How to go from 0 To 1,000 Online Course Students with No Ad Budget
It's all planned out. It's been discovered that there's an area that needs to be filled You've drafted the lesson plan and you're excited and enthusiastic about the whole thing. It's possible that you're finished in creating your course. There is a dilemma: what can you do to spread your message to students who might be interested? What can you do to make the site easier for your targeted group? To which sites do you need to post your links?
I have good news for you: this can be the case and a solution. Numerous authors prior to created online courses for all types of material. I'll teach you the best techniques for taking your course from no students to 1,000 students. This is all without any expense for advertisements.
In the beginning, I will dispel the most common error instructors make when setting the goal of building their courses. And that mistake is that they choose to follow a build-first method instead of an approach that is based on audience. The reason why the "build-first" method is not optimal is due to the fact that you believe many things to be true. This exposes you to a lot of risk in your course. In particular, it is about what to create and what your class structure should look.
That said, here are the four key components in this mini-tutorial for ensuring continuous, reliable traffic for your course:
- How to Discover Where Your Ideal Clients Hang Out
- Learn to read your audience's Minds
- How do you earn respect and Reputation in your Audience
- How do you share your course with an audience that is ready to Purchase your Product
What to Do To Find Your Ideal Audience's Place Out
Let's pretend that you're a consulting client of mine. You'd like to market a class on Marketing Analytics.
First thing I'll state to you is that you'll have to ask the appropriate questions. You need to start by asking "who will you serve" rather than "what you're planning to do". If you're in the Marketing Analytics case, you need to then decide if you wish to target CMOs, Marketing Managers, Marketing Newbies, or Entrepreneurs?
Say that you've chosen to target entrepreneurs.
If so your first step is to begin searching for "where people from this group hang out". One of the best ways to accomplish this is to search to find "online lounges". Online lounges are places on the web where users engage in discussions about their topic of interest. These can be forums, blogs, or mailing lists. My method for doing this is to do these steps:
- Start your web-based search engine (eg. Google, Bing, Yahoo!)
- Make a search using any combination of these:
Forum - Profession + forum
- Profession + topic + mailing list
Professional - Topic + blog
Topics + Professionals and a forum for industry
- - Profession + "topic" + a link-sharing website (Eg. Reddit, stumbleupon)
- Example: Entrepreneur + Marketing + forum
Just there, I get to discover 10+ potential websites to focus on:
The search doesn't stop there. When you've selected a forum, it is necessary to explore further, and then create another search using the preferred topic. In this example, we search for discussions revolving around marketing within reddit.com/r/entrepreneur. What you're looking out for here is any sign of trouble or pain that was not posted by the original poster. From the initial query of"just "marketing" in the subreddit. We don't have any luck.
So how do we refine our hunt to truly look for pain? Let's add "pain indicators" such as "help" or "advice needed". We'll look at the results. It is evident that on just the very first page, we can find a plethora of interesting threads.
If you've found particular threads with LOTS of complaints, then you know that you're in the correct online club to spread the word to the near future. As you dive in and look deeper into the forums it will be apparent that some forums will work on specific subjects, while other forums will not. This will help you focus your promotion efforts only in the areas where your desired audience hangs out. This is crucial to the success of your program.
From the above 15 minute exercise, we just got evidence that reddit.com/r/entrepreneur is a great place to promote our marketing course.
Try it out for other forums! My suggestion is that you must find at least 10 online lounges. Blogs work too (especially because of its extremely lively discussion sections).
What is the best way to read the minds of your audience
By now, you have an extensive list of threads that clearly show signs of hurt. Let's look at them all and let's be able to be aware of who the audience is.
After you've gathered enough information and begin to see patterns on who your audience is. Once you identify the patterns, you begin to develop a clear understanding of what your audience feels and believes about marketing in general.
From the above There are a few minor patterns emerging (we'll have to wait for 10+ painful threads to really know) that show entrepreneurs really want 3 things: a highly efficient digital marketing plan that requires little cost of capital, useful tips on local or city-wise marketing, and how one can position themselves in order to attract high-value customers.
In our earlier instance, you were planning to develop a product around Marketing Analytics. However, it turned out that it might be too sophisticated (at minimum to be used in the Reddit Online Lounge). The best option is to follow an education that focuses on budget, high-efficiency advertising locally, as well as looking for and closing customers with high value.
The course I have planned for these samples of pain is going to begin looking like:
- How can you use Interest Targeting on Facebook to locate high-quality clients for just a couple of dime a time
- How to Build a Referral Machine through these Pitch Scripts for your next Local Chamber of Commerce Event
- How to Discover the Needs Only high-value clients have
Course Name: "How to Get High-Value Clients Using with hyperlocal, Hyper-targeted and hyper local marketing"
If you dropped that course within the Reddit space, I'm sure that will get momentum. What do you think evidence-based marketing can offer us?
How to build Trust and Reputation with your audience
Apart from identifying pains it is important to be a authority within these online spaces.
That means giving bite-sized advice whenever you encounter these pains. By bite-sized, I mean things that range from one to 10 sentences, yet is actionable enough to allow the user to apply.
As an example you can answer the person who said "haven't seen Facebook as useful" or "need an efficient strategy" in this way:
"I realize that you will require an effective digital plan given your budget-friendly requirements. I am surprised, however to learn that you consider FB ads not to be effective. I run FB ads quite often in my business consulting, and this is the way I recommend you conduct the right targeting for high-quality clicks for $0.40 to $0.80 per click.
- ONLY make use of interest targeting. Set everything else to default.
- When you use interest targeting be sure you select more than 10 interests, and then eliminate those with large reach. The reason is that a large reach per interest translates with a higher price per click. If I wanted to target people who are interested in marketing using interests, I would do so through gurus such as 'Neil Patel', 'Derek Halpern and "Darren Rowse" etc. I'd recommend excluding 'Gary Vaynerchuk' because his reach is way too big!
- Make sure that the TOTAL reach doesn't exceed 800,000. individuals.
- Get your test started! Make sure your test is locked at $5 per day. Do not ever use the lifetime budgeting option.
- If your earnings exceed $1 per click, you must cut off interests with the highest reach and add more 'niche' interests
- If you are looking for ideas about "niche" interests, search for influencers, tools, and even software, then test the idea"
If you offer advice in an unassuming level and in a way that is actionable it will be a source of credibility and respect within the space.
How to Share Your Course with an audience that's Ready to Buy your product
"Isn't it spammy to post hyperlinks? !" "What if I be blocked? !"
You probably might have thought of these ideas. They're valid claims. In order to to solve the problem, one thing you can do is use inline links in your blog posts, and then combine this with links not related to your website. This creates the impression of being useful and not to be a spammer. Here's a personal example when I tried to help anyone who was having difficulty in landing pages.
By doing these 4 broad, strategic steps, I was able to build my site to have around 4k-5k organic visits a month, 89% from direct links. Check out the stats here from SimilarWeb. There is no advertising budget at all.
Offer a lot of free, actionable value to the world, and the world will be awestruck by the world and love you back. I hope you achieve great success in your journey!
Kenn Costales, a grow hacker and online course creator who loves discovering new methods to market items online, without spending a dime.