and business model, a very effective way to engage your members is to run challenges consistently and invite people to participate. Take it a step further and offer incentives for finishing challenges–gifts, discounts, or special swag.
• Listen to feedback: Your members will tell you what sort of content they want to see more, what struggles they are facing and need help with, and how you can better help them achieve their goals or solve their problems.

If Teachable is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Teachable’s is an online training platform and it's key features include an intuitive course builder, rich multimedia lectures, and powerful sales and marketing tools. It offers flexible pricing options, advanced analytics, and student management capabilities. Additionally, it provides great customer support and mobile accessibility

Abandoned cart emails automatically get sent out when someone adds a product to their online cart, then leaves the page before finalizing the checkout process. This type of email sequence is great for reminding potential customers to come back and complete their purchases.

Research shows that almost 70% of consumers abandon their carts—but abandoned cart email sequences can generate a click-through rate of 23.33%, meaning nearly a quarter of those will click back to their cart while considering whether to complete the purchase.

However, to see good success rates with your cart abandonment emails, you need to know how to create the best email sequence you can. We’ve got eight abandoned cart email best practices to help you get started.

8 abandoned cart email best practices to increase sales

Want to increase sales from cart abandoners? Keep these eight best practices in mind when creating your next email sequence.

1. Start your abandoned cart email sequence within 24 hours

Don’t wait too long before starting your abandoned cart email sequence. You still want the product(s) your customer almost purchased to be top of mind.

While you absolutely must send that first email within 24 hours of cart abandonment, studies show that the optimal time is actually one hour after abandonment, according to Rejoiner.

2. Send out three emails

Many businesses simply send out a single cart abandonment email and call it a day. If the customer comes back, great. If not, we tried.

However, best practices dictate that your abandoned cart email sequence should consist of three emails for optimal results. One study done by Klaviyo analyzed nearly 10 million cart abandonment emails to find some of the best data, and here are the results.

Sequences of three emails generate the best results at $24.9 million in revenue. That’s 6.5x the revenue that a single abandoned cart email sends. Two emails generate the second-best results at $16.4 million, then four emails, before we get to the revenue that just one email brings.

This tells us that your abandoned cart emails can’t be a one-and-done. And if they are, you could be leaving a ton of revenue on the table.

But what should go into those three emails? You don’t want to just send the same email three times. One good rule of thumb is to break your emails down like this:

• Email #1: A brief reminder of their abandoned cart
• Email #2: A suggestion that they finalize their purchase
• Email #3: An incentive (like a discount code or free shipping)

3. Use a catchy subject line

Make your emails stand out in your recipient’s inbox. Use a subject line that’s going to grab attention and get your customer to open it.

Klaviyo’s study found that simply reminding your customer about their abandoned cart generates a 47.67% open rate. Their data found that the average cart abandonment open rate was around 41.18%, meaning a simple reminder (one popular subject line is, “It looks like you left something behind”) increased opens by 6.5%.

However, we encourage you to experiment with your subject line, too. Add some of your brand’s personality to it.

For example, this subject from BarkBox adorably mentions that the customer’s dog wanted a reminder sent about their toys.

Brainstorm ideas for your own subject lines that will make your customers want to open your emails.

4. Write engaging email copy

If your subject lines should be catchy, then your email copy should be even more attention-grabbing and enticing. Throw some personality in there and get your customer to want to shop with your brand.

Here’s a fun example from Adidas:

“Is your Wi-Fi okay?” in big, bold letters helps lighten the mood and assume that it was just a little mistake, the customer wouldn’t have chosen not to fulfill their purchase!

Think about how you can create email copy that helps increase the chances that your recipient clicks through and decides to finish up a purchase.

5. Share high-quality product imagery

Your emails should be simple, but not boring. And they should absolutely include high-quality photos of the product(s) they’ve left behind.

Your photos will likely be automatically pulled from your product page—so step one is to ensure high-quality product photography is used there. Second, make sure your imagery shows up nice and large in your emails so it’s part of the main focus.

Here’s a great example from Jack Wills:

The product information—and photos—are front and center.

