How to Promote Online Courses If You've Already Burnt Through Your Email List
It's that simple.
Once you've refined and polished your work to a gleaming gem and are ready for students to come in.
"But where will these students come from, exactly?" you wonder.
You've done internal launches with your mailing list, and now they're becoming tired. This is evident because each time you promote your training course, your email open and clickthrough rates plummet.
The heart is racing and sweat beads form on your forehead as you come to the inevitable conclusion that your checklist is burnt out.
How do you get started?
You know you need to meet new people, however you're unsure which way to go about it.
That's why the majority of online marketing experts recommend you to consider paying for marketing and marketing funnels. "You can print money" they claim, particularly via platforms such as Facebook that let you market to a very specific audience.
If you're new to the world I would not recommend paying for advertisements and funnels. It's not feasible without the money or technical knowledge.
Fortunately, there are other ways to increase your reach and gain more students for your online class.
1. "The The Money is in the List"
In general terms, here are the steps needed to follow this:
Make a First Impression Incentive
A First Impressions Incentive (aka "lead magnet" or "ethical bribe") is a valuable element of information you offer away for free in exchange for people's details of contact. If you already have lists that you have, then you know this, didn't you?
The challenge for you now is to find new clients through different incentive programs. Consider diverse topics, as well as different types of formats. If you've offered a no-cost PDF in the past, what about making a video? A simple checklist? Perhaps a webcast?
Collect emails from your website
Create your own First Impression incentive on your website through opt-in forms. In this case, you must be creative and try out many different options in addition. There is welcoming mats and an exit-intent page, or forms that appear or slide into, as well as hover. Make sure you don't place them all at once on a single webpage, of course.
The point is, there are a myriad of ways of asking for people's emails, which are more efficient than the traditional opt-in form. The tools to implement these are reasonably priced, which means there's no reason to not make use of these. In addition, they provide data to help you determine which incentives and forms provide most results.
Utilize the marketing of content to draw new visitors
It's all well and good, but reality is that you may not be building your course list at the same pace in which you'd like to fill your courses. Consider, for example, if you want to launch your online course, say, this month? What is the number of new users can you realistically get by at this point? Not to mention it requires time to establish relationships with them, so they'll feel confident enough in you to enrol in your course.
It's the reason you should look for ways to help you market your courses right now. To do this, you should ....
2. Go into Joint Venture Partnerships
These are the steps you should be following:
Locate possible partners
JV partners don't need to reach out to huge crowds. They do have to be the right audience--people whom you believe to be your ideal student--and have an excellent rapport with the people they are. You can find possible partners through searching for influential people in your field. These are likely to be YouTubers, bloggers writers, authors, or even online course creators themselves (but aren't direct competitors). Subscribe to their mailing lists to learn more about the way they handle their followers.
Approach potential partners
In the ideal scenario, you'll find a common contact who can introduce you to your prospective partners. It is also possible to introduce yourself in person by going to industry events and conferences. Barring all that, a cold email could work. The best way to build the connection first by making comments on their blogs or social media posts or even buying their goods.
Introduce yourself, say what you admire about their work and then discuss about how the two of you might collaborate. It is important to frame the dialogue in a way that is beneficial to them, not you.
Define the terms of the deal
It's recommended to get all the details written down to ensure there's no miscommunication. You'll want to start with the smallest "asks" in the beginning, and work your way up as you go. A good example of a low amount of a request could involve mentioning the course they offer in their newsletter or blog post. A higher level request will ultimately be to send multiple emails to their subscribers advertising your service.
Make money from your course
You can give the partner an offer code or customized URL to keep track of the sales they make and then pay the proper commissions. You should ensure that your affiliate associates are knowledgeable about the subject you are teaching them. This can be done via videos, emails, or, for entrepreneurs with experience using an affiliate dashboard. Also, you'll need to supply "swipe files" that are written emails and social media posts they can modify and send to their audience.
Reciprocate
In certain instances there are instances where in some cases, the JV agreement will include a clause for the process of promoting a partner's product on your target list. In other words, you'll let them promote your product to the list of their launch, while you promote their products to your list of launch partners in the future. Other times, it's more open-ended. They might not have an official launch plan at this point, but you're committed to help them.
Naturally, one of the main reasons to join with someone else is the fact that they have a large number of customers, but you do not. If your audience is too small to reciprocate with traffic then you could offer alternative options to help make the deal work. Come up with ways to entice partners to work with you that don't necessarily involve promotional launches that are reciprocal. Think about how you can add value to the relationship.
Repeat and scale
After your launch or when you've had time to observe the effects You should take a take a step back and assess. Once you've gained some experience under your belt and you've got some experience, it's time to ask for suggestions to others that might be interested in partnering together... one who have more influence and an even larger audience.
3. Network and Speak
The name of the game is getting on ever bigger stage to catch the eye of the public and ultimately sell. There are three types of opportunities for networking and speaking:
- Teacher-centric: Speak and sell. People are attending a show because they want to hear the opinions of YOU, the expert. In addition try to provide worth. And then provide attendees to have the opportunity to know more about your company, should they be interested.
- Industry-centric: Meet and sell. The course will not be the centre of the attention. All participants are there for a discussion on the same issue. Discuss your online course when the opportunity presents itself.
- Customer-centric: Sell and talk to customers however only when it is appropriate. Other events don't focus on speaking or even the topic. It could be a dinner gathering or another event that gives you an opportunity to discuss your career, but they do not come to chat about shopping. Make sure to build relationships during the event, but take your business needs off-site and set up an appointment for a later time on the phone or at a cafe.
Marketing through content, JV collaborations, network, and speaking are only some of the proven methods you can reach an ever-growing crowd, create your own brand, and then turn these into enthusiastic students and ambassadors.
Which one of these methods do you believe will have the biggest impact on your course's the sales?
Danny Iny is the founder of Mirasee and hosts the Business Reimagined podcast, and popular author of numerous books, including Teach and Grow Rich. He also is the founder of the acclaimed Audience Business Masterclass and the Course Builder's Laboratory courses, both of which have combined produced more than 5,000 value-driven online entrepreneurs. Join Mirasee's Online Course Creators Community on Facebook.