Marketing your online course for free sounds inviting, that’s for sure.
However, let’s not get too carried away here.
It will require work, perseverance and a time commitment. In “Realityland” nothing is a 100% free because there is the time involved to get ‘er done. (Unless you consider your time to be absolutely worthless.)
Hey, if it was free and easy to become a success by selling a web course, everyone would be doing it, right?
But don’t worry my friend, help is on the way.
Because in this post, we’re going to blow the lid off of how to market your online course for free. I’m going to unpack 15 strategies and actions you can take immediately to market your web course business and get it on the fast track.
If you start implementing what I’m about to unveil to you, it should put you well ahead of your competitors.
Ready? Great, let’s get started!
Start Marketing Your Online Course for Free With This Tool
This tool is very crucial. I can’t tell you how many businesses I’ve consulted that did not have this one document in place before they started to sell their products or services. And what kills me every time is that it’s basic business common sense.
The tool I’m talking about is a marketing plan.
A marketing plan is vital to the success of your company for a number of reasons.
- It will make it clearer to you what marketing tools and channels you’ll want to use in selling your web course.
- You’ll know who your competitors are and how you’ll need to differentiate yourself in your market space.
- It will make you more aware of your customers and how your online course will benefit them.
- Creating goals for your company will be much easier because you’ll have rock-solid targets in front of your staff.
- Your competition will run from you in frustration because you’ll be proactive rather than reactive to them.
- You’ll spend your marketing money much more wisely.
- Time will be scheduled and you’ll be able to manage it better so you won’t waste it.
- If for some reason you need to get capital for your venture, investors will want to see how solid your marketing plan is.
So any way you cut it, having a marketing plan in place is extremely important.
Don’t believe me?
CoSchedule, a premier online scheduling tool for content, surveyed 3,600 marketers from all over the planet. The survey asked them about their stance on planning and documenting their marketing for their online businesses.
Here are some of the facts:
- Marketers who document their strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who do not.
- Organized marketers are 397% more likely to report success in their businesses.
- Goal-setting marketers are 376% more likely to report success.
- Marketers who proactively plan projects are 356% more likely to report success.
- Marketers using agile project management were 252% more likely to report success.
Need they say more?
Another benefit of having a good marketing plan in place is it will give you a guide as to how to serve your customers better. It will also hand your employees a manual as to how to handle different issues with clients and customers. If you are prepared for different situations you will handle problems much easier so you can increase your bottom line.
How to Write a Marketing Plan for Your Web Course Business
At this point, if all you have is an idea for your online course, so much the better.
Going through this process will make you aware of whether not your web course has any merit or not. (If you get through most of this planning and still aren’t sure if your course has any merit, check out the next section of this post.)
While I could go into great depth on how to create a detailed marketing plan for your online course, I would rather hand you a valuable resource that I’ve actually used for my own business.
Besides that, it would take me forever to write a post about how to do it.
The way I’ve gotten my marketing plan in place is by using the manual, Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days and it’s companion workbook by Jay Conrad Levinson.
If you’re going to market your online course for free, you’ll definitely need these books because they will give you all the ammo you need to explore ways to market your business.
Why This Step Is So Important For Marketing Your Online Course For Free
The reason why this book is so valuable is that it is the most comprehensive book I know of on how to write out a marketing plan. It takes you step-by-step through the entire process of creating a marketing plan and the workbook is loaded with pages of fill in the blank questions and answers.
I know the title says “In 30 Days”, but it will take you longer to get through the entire process of writing all of this stuff out. The last time I used it, it took me 2 and a half months to complete it.
Don’t get discouraged with this time frame, because it is well worth it.
It will all depend on how much time per day you put into it and whether or not your staff will be helping you with this research.
And when you get through the whole thing, ask yourself this question: Are my competitors being this thorough with their marketing plans?
Chances are they are not coming close.
You’ll Never Be Done With Your Plan
Once your marketing plan is in place you still won’t be done. You’ll want to keep copies of it where you and your staff can get their hands on it because it will need to be updated on a continual basis.