If you’re unable to include photos that large, consider taking a page from this Food52 example:

While they’ve included the product left behind lower in the email, they also have a visually appealing header photo with a large assortment of their products to help make the email more attractive.

6. Include a call-to-action (CTA)

The purpose of a cart abandonment email is to get your customer to take action in finishing their purchase. So make it clear what action you want them to take with a call-to-action button.

Here’s one example from Rudy’s Barbershop:

They’ve included a big “Checkout Now” button right underneath the products to clearly state what they’re hoping the customer will do.

CTA button options include:

• Shop Now
• Checkout Now
• Take Another Look
• Complete My Order
• Return To My Items
• View My Cart
• Continue Shopping

7. Create a sense of urgency

Urgency can help customers decide to make purchases more quickly. One case study found that creating urgency with their customers increased sales by an astronomical 332%. And it can help you make a sale with your cart abandonment emails.

Here’s an example of what this might look like from Society 6:

Letting customers know their cart is only available for a certain amount of time can increase the odds they take action much more quickly.

Other ways to create a sense of urgency with your abandoned cart emails include:

• Letting customers know when products are selling out
• Sharing that the cart will expire soon
• Including information about limited-time-only products
• Using phrases like “Don’t wait too long,” or “Going, going, gone!”

8. Provide an incentive

Finally, include some sort of incentive like a discount or free shipping that will help your customer feel better about spending money and making a purchase.

Here’s an example from Winc of what that might look like:

They’re offering a $20 off discount code to those who go back and complete their purchase—with fun CTAs like “Let’s do this” and “I’m ready for wine.”

Providing some additional incentive—whether it’s free shipping, money savings, or even a free product—can be a great way to get customers through the door, especially after they’ve abandoned their carts.

Use these abandoned cart email best practices in your next sequence

The bottom line is that abandoned cart emails work. Keep your customers from abandoning your course and digital products with these best practices. Learn more about creating abandoned cart email sequences with Teachable.

If Teachable is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Teachable’s is an online training platform and it's key features include an intuitive course builder, rich multimedia lectures, and powerful sales and marketing tools. It offers flexible pricing options, advanced analytics, and student management capabilities. Additionally, it provides great customer support and mobile accessibility

The world of online tutoring has opened up teaching opportunities for people everywhere. Now, you don’t necessarily have to work for a public or private school to share your passion for educating and giving students the tools they need to succeed in adolescence and their careers.

But how to become a tutor online? Let’s answer that question with a step-by-step breakdown of how to offer your tutoring services online.

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What do tutors do?

Tutors – both online and in-person – are professional teachers who lecture students individually or in very small groups. These professionals provide tutoring services to students for a variety of different subjects, including:

• Mathematics
• Writing
• Science
• Languages
• And more

Lots of tutors advertise their online tutoring services on dedicated websites, which connect remote tutoring professionals with students or their parents. Depending on the online tutoring platform used, the tutor might guide the student through interactive lessons, lecture them in a virtual classroom, and more.

To work as an online tutor, every teacher needs to have professional teaching experience or some kind of educational background. There’s a wide range of opportunities available for tutors of all types, especially those who cultivate good reputations and who interact with students regularly.

Tutoring can be a very rewarding experience as well. For many teachers, there’s nothing better than teaching online since it’s often more flexible compared to a traditional classroom teaching environment.

But to work as an online tutor, you need to accomplish several limited steps. For example, you’ll need learning experiences in the educational field, plus you have to complete a background check for your employing company or teaching platform. Many online tutoring websites have very strict requirements for remote tutoring professionals.

Let’s take a closer look at how to tutor online.

How to become an online tutor

To become an online tutor, you have to have relevant educational credentials, knowledge of different teaching styles, pick a specialty, and decide how you will offer your tutoring services.

Earn a degree or diploma

First, you need a high school diploma, GED, or a relevant degree. Technically, you don’t need a degree in teaching or a related subject to work as a tutor or get a tutor job. You can tutor anyone you like for free or for money if they agree to accept your services. However, you won’t be able to work for tutoring companies or official organizations without a bachelor’s degree in education or a similar subject.

