How to Promote your Online Classes to Students

Making it in the online teaching and learning business is not easy, the journey comes with its own set of challenges. The first step - figuring out what kind of online course you’re going to create and sell is quite a toughie in itself. Once you’ve crossed that hurdle (🎉congratulations!), comes the task of marketing it effectively to inform and attract your target audience. So now that you’re ready to start enrolling students, you need to think of ways that make potential leads want to join your class, without forcing this decision upon them. Tricky, right?

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You and I have both been on the receiving end of pushy marketing. On the other hand, we’ve also been on the receiving end of honest, genuine, fun marketing. In fact, we might not have even realized we were being “marketed to” because it was simply that good but subtle.

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To effectively promote your online courses and fill your seats to maximum capacity, it’s necessary to take advantage of all the modern ways people can learn about classes and events in the digital age. The first and most important step in marketing is identifying and understanding your audience. The process of finding your ideal customer, selling your course to him/her and ensuring that he/she buys from you again should be the central focus of promoting your classes.

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To make comprehending this process easier, we’ve divided different marketing strategies into three categories. Let’s call these ‘After School’, ‘Young Adult’ and ‘Working Professional’. Each category caters to a specific market or target group and lists down what strategies work best for it.

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1. After School Activities🎒

Kids have a lot of energy to burn. The buffer period between the end of school and dinnertime can be especially challenging to manage without engaging activities to keep your kids occupied. This category is perfect for hobby-like courses catering especially to school-going children—dancing, sports, music, magic, robotics, coding, art and craft, etc. If your course covers any of these subjects or similar aspects, you need to be selling it to kids and even more so, to their parents. Here’s how you can market after school programs efficiently:

• Use of Social Media - An easy yet effective way to sell your course is by circulating ads on social media. Kids these days, and their parents too, are quite tech-savvy and super active on social media platforms, so advertisements on these apps can help immensely with gaining visibility. If you don’t have a budget for this as of now, fret not. You can use free design tools like Canva to create appealing ads for your course and post them in “parent groups” or communities on Facebook or Whatsapp. If you're looking for a simpler option, consider using Adobe Express free picture editor to quickly enhance your visuals for social media posts promoting your course. If you do have some money to spare, consider partnering with relevant influencers to endorse your course. You can also use Adobe Illustrator to create ads that look enticing yet effortless.

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• Mailing Lists - A large majority of people check their mail on a daily basis. One of the most effective ways to reach parents is by curating a mailing list, and then sending out useful information about your course in the form of newsletters, blogs, announcements, tutorials, etc. Additionally, you could also offer discounts or promo codes in the emails (who can say no to those?). These lists will also help you engage with customers and maintain an active relationship with them once they have enrolled in your classes.

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• Contributing to Publications - Parents want what’s best for their child, and positioning yourself as an expert in your field can help you earn their trust and interests. Online platforms like Medium and Write.as allow you to publish write-ups on their website as an independent author, enabling you to reach to a broad audience. If you wish to target a more specific readership, consider publishing on websites related to your field of interest. Ensure that the articles you post are relevant to the subject you teach. For example, if you’re a dance teacher, write about busting dance myths or insider tips that only dancers would understand. The basic idea behind this strategy is to subtly slip in details about your course into your articles. Maybe include a link to your online booking page or social media handles towards the end, so readers can dig deeper and explore what you offer—and fingers crossed🤞🏻, sign up for your classes.

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2. Young Adult ⛹️

Young adults, or teenagers, comprise a significant portion of your customer base—making them a prime marketing target is a million-dollar market. The easiest hack to reach this demographic is to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends. This group is interested in both hobby-based classes like singing and dancing, as well as career-oriented ones like math, accounts, and content creation. If young adults are your target audience, your marketing strategy needs to directly resonate with them, while also bringing their parents on-board. Here’s how you can achieve that:

• Use of Social Media - If you wish to connect with teens, you need to go beyond simply posting ads for your class online. Teens are tech-savvy and often distrustful of advertisements, so if you want them to buy your course, you have to meet them where they are- on social media.

Start by creating an account on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Post relevant content online regularly, host live sessions for your students, and engage with them through posts, stories and comments. Share fun, engaging reels related to your subject (check out Cool Chemistry Guy) and bite-sized tips (for example, after hosting a live session on Instagram, summarize important points in a post and expand on them in the caption). If your budget permits, invest in promoting your posts and advertisements to improve visibility among your target audience. Once you get them to engage with you and talk to you, they’ll also listen to you.

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• Create a YouTube Channel - Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world? It processes over 3 billion searches a month. Imagine how many people your content would reach here. Majorly used to share video content, it is is somewhat of a social media platform as well.

