Creating an online course requires a robust marketing strategy to ensure its success. Many course creators make the mistake of focusing solely on content creation and neglect marketing until the course is live. This often results in courses that don’t sell, leading to a poor return on investment (ROI), low revenue, and strained relationships with learners.
To avoid these pitfalls, it’s crucial to start marketing and promoting your course before it’s even completed. This process, known as preselling, offers numerous benefits: saving time, earning more revenue faster, and creating a better course by incorporating early feedback.
In this article, we will explore the steps to effectively presell your online course, ensuring its success from the outset.
Planning your course
Start by planning your course. Planning will effectively help you determine when to start preselling. Your timeline is going to depend on your audience, your course type, and the industry your course will address. A good starting point is a few months before your course goes live, but go with what makes sense for your course.
Understand your audience
The first step in planning your course is understanding your audience. Your target audience will determine when and how to presell and eventually launch your course. Knowing your learners’ needs and pain points helps you create relevant content and offers.
Your students are going to choose courses that solve problems and satisfy their interests, so you need to learn about those problems and interests in order to address them. To gather this information, you can conduct surveys, speak directly to potential learners, and analyze what other course creators are doing and what their students are saying.
Develop an outline
Using the insights and research gathered, you can start outlining your course content. This doesn’t need to be perfect, but your outline should reflect the course topic and lessons. During this step, you should:
- Focus on what learners will achieve
- List out the steps learners will take
- Determine key concepts and modules
- Share common challenges
Make sure your students know what they will be able to do once they have completed your course and why you are teaching it in a certain way. Tools like the LearnDash Course Outline Builder, powered by AI, can simplify this process.
This stage also helps you decide on the course’s pricing and timeline. Aim to have a rough deadline for when the course will be live from the time you begin preselling.
Determine channels
Preselling can be done through various channels. Identifying the right ones for your audience is crucial. Examples include:
- Email marketing
- Organic (unpaid) social media
- Your website
- Events
- Digital advertising
One of the most important channels is your course sales page, which will be central to your preselling strategy.
Establish messaging
With a clear understanding of your audience, an outline, and chosen channels, you can develop messaging to support your preselling strategy.
This messaging will also assist with course descriptions and additional marketing tactics. Emphasize the core benefits of your course, focusing on what learners will gain. Craft compelling offers and use clear, engaging language in your headlines, copy, and other communications.
Aim for consistency in your tone and voice as well so learners become familiar with your style.
Selling the course
You’ve planned, and now it’s time to begin actually marketing and selling your course well before it goes live.
Create a compelling offer
A compelling offer is essential for convincing people to buy your course before it goes live. Focus on the core benefits you’ve identified.
Examples of compelling offers include early-bird discounts or a free bonus with purchase. Create urgency by limiting the availability window and scarcity by capping the number of seats. Use clear and compelling language in your offers, headlines, copy, and other messaging.
Develop a landing page
The landing page is critical for preselling and promoting your course. It allows potential students to understand the value and benefits of your course, why they should choose it, pricing, and how to sign up. A well-designed landing page should include:
- Headline and subtitle
- Course description
- Imagery, graphics, and video
- Social proof
- Pricing
- FAQs
- CTAs (call to action)
Use your landing page as a link to the next step in your content and on your channels. If you’re looking for more details on optimizing your course landing page, explore seven essentials for high-converting pages.
Invest in content
Content marketing is vital to prove your expertise and authority as a course creator. Create various types of content to presell your course, such as:
- Social media graphics
- Short and long videos
- Webinars
- Guest appearances on podcasts
- Email campaigns
- Blog posts
- Ebooks
- Mini courses
Share this content across your chosen channels to build anticipation and interest.
Execute campaigns on your channels
Execute your marketing campaigns by sharing the created content, course landing page, and compelling offers. Use your channels effectively:
Send essential, mobile-friendly emails to your leads and past and current customers. These emails could include:
- Teasers: build excitement and curiosity about your upcoming course with hints and sneak peeks.
- Announcements: officially introduce your course, detailing its benefits, features, start date, and how to sign up.
- Reminders with special offers: prompt action with reminders that include incentives like early-bird discounts or limited-time bonuses.
- Sharing content: establish authority and provide value by sharing relevant content related to your course topic.
- Last-call emails: create urgency by reminding potential students that time is running out to enroll or take advantage of offers.
Social media
Use your social media accounts to post updates, content, and the course link. Encourage others to share, engage with your audience, and use compelling and branded graphics. Consider running ads and focus on providing value over simply pushing the course.
Want to learn more about how to use the different platforms? Check out this collection of articles on selling online courses using social media.
Website
Beyond the landing page, promote your course on your website through blog articles targeting SEO keywords, banners, popups, home page sections, and CTAs in the footer, the sidebar, and the menu.
What to do if preselling doesn’t work
As with any business endeavor, there are no guarantees. If preselling doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean you can’t create a profitable course. Consider these tips:
- Revisit your course topic. Analyze market trends and competitors to identify popular and underserved topics. Conduct additional surveys or polls to refine your course focus.
- Review existing feedback from your audience or other professionals. Collect and analyze feedback from previous content and courses. Engage with your audience and seek advice from industry experts.
- Adjust your offer. Introduce new incentives like bonuses or extended access. Experiment with different pricing strategies and highlight unique selling points.
- Rework your marketing strategy. Explore new marketing channels and optimize your messaging. Implement testing for emails, social media ads, and landing pages.
If all else fails, refund those who bought the course and explain that it will not be launched.
Launching the course
Preselling is not mandatory for a successful course, but it does significantly boost your chances. The benefits pay off: increased engagement, greater efficiency, and faster earnings are just the beginning.
However, even if you presell successfully, you’ll need to continue marketing your course post-launch (and the methods are very similar to what you already learned here). To get started, dive into these marketing tips.
Presell and launch with LearnDash LMS
Focus on preselling to market your course with these steps, and reap the benefits. And if you want to create, sell, and share effective online courses, simplify the process and let a platform like LearnDash LMS handle the rest.
LearnDash offers easy course creation and numerous features to support your course’s success, like a drag and drop course builder, dynamic content delivery, course dashboard and more. Try the LearnDash demo today!