Online Course Selling has emerged with a limitless scope for tutors and scholars worldwide. Creating a specific comprehensive course for a specific subject is also gaining popularity because the learners easily get all their educational content and queries solved in one place. Therefore, it has become a necessity for any education institute to make online courses for their subjects. This aids in the company’s branding and earns money for them. But making value content for your online course is only a good use of your time and money if there is no value in it.
Adding value to your online course is crucial if you want to stand out in the cutthroat competition of this rapidly evolving world of online courses. This blog will serve as a comprehensive guide to the strategies from which you can add value to your course in your online course-selling business.
1. Provide Pre-Course Resources
If you want to make a successful start to your business of online course selling, it is important to make your audience familiar with you, your brand, and the services you offer. Give them access to all the resources through which they can completely learn about your courses. Following are some of the ways you can provide the pre-course resources to your audience to make them feel more connected with you and finally encourage them to check out if your courses help them or not.
- Welcome Email or Announcement: Make your audience informed about your online course-selling business and what courses you offer. You can also send this email to internet users you don’t have prior connections with or you don’t really know about them. In this email, give a brief introduction to your course, its objective, and the topics and concepts it will cover intensively. To make it more interesting and to make the audience compel to buy it, you can also provide a brief if you are planning to invite any guest from the area of the course. You can also provide the links to them, through which they can see a sample of your course.
- Online Platform Familiarization: Not every person uses every internet platform and not every person is familiar with them. Get them familiarize with the platform you will use for your courses. You can also provide its feature which made your mind to use that particular platform rather than others.
- Discussion Forums and Social Media Groups: Create discussion forums and social media groups for people who are not sure about buying your course and want to know about the interface of your course and the platform. Through social media groups, they can find it interesting to interact and learn with a new group of people and you might get new buyers for your online course selling.
- Field Trips or Virtual Tours: With advanced technologies like Augmented Reality and 3D, you can showcase to the buyers of your course the virtual tour of your classes and the facility you avail. You can also give the introduction of your faculties to make the learners more familiar with the tutors.
2. Add Context to the Course
Adding context to your course is the thing that will make your audience feel connected with your course and realize the importance of learning the course to them. Adding context to your course is the driving force for your online course-selling business. Because the more the audience will feel your content and course are genuine, the more they will want to learn a particular skill by buying it. You can add context to your course in a number of ways. Some of them are mentioned below:
- Industry Insights and Scope: Provide an explanation of the industry insights, future aspects, and the scope for the people who learn that course. Skills have gained more importance than degrees in the contemporary world and thus you can have those potential buyers to your online course-selling business by informing them about the emerging industry of the course you are selling.
- Experts Introduction and Interviews: Adding the introduction and interviews of experts you are collaborating with, who will occasionally join your classes to give guest lectures will motivate the learners to become like them and thus they will ultimately decide to buy your course.
- Feedback and Testimonials of Previous Learners: Reconnect with your previous learners, your course had a positive impact on and are currently recognized in their respective fields. Invite them to your webinars to address the learners and give their feedback. You can also go for advertisements with them and you can stream those ads throughout your digital platforms.
- Make the Course More Intensive: Make the course more intensive, practical, and a little bit advanced for the learners so that they take it as a challenge and a new thing to learn. Tasks that match with our level keep us in our comfort zone and therefore a person feels that a particular task is boring and tedious. Add real-world case studies to your study content so that it becomes interesting for the learners because case studies are like stories about someone on a topic.
3. Motivating Your Learners
Keeping your learners motivated throughout your online course selling can be tough but is essential if you want to establish yourself as a successful tutor. There can be times when things get tough. The content of the concepts can be tough sometimes. At times there are also calculations or statistical content in a course, which can be tough for the learners to grasp. In these times be the one who can understand them. You can connect to your past learners regarding this. Send the learners the motivating videos or audios of your past alumnus, sharing how they used to overcome such challenging times. What were the tips and tricks they followed during the tough times? This will help the learners understand the pattern in learning the topics. You can motivate them in the following ways:
- Break Down the Syllabus: Breaking down the syllabus in chunks not only helps the learners to grasp the concepts, but it also helps you light the burden on your shoulders as you have to focus on the content and study material only one thing at a time. Breaking down the syllabus greatly helps the learners to quickly catch the concept.
