Whether you’re brand new to the world of online course creation, or you’ve been here a while, you may have noticed going from 0 to 6 figures can be wild! Knowing these marketing essentials for online course creators will be a game changer for you!

Aren't you glad you're here today!

We're here to spill the tea on all the marketing must-haves for online course creators who are ready to scale to 6 figures faster.

Let's dive in!

The Key To Unlocking Six-Figure Business Growth: Know Your Audience And Create Clearly Identified Customer Avatars

When I started learning marketing for online courses, I kept looking for the next gap in my education. 

I took all the courses and signed up for everything that would help me figure out how to connect the dots and finally start to make money online. 

One day, I bought a new course and I opened up my laptop to start learning Module 1. The first I saw in module 1 was a lesson on identifying your ideal customer.

“Not this customer avatar thing again!” I thought. 

You see, I had already defined my customer avatar as well as I thought I could. 

I knew how old she was and where she lived, that she was married and had two kids and she drove an SUV and shopped at Target. 

What I didn’t know was demographics are only the start of knowing our ideal customers. 

I discovered the importance of really knowing her deepest pain and her greatest desires. When I learned to hear, in her own words, how she described her pain and her desires, that's when I really started to understand her.  

Let’s explore a few ways you can unlock a deeper understanding of your ideal customer too.

Here are some questions to help get your juices flowing:

The better we can understand how our ideal customer feels about the problem she has, and what her deepest desire is for a future without this problem, the more effective our marketing becomes.  

Then, almost like magic, she finally starts to engage with us on socials, opens, reads, and clicks our emails, attends our webinars and when she invests in our programs she is a raving fan!

I wish I could go back in time and tell new-entrepreneur-Salome to quit resisting it and spend more time getting to know my ideal customer!

Develop an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

The cliche ‘The money is in the list’ is only a half-truth.

Once you start building your email list, your list will want to hear from you regularly.

A content marketing strategy involves creating one good-quality piece of content once a week and emailing your list about it. 

You can keep this simple when you start and just create a good-quality email. 

After a while, you may want to create a Blog, Video Blog, or Podcast and add the bulk of your content to your website. This is where your audience can browse different topics and see the evidence of your authority on a topic. This also helps new people find your website thanks to Search Engine Optimization. 

Keep it simple at first and remember your ideal customer cares about two things when they read your weekly emails…

Show her you care about her and send her a good-quality email at least once a week. 

Your future self will thank you when she invests in your program or course because she knows you and trusts you’ll be able to get her the results she wants. 

If the cliche is half true and the money is in the emails that go out to the list, what would you do this week to nurture your list?

Can't Resist? Neither Can They: Making Offers That Will Make You Big Bucks

The third item on our list of marketing must-haves for online course creators is surprisingly simple but not always easy. 

It’s making offers that convert. 

The key to making offers that convert is understanding the difference between what YOU DO and what she WANTS. 

Put simply; people don’t buy what you do, they buy what they want and there is a difference between the two!

Here are a few examples:

WHAT YOU DO: You're a health coach who works with women to reduce their sugar intake.

WHAT SHE WANTS: She'S looking for someone who can help her to stop feeling so damn tired all the time.

WHAT YOU DO: You teach middle-aged people how to create art using acrylic paints.

WHAT SHE WANTS: She wants to express her creativity and relax while improving her acrylic painting skills so she can show off her paintings to her friends and family. 

WHAT YOU DO: You teach coaches and course creators how to master Pinterest posting.

WHAT SHE WANTS: Your ideal customer is looking for the fastest way to use Pinterest to increase the number of visitors to her blog.

There’s a clear difference between what you, the expert already know the problem is – and what your ideal customer describes as HER problem or the solution she wants. 

When we differentiate between what we do, and what our ideal customers want, writing high-converting copy becomes a lot easier. This means our sales pages start to convert like gangbusters. 

Simple, yes…easy, maybe…now you know what to focus on!

You’re welcome!

Marketing Essentials for Online Course Creators: How to Sell Stuff Online Without Confusing People

Create Easy Funnels for Big Money:

“Webinars, challenges, or email marketing? Which one do I choose to sell my online course?”

Great question!

The answer is simple…

It depends. 

It depends on how much time you have to spend with your ideal customer before she will trust you enough to invest at the price point you set for your course. 

Usually, the higher your price point, the more time you’ll have to invest in building your relationship with your ideal customer…

But in some cases, you can speed up the process by getting more personal, sooner. 

Here's' what we mean.

If you’re selling a course for $997 you probably won’t be able to run an ad to a cold audience and take them straight to the sales page. 

You’ll probably end up wasting your money. 

But, if you use a paid ad that you run to a cold audience where you invite them to join a webinar, and they spend 90 minutes with you hearing about the incredible results other people who are just like them got, they may be more likely to invest the $997 in buying your course. 

Now let’s take the price point up to $10,000. A lead who's buying a $10,000 course will want to spend some time talking to you in person. They will need your help to know and trust their money is in safe hands and you’ll help them get the results they’re looking for. 

Knowing which funnel to choose always depends on two main factors:

1. The price point of your course
2. The amount of time required to invest in building a strong enough relationship with your audience so they build enough trust to give you their money. 

The higher the price, the more time you’ll need to spend with your lead to build enough trust for them to say “yes” and invest in your course. 

So the next time someone says “Webinars are dead” or “Challenges are working now” you’ll know that there’s a price point for each funnel and each funnel has its rightful place in your marketing plan!

Tracking The Right Numbers for Success: How to Look at Data if You Want To Make More Money with Your Online Course

I had a coach who used to say…

“What we treasure, we measure”

-Some smart coach I used to know

and although it is a cliche, it’s still true today. 

Our final item on the list of marketing must-haves for online course creators is data tracking and analysis to know where the money comes from. 

My team and I spent over 9 years coming up with our Most Profitable Customer Journey method. This is the method course creators use to know exactly where to focus their attention to get more people on their list who will buy your course. 

If you know exactly what the student who raves about your courses did before becoming your raving fan then you can replicate that journey for future students. You'll also be able to optimize your marketing to increase the flow of traffic to your most profitable conversions. 

That’s a fancy way of saying if you know where they’ve been, you can take more people through the same journey. 

It starts with knowing where your best customers have been.

To work out what your Most Profitable Customer Journey is you can download the list of your most recent purchasers and ask yourself these questions:

• Which lead magnet did the buyers download first?
• Which other lead magnets did they interact with?
• Did they sign up for a launch event like a webinar, challenge, or workshop?
• Did they show up for your webinar, challenge, or workshop?
• Did they buy live on your webinar or class or did they wait until the last minute during your live launch to buy? 

Knowing this will empower you to make better decisions and make the small, incremental changes that lead to optimized funnels that scale to 6 figures and more.

If you treasure it, and you do, why not start measuring it today? You’ll thank me when you have a clear plan for a profitable launch.

Recap: 5 Marketing Must-Haves For Growing A 6 Figure Online Courses Businesses

To master the art of successfully marketing your online course these are the 5 marketing must-haves for online course creators:

1. Know your audience and create clearly identified customer avatars.
2. Develop an effective and consistent content marketing strategy.
3. Make offers that make you big bucks by giving them what they want not what they need.
4. Use funnels that build enough trust for the investment you’re asking from your students.
5. Tracking the right numbers so you know what your ideal customer’s journey is from when they first meet you until they become your raving fan. 

With these 5 marketing must-haves in place you’ll be laughing all the way to 6- and multi 6 figures in your online courses business in no time.