Create a YouTube channel and share creative, informative videos that’ll help build a brand name for your business/course (check out David Suh, a professional photographer who creates content on the art of posing and photography). If you don’t want to commit to a full-time channel, consider uploading promotional videos, tutorials or videos on industry news every now and then. YouTube has an in-built editing tool that allows you to create content seamlessly. A number of other easy-to-use video editing tools like Kapwing, Wistia and FlexClip can also help you in the process of making video content. Additionally,  you can not only build a community of loyal subscribers that can become your most powerful promoters, but also receive feedback and increase engagement through likes and comments.

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• Start a Blog - If you plan to consistently post content about your course, creating a blog seems like a smart move. You can use your blogs to share insights and tips, the latest industry news, course materials, activities or assignments, fostering an active relationship with your students.

Grammarly, a free grammar-checking and enhancing software, is a helpful little tool to polish your articles and give them a professional, competitive edge. Hosting your independent blog on platforms like Wordpress, Wix, Blogger or Webflow can significantly increase your business exposure. If you aren’t keen on starting your own blog, or don’t wish to commit to that kind of responsibility, consider creating an account on Twitter and sharing blog-like content in the form of Twitter threads (Instagram Threads are also growing in popularity each day).

Bonus tip: You can promote your blog on your social media accounts and vice versa to maximize your reach.

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3. Working Professional 🖥️

Whether you’re targeting individuals in the prime of their careers or those experiencing career stagnation and seeking change, marketing to working professionals can be extremely fruitful for your business. This audience will most likely be drawn to courses in finance, management, programming, and marketing as well as extra-curriculars like learning a foreign language or developing culinary skills. Here’s how to get working professionals on board:

• Podcasts - While podcasts aren’t exactly a new medium, they are time-efficient, easily accessible and rapidly growing in popularity. Podcasts are particularly effective for reaching consumers who lack the time to read blogs, watch lengthy tutorials, or engage consistently with social media.Using a recording and editing app like Anchor, you can create and distribute your podcast on platforms such as SoundCloud, Libsyn, and Buzzsprout.

Bonus tip: You can embed your podcast within your blog for better circulation and SEO ranking.

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• LinkedIn - Most working professionals aren’t active on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook. LinkedIn is the most professional networking platform out there, and establishing a presence here can be great for promoting your course. On LinkedIn, you can reach and connect with professionals from different backgrounds, communicate with people who share similar interests and expertise, and expand your professional network.

While it is a free platform, you may want to opt for paid advertising on LinkedIn, as it greatly helps in delivering your content to a larger audience. You can also use LinkedIn to share updates about your business and create an organic networking tree that will bring exciting business opportunities right to your doorstep.

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• Mailing Lists - As mentioned earlier, email communication remains the most widespread marketing tool. Sending emails allows you to directly engage with your customers, and is fast, inexpensive and much more convenient to reach this particular demographic—most working professionals are constantly required to stay on top of their emails, so they’re twice as likely to read the email you sent out, as opposed to that photo you posted on Instagram. For better email marketing, you can give platforms like EmailOctopus, ActiveCampaign and MailChimp a try.

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• Webinars - Webinars are incredibly useful for sharing ideas and expertise and conducting workshops for your clients. Hosting a webinar helps show the customer that you’re well-versed in your subject-matter and know what you’re talking about. It also allows them to be active participants instead of passive listeners. You can answer any questions they may have in real-time and get instantaneous feedback.

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In addition to the above, here are a few more tips to promote your classes -

• Offer a free introductory course for new customers. You can mention the offer code in an email or on your social media handles. The idea is to give potential leads a free sneak-peek into what you have to offer and then invite them to purchase the entire course. It helps familiarize them with the main content of the course.

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• Create multiple courses that cover different aspects of your main topic and cross-promote them. For example, at the end of one course, mention the other courses you’ve created, that you think the students will find helpful as a value-addition to the one they just completed.‍

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• Set up sales funnels to influence potential clients and get them to enroll in your classes.

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Creating great content is not only the first step in advertising your course but also understanding how to promote your content most effectively, which is an ideal segue to building lasting relationships. As you can see, excellent marketing is all about appearing in the right place at the right time.

Once you have successfully created and marketed your course, you can also upload it to websites like Udemy or Skillshare. If you’re looking for help to manage and organize your online classes, Classcard is here for you. Our intuitive and practical software allows you to manage bookings, track attendance and payments, share resources, seamlessly communicate with students, and much more. Let us help you ease your workload while you focus on delivering exceptional instruction!

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