Yep, you’ll never have a totally finished document, because it will be used and updated all the time.
Don’t worry, updating is normal and recommended.
One last thing about these books before I move on. You can get them from Amazon for around $15 apiece, but if you’re smart you can get them used for around $3.00 on there.
Haha, see?
I’ve already saved you about $25 bucks and we haven’t even gotten to the real meat of this post yet.
Do This Before You Make Your Online Course
This is a trick that has been used by savvy information marketers since antiquity. Back in the 1980s, I took a course by the famous marketer, Dan Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy is a master copywriter and information marketer.
I bought one of his courses on how to create and market your information for fun and profit. Basically, his course was a manual and CD set with several hours of recordings of him giving a seminar on the subject.
It was an excellent mini-course and well worth the $30 bucks I paid for it. As with most of Dan Kennedy’s excellent courses and products, he over delivered on the information. He had all kinds of successful entrepreneurs on the recording who were making mega-bucks creating and selling their own info-products.
But here’s the one big thing I took away immediately from the course.
Ready?
Here it is: Don’t create the course until you’ve tested the idea first.
Yep, the best bet when creating an information product of any kind, whether you want to sell a manual with CDs or an online web course, is to find out whether your product idea has merit or not.
Think about it. You may lose some time setting things up to test your online course for free, but you’ll save a lot more time and money in the long run. For one thing, you won’t waste time putting together a course nobody wants.
How To Test Your Course Before You Make It
Back in the days before the Internet, guys like Dan Kennedy would test their info-product ideas like this:
1: Create a free report that is related to the idea you want to test which you can give away for free.
2: Run an ad in a magazine, newspaper, or trade publication advertising your idea and offer the free report for responding.
3: Track the response for the free report to see if it has merit.
4: If the response is good, create the product and roll it out using the marketing channel you tested it in.
If he got at least a 3% or better response from his ads he would run with his idea. However, if his ads received a low response rate, he’d either retest the ads or scrap the idea.
How to Apply This Testing System To Your Web Course
I think the best example of sampling courses is like is Udemy. Usually, on Udemy, they have about 3 or 4 lessons you can watch before you decide to take a course.
1: Create a few lessons based on your idea.
If you’re teaching using videos, you can have an introductory video followed by a couple of high-quality lessons. 3 or 4 lessons ought to do it.
2: Create some landing pages and track with Google Analytics.
If you’re using WordPress for a website, you can install plugins that will help you build landing pages for your online course for free. With these plugins, you can easily do A/B split testing to see which landing page brings in the best results.
3: Create a landing page and describe your product.
Make it sound as if you have the entire course in place and give your visitors details of what they are going to learn. (Once again, check out courses on Udemy for examples.) You will need a call to action and a way to collect email addresses and then deliver the sample lessons to the prospects who signed up.
4: Use sales copy to get prospects to try your sample lessons.
On the landing page(s) you will want to write some sales copy to get people interested in trying your free lessons. You can swipe ideas from other sites similar to the one you want to create, or take the easy way out and hire a copywriter.
Whatever way you decide, you’ll need a good headline that emphasizes the benefits of your web course. You can list what your course is all about and the benefits they’ll receive by using bullet points.
5: Advertise short-term with Google or Facebook ads.
If you need to find out quickly whether or not your idea has legs, you’ll want to run some ads. Yep, you’re going to have to spend a little money to do this, but it will be well worth it. (So far, everything has been for free. However, if you want to find out quickly if your product has legs, you’ll want to fork over a little moola.)
Adwords is the best way to go because it targets users who are looking to buy. Facebook, on the other hand, uses demographics to display their ads. In both cases, you can set a limit on how much money you want to spend in testing your product.
If you don’t know how to write ads that people will want to click on, you may want to hire a copywriter that specializes in that arena.
6. Keep track of your results.
There must be accountability by tracking data. If you’re getting a decent amount of sign-ups for your sample lessons, you can start to move forward with your online course.
How do you determine if your response rates are decent?
