Whew! You’ve finally finished that first course, and now you have to sell it.
Where do you start?
Today I want to share the three secrets I wish I’d known when I started marketing online – so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did!
Secret #1 – Know Exactly Who You Are Helping
What is your answer if I ask you, “Who will love your course?”
If you say, “Everyone needs my course.” Nope! Wrong answer and you get a Family Feud big red X.
If you say, “Everyone who owns a business or everyone who wants to lose weight or everyone who is a parent,” that’s a little better, but still not the best answer.
You will do so much better when you can have specific traits and descriptions that reach your target audience. Why? Because then you can speak their exact language, and you can find them easily online.
For example, for several years I helped folks who wanted to put their business online. But this is a huge group of people – who have very different needs. You have folks who have brick and mortar businesses – but they have very different needs than the blogger who wants to create an online course. When I switched to talking about online courses, it became so much easier to speak the exact language of course creators.
Let’s take a very specific example. When I was helping businesses get online, I could talk about getting customers, or maybe clients, or should they be called buyers? Which word is going to resonate? Who knows?
But when I talk to course creators, they want to get students. That word will resonate and makes my marketing feel like it fits them exactly.
So for you and your course, it may take a few attempts to figure out exactly who you want to target. But start by focusing on one specific group using the template:
People Who _____ (replace people with a noun and the blank with a description)
Mine is Experts Who Want to Sell Courses. A parenting coach might be Parents Who Have Difficult Teenagers. A business coach might be Entrepreneurs Who Have Yoga Businesses.
What is your Who statement?
Secret #2: Recognize the Power of Marketing Math
On average, only 3 of the next 100 people who find you are ready to buy.
Let that sink in for a moment.
That means that you will fail 97% of the time.
Yikes! When I first started, I did not know that. So there was a lot of failure popping up – and that can be depressing.
Plus it just might drain your bank account unless you are prepared to market… a lot and with the right price point.
To make 10 sales, you may have to get your offer in front of 350 people. How will you do that? How much can you spend to do that?
The best part of this secret is that if you can capture those other 97 people, you can hang around with them and impress them until they are ready to buy.
That’s why I insist that every one of my clients have a regular email that goes out at least once a week. You need to stay connected and keep impressing your prospects along their customer journey.
Because of the rule of 97, you can’t start marketing too early. In fact, I want you to start marketing before you have a course ready. Start impressing your 97 today so that when your course launches, they are ready to buy.
How will you stay connected with the 97?
Secret #3 – Copywriting Makes All the Difference
My definition of copywriting is “Writing that Persuades Your Reader to Take Action.”
It’s very, very different than the writing you were taught in school.
And the better you are at copywriting, the more successful your course business will be.
It’s so important that you may need to hire someone to help you – but I’d also like you to learn some basics so that you can write your own persuasive emails and social media posts.
Here are a few basics:
- Always, always use a call to action and tell your reader exactly what to do next: click here, sign up here, enroll here, grab your free report.
- Keep it concise – and use 1-sentence paragraphs, bullet points and bold headings so we can scan while we scroll.
- Focus on stories that have a lesson or a point (don’t just tell stories to fill the page). Tell stories with a point that connects and helps me understand.
Where will you improve your copywriting?
With these 3 secrets you will be way ahead of most of the course creators out there – and I can’t wait to hear how you use them to market your course.
Free Training: Improve Your On Camera Presence with These 5 Tips
Emily is here this week to share five ways you can improve your videos – for social media and for your course. (Make sure you listen to tip #4 all about camera angles and what NOT to do!)