Furthermore, it’s unlikely that parents or educators will accept you as a tutor for their children or students if you don’t have a degree highlighting your skills or specialization. Tutoring experience is valuable, but some sort of certification and degree will go a long way.

Generally, if you want tutoring to be your profession in the long run, it pays to earn a bachelor’s degree in teaching or whatever subject you wish to teach.

Earn certification

No matter your career path, tutors must pursue certification through different accredited tutoring associations. Examples include:

• The American Tutoring Association
• The Association for Tutoring Professionals
• The College Reading and Learning Association
• The National Tutoring Association

The more certifications you have, the more likely you’ll be hired by an official tutoring organization like an agency or private school system.

Certifications can also benefit you if you choose to work part-time as a freelance tutor. And they’ll help you learn the important tutoring methods. You can post these on your tutoring profile or business website. Certifications demonstrate your expertise in the area of tutoring and make parents more comfortable hiring you for their kids.

Most tutoring certifications require you to take one or more exams. They may also require you to have a bachelor’s degree in teaching (see more above). Again, this highlights the importance of getting a bachelor’s degree if you want to tutor seriously and for significant money.

Choose your tutoring specialty

Next, you need to decide what to teach or what your tutoring specialty will be. Unlike many public school teachers, most tutors teach one or two subjects maximum. They may teach students to help them master specific subjects or areas of expertise rather than teaching students everything they need to learn from the school system.

For instance, you can be an English tutor, a math tutor, a tutor of music, or something else entirely. English tutors, or American tutoring, are some of the most common as many non-Americans seek English tutors for their children. That’s because American English is an important business language.

However, Chinese is also a common tutoring specialty. Chinese is becoming an important trade language like English, so if you know how to speak it, you could make a lot of money teaching Chinese to current English-only speakers.
Regardless, you should try to teach subjects you have professional training in or enjoy teaching.

Choose where you’ll teach

You can offer tutoring sessions in public areas like coffee shops. Or you can tutor at your own home, which provides greater privacy and control over the environment. Alternatively, you might go to your pupils’ homes, especially if your students tend to be on the younger side or high school students and parents are worried about protecting their children from identity theft and online security.

Choosing where you’ll teach can impact your schedule, how often you can tutor, and how much you should charge for your work. Keep all of this in mind when choosing your primary teaching locations.

Decide to work independently or for an agency

After choosing your specialty, you need to decide whether you’ll work as an independent freelance tutor or if you want to work for a tutoring agency. It’s easier to find work when working for an agency in many cases.

A tutoring agency is an organization that hires you as a contractor for private tutoring jobs. The tutoring agency handles marketing, outreach to parents or schools, and many other business elements. In exchange, you tutor for the agency and give them a cut of your profits or accept a salary from them.

In essence, working for an agency means working as a tutor in a traditional employee context. It’s not the same thing as being an independent tutor, where you get to choose all of your clients, set your rates, and have more freedom.

Both types of tutoring have their advantages. For instance, tutors working for an agency don’t have to worry about advertising their services. But they might earn less money working for an agency than they would as a freelancer with their own client base.

Start seeking students

Whether you choose to work for an agency or independently, you’ll need to find students to teach. There are many ways you can do this, though if you work for an agency, you’ll have to advertise your services much less, if ever.

How to start freelance tutoring

Freelance tutoring can be advantageous and beneficial economically, professionally, and personally. When you tutor as a freelancer, you are 100% in control of your:

• Rates
• Schedule
• Who you teach (i.e., high school students vs. college kids, their age range, etc.)
• What you teach
• The learning styles you’ll offer your students, etc.

However, running a freelance tutoring business is like running any other online business, whether you teach students in person or over the internet. You need to come up with a business idea, make a quality website, and decide how you’ll present your class materials to your pupils.

You can use online platforms like Teachable to provide educational content to your pupils. Alternatively, you can video conference with your students, especially if your teaching methods require you to converse with them “face-to-face.”

