Whether you are a coach, crafter, or marketing professional, selling an online course can help your business grow.

However, creating a course is one thing. Attracting students who would be willing to pay for it is another. Hence, you will need a robust strategy that can help promote your online course and generate sales.

When you search online, you will find multiple steps to selling a course. Nonetheless, you can break down the fundamentals into three phases:

1. Creating an online course that people want
2. Driving and building an audience
3. Turning those audiences into paying students

That said, let’s break down these steps and discover the effective ways to promote and sell your online course:

Step 1: Creating a Course That People Want

The purpose of creating a course is to provide value to your audience. Hence, do not expect selling a course to be a get-rich-quick scheme. That’s because there is a lot of work behind developing a compelling online course.

Choose a Profitable Topic

The first step to developing a course is to choose a profitable topic. After all, the ultimate reason you want to do this is to drive passive income.

Sure, you must have something valuable to teach. However, you should also check whether it is something that people would be willing to pay for.

What you can do is to check what courses relevant to your topic already exist. You can also ask your audience and fill in the gap in the market.

Build Your Course Content

Once you have identified your profitable topic, the next step is to create your course content. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Write your course outline
2. Build your modules
3. Record your lessons
4. Edit to polish

Create a Course Sales Page

Your course sales pages serve as a portal wherein students can learn about what you offer. This is also where they will decide to enroll or leave.

Hence, ensure that you already have a course sales page before running any marketing campaigns.

Step 2: Driving and Building an Audience

As mentioned earlier, letting your potential students know that your course exists is one part of the equation. Luckily, you can approach this step in two ways:

• Free Traffic. Create content to help you put the word out about your course and showcase your expertise. Some excellent examples of free traffic are SEO and social media marketing.
• Paid Traffic. This refers to paying money to run online ads to promote your course. Some examples include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and YouTube Ads.

If you are yet to build your presence in your industry, we recommend doing these marketing approaches simultaneously. That way, you can build an audience around your course.

Here are six audience building ideas that you can do:

Start a Blog

Your blog is an ideal platform to showcase your expertise. It also allows you to provide valuable bits to your target audience.

Publish a Guest Post

In relation to starting a blog, publishing on other relevant websites allows you to expand your audience reach. Thus, more people will learn about you and the value you provide.

Leverage Social Media

What’s great about social media is that it allows you to foster two-way communication with your audience. This can also come in handy when generating audience insights and validating your course idea.

Build an Email List

Email serves as your direct line to your audience. Hence, building an email list ensures that there will be people who will take your course in one way or another.

Host a Webinar

If you wonder how to build an email list, hosting a webinar is one way. Doing so allows you to engage with your audience and give them a sneak peek of what to expect from your course.

Create a Podcast

Podcasting is a low-barrier entry to building an audience for your online course. It also enables you to share valuable content and showcase your expertise to people on the go. That’s because they can listen to a podcast while driving, at work, or while taking a break.

Step 3: Turn Audience Into Paying Students

Now that you have your audience, the next step is to convert them into students.

The marketing tips mentioned earlier are great places to start. After all, people are more likely to come across you while searching for a relevant topic.

Say you will be selling a course on stress management. It would help if you publish content around this topic, like blog posts and podcast episodes, to build an audience. That way, they will come across your posts when they google “stress management.”

Fill your content with golden nuggets to the point that people would want you to teach them directly. From there, you can turn your audience into paying students.

You can let them know that you have a course and redirect them to the sales page. Another thing you can do is say that you are building a course and that they can subscribe to your newsletter to receive a launch update. Lastly, you can host a webinar and encourage your attendees to sign up for your course for a discounted price.

That said, you should also consider how you will be pricing your online course. Here are three pricing models you can follow:

• One Time Payment. This means letting your students pay once and access your course forever. An excellent example would be Udemy.
• Multiple Payments. Not all students can afford to make a one-time payment. Allowing students to pay in installment makes buying your course financially manageable for them.
• Recurring Payments. This is common for membership websites. This means requiring your students to pay a monthly fee to retain their access to your course.

Here’s the thing: Pricing your online course compels your students to commit to it. They will choose to finish the course to get their money’s worth. Regardless, do not get caught up worrying whether you priced your online course right. You can still make changes as you move along.

The key to selling your online course is building a relationship with your audience. Ask for their opinion and let it guide you in creating a course they would be willing to pay for.