- Celebrate Small Wins: Celebrate every accomplishment of your learners. Give them awards or compliment them. It helps in boosting their confidence.
- Create a Schedule: Creating a schedule and making your learners stick to it, makes them feel they are doing a great job every single day. It gives them a purpose because they have tasks already. It makes their mind focus on the work as there is no confusion as to what to do or where to start.
- Incorporate Variety: Your business of online course selling will be unique when there is variety. If you use only one format and one teaching method, the learners will get bored and they will feel like they are not learning anything. Add variety to your online course by mixing up learning formats – use videos, quizzes, discussions, and interactive elements to keep things interesting.
- Offering Incentives: Consider offering incentives or certificates for completion. Recognizing their efforts can be a powerful motivator.
4. Engaging Content
Engaging content is the life of Online course selling. Make your content more engaging by using multimedia features, videos, representations, and interactive quizzes that make the content interesting. You can also include interactive elements like discussion forums, group activities, and Q&A sessions in your classes. This fosters a sense of community among students and allows for peer learning. Engaging content increases the participation of students
- Real-World Applications: Try to explain the concepts to students more in a practical way showcasing their implementation to real-world problems. Provide case studies, examples, and practical exercises that demonstrate how the knowledge can be used in different contexts.
5. Offering Discounts
You must be aware that this is one of the most practiced strategies in all sorts of businesses out there but its effectiveness can’t be neglected. You can also get some of your past learners if you offer discounts on some of your courses for your past learners. You can also encourage your present learners to buy a course from you in the future. This strategy will not only make you gain profit but also will win the trust of the people who have subscribed to your course.
- Provide Exclusive Offers: You can develop your online course selling by providing exclusive offers. Invite alumni to conferences and industry events, such as VIP sessions with keynote speakers. Tell the people who participate in it that you will continue to host receptions for learners or students who wish to participate in or support your educational programs. Talk to previous learners about their needs and challenges during the course to find out which bonuses are most valuable to your audience. The more you understand your audience, the better you will be able to determine the value that differentiates your online education program from those of your competitors.
6. Creating Online Communities
No one wants to learn by sitting passively and watching your YouTube videos. To boost your online course-selling business, you will have to be creative and come up with unique ideas. You have to understand that the phrase human is a social animal has some relevance. Your audience will find it interesting to learn while interacting with other people. As it is an online course you can’t make your classes physical and let your learners discuss their queries and get familiar with different perspectives, you can associate your learners through social media also. People use platforms like Facebook widely to create groups in which they can interact with each other regarding a subject. Similarly, you can also choose a platform that is easy to operate and its functionalities can make it even with the moderate internet connections. Further, you can manage such groups on the basis of their position, career stage, geographic area, interests, or other factors.
7. Robust Technical Support
Technical issues can stymie the learning process. To address any technical challenges that learners may face, provide clear instructions, troubleshooting guides, and a responsive support system. A positive overall perception of the course is enhanced by a smooth technical experience.
8. Marketing With Potential Partners
When you start the marketing of your brand, think mindfully and consider spending your money on marketing campaigns that will have a long-lasting impact on your brand. Choose influencers from the education industry as well as those outside the industry who are popular at the current time. Choosing good marketing strategies is like giving life to your brand. Content Marketing, Social media marketing, Influencer marketing, E-mail marketing, and Search Engine Optimization are some of the popular strategies practiced in the current digital world. Online course selling will be much easier for you when you choose the right and effective marketing strategies.
Conclusion
To summarize, your online course selling profession can only be fostered when it has value. Adding significant value to an online course entails more than just providing information; it also entails creating an immersive, interactive, and supportive learning environment. Educators can elevate their online courses by implementing these strategies, empowering learners to not only acquire knowledge but also apply it meaningfully in their personal and professional lives. As the future of learning is shaped by online education, the emphasis on value creation will undoubtedly be a key determinant of success for both educators and learners.