Regardless, to start freelance tutoring:

• Decide how you will run your tutoring business. Will you advertise locally and meet students at coffee shops? Or will you have a big online tutoring business where you videoconference to teach students throughout the day?
• Set your rates. The key to succeeding as a freelance tutor is setting your rates to be competitive without going overboard. Look at what other tutors in your area or niche are charging and try to rate yourself competitively. Most students won’t want to take out student loans for a private tutor unless they sign up for a long-term program under your tutelage.
• Start advertising your freelance tutoring services. Note that it may take you some time to build up a reputation as a great tutor. But over time, getting students to come to you for education will become easier. You can post advertisements, make blog posts about your experiences, and much more.
• Ask for positive reviews from the parents of your current pupils. This is the best way to build a strong reputation and a client base from scratch.

How to get students to tutor

Now that you know how to become a tutor, it might be wise to start looking for students to teach. After all, you won’t make any money despite your skills if you can’t advertise your tutoring services one way or another!

Fortunately, there are multiple ways in which you can get students to tutor, including:

• Registering for an online tutoring directory. These are essentially public listings where you can advertise your services. Examples of tutoring directories include Care.com, Wyzant, and more.
• Asking for referrals. If you know people, ask them to refer you to teachers or parents so you can educate their students/kids.
• Running online advertisements for your tutoring service, especially if you work as a freelancer. Online PPC or pay-per-click ads could be the best way to advertise in this manner. Alternatively, you could advertise on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

If you get a tutor job with a tutoring agency or organization, you’ll be assigned students to tutor almost immediately. If you decide to go freelance or opt for another business pathway, you’ll need to pursue new students to tutor by yourself.

FAQs

How do I start a career as a tutor?

To start a career as a tutor, you must first figure out what you want to teach, get a degree, and decide whether you’ll tutor for an agency or by yourself. Above all else, you need to be skilled in one area or another so you can teach applicable skills to students.

Can I be a tutor and make money?

Yes! Good tutors earn enough to make a living from teaching just a handful of students each year. However, most tutors make money privately or while working for an agency.

Do I need a degree to become a tutor?

You don’t need a degree if you wish to tutor students as a freelancer. However, working for tutoring businesses requires a degree either in the subject you wish to teach or in education.

If Teachable is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Teachable’s is an online training platform and it's key features include an intuitive course builder, rich multimedia lectures, and powerful sales and marketing tools. It offers flexible pricing options, advanced analytics, and student management capabilities. Additionally, it provides great customer support and mobile accessibility

Online education is more popular than ever, and teachers like you have wider audiences to market to as well. Whether you’re an experienced educator or are looking to launch your first online class, it can be tough to bring students to your online courses, especially if you don’t already have a dedicated audience.

Luckily, you don’t need to spend tons of money on online advertisements, nor do you need to hope Google’s SEO algorithms favor you over your competitors. Instead, you can take advertising into your own hands if you learn how to market online courses effectively.

Let’s take a look at 41 ways you can do just that.

How to market your online course before it’s ready

Advertising for online classes doesn’t have to begin after your course is ready and uploaded to a quality learning platform like Teachable. You can market your course before making it with a few smart strategies.

The below steps are important for ensuring your later marketing efforts succeed. Think of them as the groundwork you need to do before promoting your online course.

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1. Identify your brand’s USP

First, identify the USP or unique selling proposition of your brand. Of course, “brand” in this sense can be just you as a person or your reputation as an online teacher.

Regardless, the USP is what separates you from other online educators.

It’s important to identify your USP, so you know what you bring to your students and can highlight that in all of your marketing and promotional materials. Your

USP can be things like:

• The affordability of your online courses
• Your expertise in your educational niche
• The quality of your online courses
• Something else entirely

Bottom line: make sure you know what separates you from the pack of other online educators before selling online courses. It is the number one way to ensure that students understand the intrinsic value of your educational offerings before making a purchase. It’s also a great place to showcase the transition students can expect to undergo after having gone through your course.

2. Determine your target audience

Next, you need to determine the target audience you’ll primarily sell to. For example, if you make online marketing classes about UX design, your target audience will include:

• Small business owners
• Online entrepreneurs
• UX students
• Online marketers, etc.

Your target audience is the group of people most likely to purchase your courses or attend your lessons regularly. Again, by identifying your target audience, you’ll be better equipped to market to them effectively.

