Blog Post
Online Course Marketing Ideas - Reach more learners - 5 simple ideas that work
Here are some simple things you can do to build a bigger online audience, promote your courses and increase bookings/enrolments. They are not complicated and most are based on things we can learn from successful sites like Amazon or YouTube.
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Keep persuading learners to share information about your courses on social media.
Encourage them to share on their favourite social media platform when they enrol on a course, complete an important milestone and when they finish the course.
Do you give your learners certificates online when they complete a course? Get them to share the certificate with friends. It should be relatively easy to add social sharing buttons to your website/online course directory.
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Pinch ideas from Amazon’s product pages.
Amazon’s product pages are interesting because at first glance the design looks simple, but they are the end result of a lot of A/B testing and analysis of customer behaviour. Break a typical page down and you get:
- Product description & pictures
- Reviews, ratings and answered questions = lots of reassurance
- Compare with similar items
- Inspired by your shopping trends
- Frequently bought together
- Best sellers
Amazon knows that buyers want information before they decide to make a purchase. They want reassurance about quality and they want to see alternatives - Amazon works hard to keep you browsing when the first product you look at doesn’t meet your requirements.
Amazon is a good source of ideas if you want to publish an online course catalogue and take course bookings online.
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Improve your website SEO and get to grips with Google Analytics. Also, add an online chat widget to your website.
You want your website to come as near to the top as possible on Google (and Bing) searches. Read through Google’s SEO paper and make sure you’ve done each of the things that Google recommends.
Get to grips with Google Analytics. Add the Google Analytics tracking code to your website and then start to look at how many visits you get, how long visitors stay on your site and what they look at. Use insights from Google Analytics to drive further improvements to your website.
How many people arrive at your website and then leave again without making an enquiry or booking on a course? Why not add an online chat widget to your homepage? Offer to help visitors when they land on your site. You’ll get valuable information about what people want, even if you only manage to get a conversation with 5% of your visitors.
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Segment your market and use Facebook Ads.
Do you sell directly to learners? Use Facebook Ads. They could be a great way to reach particular groups of learners - you get a lot of control over who sees your ads.
For example, do you offer language training? You could create a Facebook Ad campaign that targets retired over 50s in your local area who enjoy foreign travel. Facebook provides comprehensive support materials and tools to track and tweak your campaigns.
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Use video.
Video and YouTube have got huge potential for training providers. Create a YouTube channel and start adding short videos. Build the channel over time. There are plenty of good examples of training companies that use YouTube to keep in touch with their learners.
Spend some time looking at sites like Amazon, YouTube and Facebook. Borrow some ideas and look for opportunities to build more social engagement around your website. Keep looking at Google Analytics and other sources of data - use insights from data to drive improvements.