The easiest method is to figure out how much customer acquisition will cost you. If you’re spending more money marketing your online course than you are taking in, then you need to rethink your marketing or product.
However, since this is just a test of whether or not your course is going to make money, at least a 2 to 3% response rate will be good. The main idea is to see if using ads for a short time (to save money, of course) will bring in some business. What you don’t want is a situation where hardly anyone is signing up for your offer.
This is a tricky testing method! Remember I told you to use Google Analytics? If you check your analytics and you see that a bunch of people clicked on your ads, came to your page but did not sign up it could be something else. It might not be your ads, your website copy, or call to action.
So you’ll need to test a little. Another side benefit of testing with ads is you’ll know right away which words or benefits people are most interested in. If you’ve been using certain keywords and phrases that get clicks you’ll know those phrases and words are on the right track and you can use them on your landing pages.
You Absolutely Need This Blueprint To Sell Your Online Course
You’ll need some money to promote your web course or eLearning course once you really get rolling. But if you’re just starting out, I’ve found a great way for you to get to market your online course for free.
At any rate, my methods won’t cost you much because I’m always looking for cheaper alternatives.
The blueprint you’ll need is extremely important but won’t cost you a dime to create and use. What I’m talking about here is creating a sales funnel.
A sales funnel is ultra important because it will give you a visual or simplified plan on how to get people to buy your online course.
Here’s a simple example of what I mean:
Learn This Marketing Terminology Before Building Your Web Course Sales Funnel
I want to make sure you understand the different terms that apply to this process so it won’t be too confusing.
Business Goal: The main thing you want to accomplish with your marketing. (Example: Getting 300 people a month to sign up to your email list by using a social media channel.)
Strategy: This is the planning and thinking you’ll use to get to your business goal. (Example: Figuring out how you can use explainer videos to attract and send prospects to your site and free offer.)
Tactics: Actions that you’ll take regularly to achieve your strategies. (Example: Creating and posting explainer videos once a week so prospects will click on the links provided with them so they come to your site and sign up for your offer.)
A Sales Funnel You Can Actually Use To Market Your Online Course
There are a lot of different sales funnels you can use in the marketing world. The one I’m going to share with you here has been proven to work again and again. So if you want to get started immediately you can use this one.
But basically, you can brainstorm with your team on how to create your own sales funnel or you can swipe some sales funnel ideas online.
Marketing Tools You’ll Need For Your Online Course Sales Funnel
Email Marketing Software
You will need a way to build a list of subscribers who will get automated email messages from you. If you’re going to market your online course for free I’d use Mail Chimp.
Mail Chimp will allow you to use limited free services until you build your list up to 2000 contacts. After that, you won’t be able to send any more emails but you can still build your list and use some of their other services.
Using Mail Chimp’s free services is a big help if you’re just starting out. For one thing, typical email services like Constant Contact or Aweber will run you around $30 a month or $360 a year right out the starting gate.
If you’re just a little guy that’s a pretty big chunk of change if you’re just starting out on a shoestring budget. And if you’re brand new to this game, it might take you a while to learn and implement and build your email list.
So using Mail Chimp to start out with is a no-brainer.
If you’ve got enough capital you can get the paid version of Mail Chimp or another email marketing platform. At any rate, if you’re going to use this proven sales funnel model, you’ll need to use automated email.
YouTube Account
Using Youtube is one of the best ways to gain an audience. Why? For one thing, you can access the hottest social media platform for free. Yep, getting a YouTube account is free and you can easily set up a channel on it in no time.
A lot of marketers will tell you to start podcasting, but in order to do that, you’ll need to pay for a service to store your audio files. YouTube doesn’t require you to do that and the other cool part is that it’s visual.
Once you get a method of creating videos under your belt, you can churn them out almost as fast as a podcast.
Landing Pages for Your Web Course
Create Your Landing Page
If you already know how to write sales copy, you’ll have another way to market your online course for free.