For example, you can make an ad that speaks to them more directly and clearly instead of a generalized ad that doesn’t pull them in or persuade them to view your materials.

You can determine your target audience by:

• Performing market research, such as keyword research
• Using some common sense—for instance, if your courses are on a specific subject, your learners will necessarily be professionals in the same industry
• Considering your experiences as a teacher

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3. Create a “student avatar”

The next step is to create a so-called student avatar. In a nutshell, a student avatar is a representative example of a member of your target audience or the people most likely to enter your marketing funnel. You’ll often hear this called an audience persona, too.

Say that your audience comprises small business owners who want to know how to make a clean e-commerce shop user interface. That’s perfect for your courses because you teach how to make UIs for small websites.

The student avatar might have characteristics like:

• Aged between 25 and 45
• Generally female
• Interested in clear solutions and streamlined tutorials

No matter the exact demographic characteristics or attributes of the student avatar, the point of understanding them is the same. When you create a student avatar, you can advertise to that persona more easily and effectively.

4. Research keywords for titles

Before drawing up a list of potential courses to create, you should research keywords for course titles. Course titles can and should take search engine optimization (SEO) into account, as the titles will impact who finds your courses and how you can categorize them.

Researching keywords can also be advantageous since doing so can help you develop course or topic ideas if you are having trouble.

5. Pre-sell the course

That’s right; you don’t have to sell online courses after they’re done. It might be smarter to pre-sell your courses by letting people purchase them or a tutorial/trial class within the larger course ahead of time.

Pre-selling a course is advantageous because it lets you test out course ideas. If, for example, you pre-sell two courses that you haven’t yet created and one has many more pre-sales compared to the other, you know which of the courses you should focus on. It’s also a fantastic way to gather feedback, secure testimonials, and test the waters with ideas. Learn more about how to run a pre-sale here.

6. Make a “Teacher Profile” page or section

Lastly, you can build trust and your brand authority as an educator if you create a teacher profile page on your website or course sales page. The teacher profile page should include:

• Your history as an educator
• Any relevant credentials to the subjects you teach
• What you plan to bring to potential students, etc.

You should mainly focus on credentials (strong social proof) and authority on this page. But it’s also a great place to share your brand mission statement or course goals. Be sure to link to the teacher profile page in every course description, especially for new courses in untested subjects or niches.

A teacher profile page is even more important if you are a new educator and don’t have a willing audience of trusting students quite yet. Pro tip: include some contact information, such as an email or social account. That way, your potential students can ask questions and see if the course is a fit for them.

How to market online courses once they’re ready

Naturally, most of your marketing work will occur after you create an online course (or several) and are ready to bring students to your materials. Fortunately, you can employ many effective strategies to promote your course after making it and uploading it to Teachable. Here’s how to promote online classes once they’re ready.

7. YouTube promotions

For starters, one of the best ways to advertise a course is through YouTube promotions. YouTube promotions are much more effective nowadays since people are used to viewing video content for ads, promotions, and breakdowns of online courses.

YouTube promotions can be even more effective if you leverage several subsidiary strategies:

• For example, you can partner with other YouTube creators and cross-promote your courses with each other. This may allow you to bring students from each other’s audiences without having to attract new students.
• You can join the YouTube Partner Program and create advertisements that show up on related videos.

8. YouTube Ads

Dedicated YouTube ads take some time to create, but they’ll pop up in front of your videos or the videos of related content creators. Think of these as traditional commercials seen on TV. This marketing strategy will likely be more approachable and effective as you earn money and solidify your place as a major educator in your subject.

9. Blog announcements

Blog announcements can also be highly effective. For example, you can make a blog post announcing the recent launch of one of your new courses. The benefit of announcing new courses on your blog is that you can tie them into previous classes you’ve already released or represent the classes however you like.

Similarly, you can cross-promote by partnering with other educators or brands and announce your class on their blogs and vice versa.

