The online learning industry has registered a phenomenal growth in the last 5 years which makes it a very interesting business prospects for the educational professionals and experts. However, this is not a get rich easy model and you should be prepared to put into god efforts and follow a specific strategy in order t realize your goals. Just creating a good course is not enough. You also need to make it presentable and follow a streamlined digital marketing strategy to attract students and increase subscribers. In this blog we are going to mention some of the best ways to turn your online courses into a sustainable source of income while at the same time offering a premium experience to the students:
Create SEO Friendly Course Content
To sell your courses they must show up at a good position on SERPs during related search queries. So, optimize your course for search engines by following healthy SEO content strategies and keep yourself updated with the latest developments.
Create SEO friendly course content so that your e-course should get good visibility during related search queries. Keep yourself updated with what kind of courses students are looking for in your niche. Also, mold your content to instantly attract the students and keep them hooked on to your site. SEO Specialists also recommend moulding your content to instantly attract the students and keep them hooked on to your site.
Title is arguably the most highlighted text portion of your blog post. Create a catchy, keyword-friendly and precise title that instantly connects with the students
- SEMrush can be used for researching keywords
- Ubersuggest can suggest your most rewarding keywords
- Keyword Optimization can be done with RankMath WordPress plugin
Strategically placing keywords in the right places of your e-course plays a vital role in determining its popularity and ranking. Follow a streamlined keywords research strategy. Thankfully some helpful tools make things easier for you. >>
Develop Knowledgable Courses and Present in Interactive Format
Develop courses that are knowledgeable and interactive at the same time because at the end of the day what matters most is how long a student can continue with your course- if you are looking at long term success and build a brand.
The passive, static bulky courses generally prove too weak to hold students for long. Many students abandon it before completion, submit negative reviews and may even demand a full refund. So be careful while creating a course. Create a fresh, agile and interactive course that imparts the knowledge in a friendly manner.
- Use versatile and interactive question format including quizzes,
- Allow students to track their current progress status trough periodic assignments
- Avoid bulky or complex lessons. Impart knowledge in a bite-sized and digestible format in both text and video formats
- Use a good volume of interesting real-life examples to make your course engaging and easily understood in a real-life context.
Offer Free Courses
One of the powerful strategies to increase enrolments is to offer a free course. Most of the popular e-learning course providers are offering a good amount of free courses which has played a key role in increasing their enrolments. However, our free course can lose its appeal if it lacks the real value and it may even discourage the students from buying the paid courses.
To create engaging trial courses that give a solid idea to the students about the kind of content they can expect from you. A valuable trial course not only increases the chances of enrolments but also help you get good reviews. So irrespective of whether or not the students proceed to buy paid courses, you should still enjoy tangible benefits out of your free course strategy.
Treat Your Teachers Well
One of the best, easiest and most economical ways to promote your e-courses is to engage your teachers and instructors strategically. You can form a teacher’s network and offer them multiple benefits in terms of reputation, revenue or rebates- based on their level of involvement and milestones achieved. For instance, the top-performing teachers can be awarded virtual performance badges and social media mentions. It not only keeps them motivated but also prompts them to post about it across their social media channels which offer you organic social media traction.
Likewise, you can partner with relevant brands and offer a special rebate exclusively available to your teachers’ network- something that can work as a solid branding strategy. For more tangible benefits you can also encourage your teachers to actively sell e-courses through digital mediums and earn a decent commission on each course sold.
Keep Yourself Updated with Your Competitors
You just cannot afford to neglect the competition is you need to survive or succeed in the online learning business. You have to get to know your nearest competitors and the strategies that they are currently following. What type of courses they are offering to their students? What content formats they are using? How do they price their courses? All these things can not only help you pace ahead of your competitors but also allows you to gauge the gaps in the demand and supply and do the needful to fill that gap- something that may offer you a unique position.
Reviews Encourage the Students to Buy Your Courses
Reviews from relevant and trusted online platforms can go a long way establishing your brand authority and encouraging more students t buy your e-course. Career-oriented students would avoid hasty decisions and prefer to go check reviews from authentic sources before buying any e-course. Creating strategy alliances with reused bloggers and influencers to get your courses reviewed by them can thus play a great role in the increasing enrollments. Make sure that they should possess impressive qualifications and experience in the education industry. Also, they should have a strong community and loyal, genuine follower groups. Needless to say, you need to pay a keen focus on Th relevance in terms of demographics profile. For instance, even highly rated influences or the US won’t be a good fit for you if your course material is designed specifically for Indian students or your primary market in India.