One of the big mistakes I see on a lot of landing pages is they don’t sell. That’s because they confuse selling with telling. Good examples of this are accountant and lawyer pages.
These professionals may know a lot about their business, but they know absolutely nothing about selling.
Here’s some “copy” from an accounting firm’s website:
“At Joseph D. Boring, PLLC, our Podunk CPA offers business-focused accounting services to maximize income and minimize tax liability. With over 40 years of experience in the financial industry, as well as Valuation Analyst and Restricting Advisor certifications, our professional staff help clients set and obtain goals while interpreting complex accounting processes.”
As you can easily see, this is the usual boring and dry dreck you’ll find on almost 90% of these professional sites.
Just because you’re in the accounting business, doesn’t mean you must have dull copy on your site.
You also can’t assume everyone who comes to your site knows what all of those accounting terms and awards mean.
Here I’ve spiced up the language a bit and included some benefits in plain language:
“At the Joseph D. Boring accounting firm, we’ll bend over backward to ensure you’re not losing money. By using our firm’s 40 years of accounting know-how we’ll make sure you keep everything you deserve.
How do we do it?
We live, eat and breathe, financial management by bringing you the right expertise at the right time. And we can do it cost-effectively.
Our team of highly-seasoned experts is up to date on all the latest regulatory requirements. Because we’re intimate with the industry, you’ll have peace of mind knowing our team of accountants will handle your matters properly.”
Writing the copy above literally took me 5 minutes. It’s not a mind-blowing copy, but it’s better than what preceded it. (Yeah, I know, it’s missing a call to action and all that jazz, but I’m just making a quick point.)
Your landing page has got to be able to catch your prospect’s attention and sell. And it has got to be able to sell the next step.
2 Free Ways to Get People to Sign Up
You’re going to need a way to get people to sign up for your free offer. I know of two ways to get this done for free. One is using Mail Chimp’s free trial services, as I mentioned above.
Mail Chimp has opt-in boxes and forms you can use to collect email addresses from your visitors while you’re on their free trial.
The other opt-in box option I love to use is Hellobar. Hellobar is great because you can set up different versions of it for free. Of course, the paid version has more options, but I’ve been using the free version for years to collect email addresses.
I use the pop-up box version because I can collect a lot more email addresses with it than just a static box on my landing pages.
Hellobar is not an email service like Mail Chimp, it merely collects email addresses for you.
However, you can collect email addresses using Hellobar and migrate them over to Mail Chimp very easily. If people sign up to your list through Hellobar, you can move them into your Mail Chimp account. If people have given you permission to send them an email then Mail Chimp is fine with that and you can add them to your email list.
Use Content to Promote Your Online Course
In this section, I’m going to give you some tips that have a high value.
As a copywriter and content marketer, I find it frustrating to try to explain to potential clients why they need to use content marketing.
Using Facebook ads or Google ads you can get people interested in your product or service. However, these two ad companies are rather expensive.
If you are using any keywords or terms which are rather competitive, you’ll go broke. I’ve seen companies spend anywhere from $3.00 to $4.30 per click to sell their web course.
As a matter of fact, a lot of mid-sized to large companies spend $9000 to $10,000 a month using online ad companies.
If you’ve got a business that size and you can afford that kind of money, fine. In bigger businesses, it’s not uncommon to get back $8.00 for every $1.00 you spend.
But if your business is just starting out and you don’t have a massive budget, I have a sweet alternative…Content marketing.
The Hidden Value Behind Content Marketing
Why do I like content marketing so much?
For one thing, content can sit on the Internet forever generating business for your company and you don’t have to pay a dime. You can easily promote your online course like this for free using these tactics.
If it’s good content it can bring in business for years. Not only that but if the content is really good, you’ll be seen as a guru or an expert in your niche. If you’re perceived as an expert you won’t have to spend time and money with ads, because businesses and entrepreneurs will seek you out.
Content marketers have almost 6 times higher conversions than pay-per-click ads. The reason for this is the trust value content can bring. If someone comes to your site and reads a lot of your content they will become familiar with you and your brand.