10. Student testimonials page for your website

You might consider creating a student testimonials page for your website or a sales page to market a class. Student testimonials are highly advantageous because they:

• Boost brand authority for you as an educator
• Show potential students that your previous students had a great time learning from your classes
• Allow students to gain some insights into your teaching style and your specific benefits

Of course, your testimonials should be legitimate and taken from real reviews. This leads to the next major tip…

11. Ask for course reviews

Don’t hesitate to ask former students for course reviews or testimonials about your teaching abilities. If you’ve just launched a new course, you can ask for reviews for prior classes those students completed.

Asking for course reviews, feedback, and testimonials is highly recommended for your personal branding. Getting the positive word out there and gathering good reviews for your testimonials page is a great way to convince new students that you are worth their time and money.

12. Make a dedicated course page for your website

You don’t have to have a website to have a course page on Teachable. Teachable can act as your business’s homepage and course directory.

However, if you have your own website, be sure to update the links and information about your course or courses. Each new course you release should have a dedicated page on your website. The dedicated course sales page should include the following:

• A breakdown of what the course includes
• Details about how long the course is and how many subclasses it includes
• What students will learn by the end
• Who the course is meant for
• Any other pertinent information

Think of the dedicated course page as a product description for prospective students. The more information you give them, the greater the likelihood a student will sign up for one of the courses since they’ll feel confident about their purchase.

13. Update the existing course page

Alternatively, you can update your existing collective course page if your site has one already. This is essentially a listing page that breaks down all the class offerings you have as a teacher. Be sure to update this each time you launch a new class or change how you price your courses.

Many of your former students will visit the existing course page rather than click on advertisements since they already trust you. Updating the existing course page will make your new class offerings more accessible to new and former students.

14. Email newsletters

Email newsletters are perhaps the best way to market online courses. Getting leads for your newsletters is easy by requiring student emails from every new student who signs up for a class.

If you already have an email list, send out course announcements when you make a new class and invite your students to watch it on your platform. Your marketing newsletters should also include special deals or discounts (more on those below) if applicable.

15. Email signature links

You can passively promote online courses by adding a link to the new class or your educational platform in your email signature. Your email signature is used for all of your professional correspondence, either between your students or other individuals and organizations.

Having the link to your new class in your email signature gets the word out there that you have a new course ready for viewing. It’s a great way to bring a few extra people to your class without having to do much.

16. Podcast announcements

Are you into podcasting? More importantly, are your students? If you answer one or both of those questions “yes,” then you should feel free to announce your new classes on any podcasts you are a part of. It’s a smart, stellar way to market and sell online courses to those interested in your courses.

Whether you host your own podcast show or are a guest on someone else’s, be sure to plug your new class at the end. Most podcast hosts are fairly relaxed about this, as they’re used to product placements or advertisements being a part of their shows.

17. Make a free trial

You can’t go wrong with allowing new students to sample your educational wares without having to pay a penny. To do that, create a free trial for every new course or class you make.

Platforms such as Teachable allow you to do this with a few button presses. But no matter what platform you use, you should make a free trial by:

• Giving students unlimited access to the course for a short timeframe, like 24 hour
• Giving students unlimited access to one part of the course, like the first two lessons, but requiring them to pay for the rest

No matter which trial strategy you employ, you can rest assured it will be quite effective at getting new students to want to get the full course offering once they see the beginning. Just be careful not to make your free trial with too much freedom and flexibility; otherwise, you might find that a few highly productive students complete your class within the free 24-hour period, for example.

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18. Offer a free mini course

Alternatively, you can create a free mini course. This is a great lead magnet, which will help draw new leads to your brand and other courses you offer.
For example, if you make a new course with three sub-classes contained within, you can offer the first one free on your website. This is similar to a free trial, but it doesn’t have the same time limit element and might be a little more effective.

Naturally, any free mini courses you offer should be valuable and accessible from the get-go. The point of mini-courses is to draw students to your larger class offerings. So make sure any mini classes you launch have valuable information while also serving as a taste of what else you can provide.

19. Host a webinar

As an online educator, you’re probably already comfortable getting in front of a video camera. If this is true, consider hosting a webinar for prospective students looking to learn more about your course offerings.

