How to Effectively Market an Online Teaching Program

John Kilmerstone
BLOGGING KARMA
Published in
4 min readJul 10, 2020

You worked hard to build a course or a curriculum, or perhaps you are a teacher/professor who wants to help students out there. You have what it takes to impart knowledge.

In your case, teaching is not a problem-you know what to do and it is your zone. But how do you find clients? Today, I will share with you some techniques on how to effectively market an online teaching program.

These are:

I will explain how each one works, and then you can choose a few or implement all techniques for your online teaching program.

Freelance Marketplace

There are many freelance marketplaces out there-from Fiverr to Freelancer to People Per Hour, there is no shortage of websites where you can post your service.

A freelance marketplace is like amazon. The difference is that in Amazon, people sell physical goods. In a freelance marketplace, you sell services.

Here are some things you need to know about these marketplaces:

  • They are highly saturated-you are competing against many people who offer services like you do
  • Prices are low — many clients who come here have low budgets, so expect a lot of them to haggle; the freelance marketplace is a cut-throat competition where you have to lower your prices to be able to compete against other service providers.
  • Fees — like Amazon, you have to pay fees in these marketplaces. The typical fee is 20% of the transaction.

If anything, freelance marketplaces are safe. They use escrow services where the client’s money is deposited for safekeeping. Once the service is rendered and the client is happy, the funds get transferred to your account.

To be able to succeed in this marketing strategy, you have to know your competition. Investigate and ask around-post as a client and ask your competitors what they do.

Order a course yourself, and you will know what teaching methods they use. Learn as much as you can and then make your online teaching program competitive.

Your Own Website

The second method to effectively market your service is through building your own website. This may seem daunting at first, but know that there are hundreds of online tools out there that make it easy for you to build your own website.

Here are the benefits of marketing your services on your own website:

As a website operator, you are creating your own brand-with the possibility to expand your services. Just note that your website is your asset. There are many things you need to do at the backend to ensure that your site is working, that it is safe, and that it is functional.

Learning Marketplaces

These marketplaces are like freelance websites, but they are dedicated to online courses. Examples of these are Coursera and Udemy.

In these learning marketplaces, you upload your online course and then earn money if people buy your offer.

Here are some benefits of marketing your services on this platform:

Like other freelance marketplaces, you are not the only teacher here. Whatever it is that you are offering, there surely are other educators offering something that is similar. And like other marketplaces, you may find yourself competing against their prices.

Paid Advertising

The final effective method to market your online teaching program is to advertise. Regardless of what platform you use, you need to be actively advertising your business.

As you can see, freelancers who wait for sales do not really make it big. What you have to do is to invest in your marketing campaigns so more people will know about your offer.

Here are some advertising channels you must definitely use:

The average conversion rate of online sales is a mere 3%. What this means is that for every 100 people who saw your offer, it is likely that only three are going to buy.

Without active marketing, your conversion is going to be zero. You need to invest money to earn money. Before you advertise though, you need to know where your customers are, and you also need to know their demographics like their age.

The last thing you want is to put your ad in front of people who have no interest in your service. What you want is for your ad to get seen by the right people.

Summary

Teaching is a noble profession. In a world where people are inundated by a lot of useless information, you can carve out your niche in the academe and help them learn new skills, or become better at what they are doing now.

If you are a beginner, you have to choose one or two from the options I gave you. Once you see results, you can start marketing your online teaching program in other ways. The first step to choosing which method applies best is to understand who your customer is -different learners congregate in different areas of the internet.

Originally published at https://bloggingkarma.com.

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John Kilmerstone
BLOGGING KARMA

I’m an Australian who has been living in Japan for over three decades. I love blogging, photography and traveling the globe to expand my experiences.