These types of visitors will be far more likely to buy than if they merely clicked on some ads you ran on Google or Facebook.
Content Doesn’t Interrupt
Another reason why content marketing is popular is that it doesn’t interrupt your prospects. Ads (especially on platforms like YouTube) are constantly popping up all the time. So ads usually are butting-in while you’re trying to read or watch something.
Content marketing, on the other hand, has invited guests. If someone sees your post and decides you are what they’re looking for, they’ll click on your post link.
Content is Great for SEO
Another great benefit of content marketing is the SEO value it brings. Adding more relevant and high-quality content to your site will draw the attention of the search engines. You can easily move up in the search engine results because of it. Paid ads will not be able to do that for you.
Let me give you an example of one facet of content marketing that can help your SEO in a major way.
When you write content for a blog post, you will be using researched keywords in your posts. These are keywords that you’ll want to be found for in your niche or target market in the search engines. The more organic keywords you have online the more traffic you’ll get, especially if the keywords are in well-written posts.
So, if you have a lot of keywords online and they are inside of posts and content your readers will like, you’ll get more free traffic.
Content Campaigns are Trusted More
People will trust other people they know. If you go to Joe’s Pizza Parlor and talk to Joe every couple of weeks while eating his pizza, your chances of going back increase considerably.
It’s the same online.
If someone returns to your site to read your content again they are far more likely to take your online course. At the very least, they’ll probably try out your free sample.
This is one of the reasons why email campaigns are so effective. If people are receiving your content in email newsletters on a regular basis, they’ll feel like they know you. You can’t do that with online ads, or even TV commercials.
Content Can Be Interactive
If you are producing your own content to sell your online course for free, you can also make it interactive. If you are writing blog posts on a regular basis, you can ask readers to comment on your posts. There are actually two benefits to this.
First, people who comment on your posts are adding more relevant content to your site.
Caution: If you are vigilant with the comments added to your site, you’ll notice that a lot of the people who comment are spammers. They will go to your site, create a trivial comment and then leave a web address that leads to a product they’re trying to sell. Get rid of these comments because they are linking to sites unrelated to yours. You don’t want to be seen as a business who links to just anyone.
However, there will also be quite a few people who will make great comments on your site as well, so you’ll want to keep those. You can also make well-written responses to those comments which will add to your content. (If you’re really smart, you can add responses using a couple of the keywords which are in your post. )
Second, you can take the content and share it on as many social media channels as you like. If people like your posts they will also share your content. If you ask people to share your content at the end of your posts, you’ll get even more interaction.
Content Can Be Repurposed
One of my favorite things to do with content is to repurpose it. You can take any content you’ve created and then turn it into different formats. For example, you can take the content you’ve used for a video and have someone transcribe it for you.
After that, you can take the transcription and post it on your blog. You can do some keyword research and rewrite some of the transcriptions with your keywords or keyword phrases in it.
This will quickly give you all kinds of extra posts that you can use to promote your online course for free. Once people find and read your posts, you’ll be able to give your offer for a free sampling of your course and collect their email addresses.
Become a Recognized Authority in Your Niche
Remember when I told you to write blog posts? Later on in this post, I also told you how you can repurpose posts into different formats.
A great way to market your course online for free is to become a maven.
What’s a maven you ask?
Webster’s definition – One who is experienced or knowledgeable: EXPERT
One of the best ways to become an expert in your chosen market is by writing a book. What you can do is take blog posts you’ve already written and then turn them into chapters. Once you have enough chapters, you can then create a printed book, eBook or both.
But you’ll need to brand it.
Get a free copy of an eBook by anyone who is a pro and look at how they branded it. You’ll usually see copyright information, an “About the Author” section, logos and website information, etc.
You should also look at regular printed and published books as well.
The idea is to make your books look as professional and legit as possible.
If you have a printed book and sell it online, you’ll want it to look like a published book as much as possible. However, DO NOT put a real publisher’s name on there. Many people self-publish their own books, and that’s fine.