Your webinar can be on your chosen niche or industry, of course. Make sure it provides some interesting information about your current topics and subjects, such as how to sell an online course. The webinar can be a promotional tool if you plug in your new class at the beginning or end of the session.

Of course, you’ll need to promote the webinar regularly to ensure enough people attend. But done right, a webinar can provide lots of marketing benefits. For example, it can improve your authority in your industry if enough people attend and see that you know what you’re talking about.

20. Cross-promote with other courses

If you already have more than one class under your belt, it should be a simple affair to add a promotional line about your new class to the end-of-current course offerings. Include a link to your course, too. This way, you can advertise new classes to students already in your educational pipeline.

They might finish a current course, then notice an advertisement or offer for a new class you just released. If they appreciated the current educational offering, they might be well-prepared to make an immediate purchase and jump into your next course on the same day.

21. Bundle a new course

You can also attract people to new classes by making them more economically worthwhile, improving sales for your online course offers. For example, you can market online courses by bundling them with old courses.

Say that you just came out with a new class for a subject that relates to your best-selling course of all time. To get people to view the new class, bundle it with the best-selling course and ensure the price is lower than if someone were to buy both courses separately.

While you may not get as many sales from those who have already taken the other course, you might get many more new students who jump at the opportunity to learn from you at a lower-than-average price.

22. Discounts and sales

Speaking of low prices, you can always offer discounts and sales for your new classes, especially in the earliest months after launch. Discounts and sales of between 10% and 15% can do wonders for improving your long-term revenue and showing the value of signing up for your course, although this depends on your profit margins.

Don’t forget to offer discounts and sales for special occasions, such as the Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales periods. Other course creators will undoubtedly do this, and you don’t want to be left behind just because you keep your prices rigidly at their original marks.

23. Amazon book publishing

Have a talent for writing, or do you want to advertise your new course while also improving your brand recognition? In that case, you might consider publishing a book on Amazon. The book doesn’t have to sell tons of copies to get the word out about your new classes and market your educational brand, not to mention boost your product or service search results presence.

Plus, if you make a book about your educational subject, you can always plug that book into any future classes you make. Like modern college professors, you can tell students to buy your book if they want to learn more about your perspective on a topic or get some extra value from your online classes.

24. Attend local meet-ups

Local meet-ups with other online course creators and educators can be beneficial for a few key reasons:

• They allow you to network with those creators, potentially benefiting from the partnerships detailed below.
• They let you advertise your online classes since many students attend these meet-ups as well.

However, this tip is contingent on your area having regular meet-ups you can attend. Look for social media groups about local course creators or digital education conferences and conventions before making this a major part of your online course marketing plans.

25. Partner with other course creators

Consider partnering with other course creators, especially those in related but not identical subjects: an effective way to promote your online course in 2023. For example, you can team up with a UI design teacher if you primarily teach UX or user experience principles.

Simply include a mention for other creators at the end of your courses or mention those other creators in blog posts. They’ll do the same for you, and, in theory, you’ll create a tide of advertising momentum that lifts all proverbial boats.

26. Satisfaction guarantees

Satisfaction guarantees are essentially refunds. While these can cost you if you aren’t careful, they’re still valuable promotional tools since they show that you believe in your online classes enough to offer refunds in the first place.

Generally, it’s a good idea to offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Then, students who aren’t satisfied with your new class can get a refund within 30 days of making the purchase.

27. Provide a payment plan option

Some students may want to take advantage of your online learning resources, but they may not be able to afford a new class for its upfront price. To help those students out, you can provide a payment plan option by which students make regular monthly installments toward the price of your courses.

This is a great promotional tip if your classes tend to be on the more expensive side due to their length or complexity. That way, even budget-minded students can start learning from your classes quickly after they are released.

28. Google Ads

You can’t forget about Google Ads—arguably the cornerstone of online advertising these days. Google Ads are super easy to set up and allow you to advertise your classes based on certain keywords.

Google Ads are PPC or pay-per-click advertisements, so you only have to pay Google when someone clicks on one of your ads and sees your class’s landing page. With Google Ads, you can also monitor ongoing marketing campaigns, see which ads perform the best, and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.