Affiliate Marketing Programs
Affiliate programs allow you to multiply the sales of your e-learning courses by paying a reasonable commission. The beauty of affiliate programs is that you would pay only after realizing the sales so it is a model where you earn income before paying expenses. Moreover, it is also a great way to extend your reach to diverse demographics and explore new markets with almost zero or minimal efforts. At the same time, the affiliate marketing model also helps you in optimizing conversion rates across multiple demographics as the professional affiliate marketers already have conversion-oriented websites and content.
Social Media
Social media plays a vital role in boosting your brand and creating a dedicated community. However, it takes more than just creating a Facebook page or twitter handle and posting a few random posts now and then as it clearly shows that you are serious about your learning brand. This way you would do more harm than good to your e-learning platform. The right strategy is to create your social handles across major platforms and publish regular posts or at least thrice a week. There are different strategies that you can follow to boost our brand visibility. You can start with anyone deeding upon your targets and phase. However, the standard advice is t avoid working n multiple strategies simultaneously and create a well-routed ma o determine milestones. Using ROI oriented strategies can help a great way in ensuring that you get eh maxim returns out of your time and efforts.
Powerful Learning Management Systems
Learning management systems offer you a complete array of tools and technologies to create dynamic course content and present in an innovative and interactive format like quizzes. So it is very important to choose a friendly and power LMS. One such option is LearnDash- one of the highly trusted brand in LMS industry.
Many times you might want to elaborate on the existing lessons or use them in some other context of your course material where you need to reuse a good volume f content. LearnDash allows you to reuse lessons, quizzes or other content of your course with a few intuitive steps. Along with saving our time and efforts it also streamlines the entire process without requiring you to go all over again.
Your front-end plays a key role in attracting the students and keeping them engaged throughout the entire session. Even the best courses lose their appeal due to low-quality front end. It hurts the overall visual experience and thus lowers down the engagement and affects the saleability of your recourse. Thankfully, Learndash has a perfect solution for the same. The focus mode feature of LearnDash allows you to instantly accelerate the visual appeal of your lessons by adding a profession streak to it. It is surprisingly easy and equally impressive- thanks to the smart option and automated functionalities that compress the complicated processes into a single click and instantly turn your DIY lessons into professionally presented course material. It also allows you to brand the entire course material by using your brand-specific colors, loos and other elements at strategic places of the course materials.
Other Salient features
- The easy and quick user registration process
- Dual forum options for the students to choose from- private and public
- Extended formatting features to dynamic presentation appeal to your course content
- Professional looking grade books that seamlessly integrates with manual grading as well as Learndash quiz/assignments
- <<Bonus points on course completion
- Brandable certificates and badges
- Provision to produce course under and sell them
Propanel
Propanel takes your scope to the next level by offering you highly sophisticate details about the current commercial potential of your e-courses, recognize the gaps and take necessary action to realize your goals in the stipulated period. With ProPanel you can take care of the entire business aspect of your course like:
- Key metrics including number of students, and courses,
- Several pending assignments and essays etc.
- real-time purchase activity status
- View user course progress/quiz results and download it for your perusal
- Complete control over assignments/essays like Managing, approving and deleting
One thing to keep in mind is that it is only after using it in the practical scenario that you would be able to understand the scope and benefits of a specific LMS. So it is highly recommended to take advantage of a 1-month refund provision by LearnDash and see if it fits your requirements y exploring maximum options for 1 month.
Conclusion
While the online courses offer a sustainable income source with minimal investments, the increasing number of players in the field makes it somehow difficult to sell your courses. However, there are certain specific techniques, tools, and platforms that can make things less difficult for you. In tips blog, we have presented different strategies and tools to create engaging online courses and efficiently market them.
Advice to the Readers
The reader is advised to read reviews about any tool before using the same. Also as far as possible it is best to start with a free trial and see if any specific tools fit your requirements before investing in it. The same level of care should b taken before adopting any tip or technique mentioned in the blog. It is best to check the relevance before adopting the same.