How to Attract Students for Online Classes: Top Tips

Online education has become one of the hot topics in the past few years, and every coach, consultant and expert is doing their best to monetize their expertise and get their time back by creating an online course.

Its one of the best business models and allows you to stop trading your time for money. 

Why not take full advantage of it? 

Undoubtedly, creating a course has a dozen nuances and issues in the store for each creator. 

Each piece bring on new problems.

Once you complete the curriculum development and lesson planning then you have to figure out what tech to use. After choosing the tech then its the sales funnel and then the marketing and then how to convert seekers into buyers. 

All fun of running an course biz. 

So how to attract students to online classes?

We’ve prepared several working methods for expanding your customer base. 

Let’s get started! 

Social networks are your unconditional assistants.

The development of a new product or service necessarily requires creating awareness. 

Content marketing has several advantages for increasing students but is not easy and is time consuming. Since almost all your potential customers spend hours on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, it’s worth making the most of these platforms. 

Some tips that work for other creators:

  • Create pages dedicated to the online course on social networks.
  • Regularly publish engaging and valuable content to your subscribers and other users.
  • Use the winning topics to create long format articles
  • Master one platform first before you try and market online courses everywhere
  • Respond promptly to all comments and messages. Communication with potential and existing students is another key to success.
  • Network with others in your space. Whether its potential partners or influencers. 

Don’t despair if you don’t see results right away. Indeed, social networks are a powerful tool for promotion, but it takes time. Allow 60-90 days before you gauge results. 

And again, about social networks. More precisely, about advertising there.

Developing and implementing a content strategy has its own merits. But an equally effective approach would be to place ads on the most popular platforms, such as Facebook. What are the advantages of such an approach?

  • The ability to target a specific audience.
  • Ability to track conversions.
  • Fast testing of messaging
  • Ability to also expand to Instagram (owned by Facebook)

The only pitfall of this tactic may be the cost. Thus, if your online courses are relatively cheap and your budget is limited, then the price of an advertising campaign can be pretty high. In this case, it would be wise to run a small test campaign first to see preliminary results.

To earn more, pay your students.

Sounds pretty unprofitable. But if you correctly approach the affiliate marketing strategy, the prospects are up-and-coming.

For online courses, you can proceed as follows:

  • Engage regular users and influencers to generate leads. And in return, pay them referral fees.
  • Offer your students attractive discounts for each new client they bring.

All comes down to having a solid sales funnel and enticing affiliate program (which you will also need to promote). 

Discounts, scarcity and one time offers are your friend. 

Most people are sceptical about spending large sums of money on educational courses they are not sure they need. But if they are offered to buy an online course at a discount, then the situation changes instantly. 

Primarily, check your competitors’ prices to offer users a better offer. Not necessarily by lowering a price as that’s a losing game. 

It is also a working strategy to set higher starting prices (called anchoring) and give the first students a considerable discount. 

Make students an offer that is almost impossible to refuse!

A limited time no-brainer offer.

Opinion leaders and influencers with an active audience can help in promotion.

Paying other users to advertise your services is gaining momentum in social networks. In particular, this applies to media personalities. 

To make influencer marketing bring benefits to your project, we recommend that you consider some of the nuances:

  • Consider only those influencers directly related to your online classes’ niche. Otherwise, what’s the point… really?
  • A lot of followers is not always good. Choosing the page with a high interaction percentage is much more essential. There are tons of broke influencers out there that can’t convert their audience. 
  • Work only with trusted accounts.

In Summary

Attracting new customers is a concern for every business, and the field of online courses is no exception. Take note of the above recommendations that you think are the most appropriate to promote your project. If there is considerable competition in your field and it’s challenging to win the audience’s attention, then use an omni-channel approach.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
  1. If you’re still looking for traction in your online course, I’d recommend starting with an affordable guide:

The Course Engine: Transform your course into a money-making machine with The Course Engine. This quick and actionable guide will teach you the system I use to transform average courses into ones that can grow past 7 figures in revenue with my in-person clients.  Join 279+ students here.

  1. Want an expert to take over or help you with your marketing?

Check out what we do, our case studies and book a free consultationwemarketonlinecourses.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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