29. Other banner ads

While Google Ads are effective, they aren’t the only online ads you can leverage. You can also purchase banner advertisements on websites related to your niche. For instance, if you teach carpentry online, you might purchase banner ads to show up on carpentry supply websites or even on sites for bigger companies like Home Depot.

30. Ask bloggers for course reviews

If you know bloggers in your social or professional circles, you can ask them to review your classes and courses. Of course, ask them to be honest in their opinions, but have them write positive reviews that will bring new students to your courses.

In exchange, you can link to their blogs or provide them with other value depending on your niche or educational industry.

31. Join course forums and participate

There are lots of online course forums and networking sites you can join. It’s a good idea to join them ASAP and participate in conversations regularly. This is a great way to build your reputation as a high-quality educator in your field. If any prospective students read your posts, your insights might convince them to give your classes a try.

32. Create an affiliate program

Affiliate marketing programs have you pay bloggers and other content creators to mention or advertise your courses. If they bring students to your classes, you pay them a commission for each sale you make. It is a great and low-cost way to advertise your classes across the web since you don’t have to pay anything if the affiliate marketers don’t produce results.

33. Translate your new course

Translating new courses into other languages aside from English is a great way to expand them into other markets. The most popular languages include Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish. However, note that you’ll have to spend a good amount of money to get excellent translation services for your classes.

34. Record a Google Hangout presentation

Google Hangouts allows you to create content like video or slide-based presentations. These are great opportunities to showcase your educational skills or host a “trial” class, such as a module from one of your recently released courses. You can share these presentations with your friends or professional peers and even open them up to the public.

How to promote online classes on social media

Aside from the above effective marketing tactics, you can and should leverage social media marketing strategies to advertise your courses. Lots of online advertising happens on social media platforms since billions of people collectively use those platforms daily.

35. Update your social media profiles

For starters, you should make sure each social media profile is updated across the web. Ensure that each profile has your new courses listed clearly with functional links to direct visitors to them.

36. Facebook ads

Next, consider leveraging Facebook ads to bring people who know you on social media to your course content. Facebook ads can be static images or videos, but video ads are much more effective than image-based ads in most cases.

37. Facebook groups

Facebook groups are online social networks you can jump into to promote recently released classes. You should try to join Facebook groups for:

• Your local area
• Other content creators
• Students and teachers in your industry, especially if it’s technical

38. LinkedIn groups

By the same token, LinkedIn groups represent ways to network with others in your field or with students who might be interested in what your classes have to offer. Be sure to join these groups and interact with others in them regularly so you can build a positive reputation and have many opportunities to advertise your classes to prospective students.

39. Purchase Social Media Posts

Sites such as Fiverr allow you to purchase social media posts from influencers. Often costing just a few dollars each, these can help you spread the announcement of a new online course’s launch far and wide in a few days.

For longer-term advertising purposes, consider working with an influencer directly, who you’ll pay to promote your classes on their social media page.

40. Build a TikTok audience

TikTok isn’t going away anytime soon! If you want to reach younger students, it might be worthwhile to create a TikTok profile, start creating compelling content to promote your business, and build an audience on that platform.

41. Instagram Reels promotions

Don’t forget Instagram, arguably the most important social media platform for advertising. Instagram Reels video content, in particular, is excellent for highlighting your classes, showcasing a few small lessons or nuggets of information, and building intrigue about your course offerings.

Putting it together

Marketing online courses means leveraging multiple promotional channels to get the word out about your classes to as many people as possible. With the right preparation and overarching strategies, however, your online classes will draw people to them faster than you think, and your career as an online educator will blossom in no time.

Of course, a platform like Teachable can help you reach your goals effectively as well.

FAQS

How do you successfully market online courses?

Once you create an online course, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by employing too many tactics to get course sales. That’s why we recommend that course creators start with two or three tactics and focus their energy most on them. In this article, we cover organic search, email, paid, social media, and video marketing strategies.

How do you promote a course on social media?

Social media is one of the easiest ways to reach out and engage people who may have a genuine interest in your product. You can drive traffic to course platforms via Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Many social media platforms offer business profiles that support your marketing efforts.

If Teachable is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.