But make sure you don’t use a real publisher’s name. When I create printed books or DVD courses for myself, I call the publisher “Ellistrations” or “ElmoCopy Press” which are named after myself. You can call it pretty much anything you want, just don’t name it after a real publishing company.
You can sell your printed books on a bunch of different sites online like Amazon. The main idea behind this is you’re offering great information your niche needs and some people will buy it or at least see that you’re selling a real printed book on there.
If your course is very professional you can offer to send the printed book to anyone taking the course as a bonus.
Any time you can offer a bonus and it’s a quality item like a well-written book or eBook, do it.
90% of the online courses don’t offer any kind of bonus material, especially a printed book that they’ll receive in the regular mail.
What to Do If You’re Offering Multiple Courses
If you’re offering multiple courses you have another way to market your online course for free. You can bundle those courses and promote them together for a cheaper price than if buyers would purchase them separately.
(It would be a good idea to not bundle unrelated courses together.) If you’re selling 4 courses that sell for $150 each you could bundle them together and sell them for $387. That way, your students would have a discount of $63.
As I mentioned earlier, if you’re offering valuable free bonuses with your web course, your offer will just that much sweeter and their incentives for taking your course will have them salivating to take them.
How to Increase Your Sales to Over 150%
If you want to increase your sales dramatically, offering a guarantee will take away most of the pain of spending money.
Yeah, spending money hurts, but you can also wonder if what you spent your money on will work. If you don’t know for sure that what you’re buying is what you need or if it will really work for you, then a guarantee should alleviate most of that threat.
There are usually 3 parts to a guarantee. Conditions, length, and payback.
Conditions
With most of my courses, I offer a money-back guarantee without question if the buyer doesn’t feel they are getting what they wanted.
For me, it’s pretty simple and straightforward. You don’t like it – you get your money back, no questions asked.
There are all kinds of ways you can write your conditions, but it has been my experience that simply giving their money back if they don’t like the product is the way to go.
I’ve sold everything from embroidered items, books, mini-courses, and DVD’s musical instruments, etc. since 2001 and I have only had to honor my guarantee 3 times. (One of them I accidentally sent the wrong item.)
Usually, people don’t want to go through the hassle of returning stuff.
Length
This is the amount of time in which you’ll refund your course if the buyer doesn’t like it for some reason. The longer amount of time you can put on the refund, the sweeter the deal for the buyer. Common lengths of time are 30, 60, and 90 days before the guarantee runs out.
*Note – If I were selling a course and someone contacted me after the time period, I’d probably give them their money back. I mean, if someone asked me a year later for their money back, I’d probably ask them why it took so long. However, if I felt in any way that I took someone’s money and they didn’t think it was a high-quality product, I’d still probably give it back.
Payback
Most of the time you’ll just want to just offer their money back if they don’t get what they want. I like to mention that whatever bonuses I’ve offered them will not have to be returned if they decide they want a refund. That’s just another incentive for them to take your course – free bonuses.
Conclusion
If you read this entire post on how to market an online course for free, congrats!
Just to make sure you didn’t miss any of the 15 ways to do this, here’s a list of what we just covered:
- Write up a marketing plan.
- Create a free sample of your course to use for test marketing.
- Get a YouTube channel and make videos about your course subjects
- Make a blueprint or sales funnel to help sell your web course.
- Use Mail Chimp’s free email service.
- Write the copy for your landing page yourself if you can.
- Using Mail Chimp’s free opt-in box.
- Taking advantage of Hello Bar’s free-floating opt-in boxes
- Use content marketing instead of paid ads.
- Use blog post comments by responding to them on your blog posts.
- Post links to your site’s content using social media channels.
- Repurpose content to increase the reach of material you already have.
- Become a maven in your subject by writing a book.
- Bundle multiple courses together and offer them cheaper.
- Offer a great guarantee.
If you can think of any other ways to market your online course for free, please share your ideas in the comment box below.
If you really liked my post, would you please share it? It would really make my day knowing I’m adding value to your life and business.