Online Learning Blueprint Part 2
In part 2 of our blueprint (read part 1 here) to help you build your online learning business, we take a look at Branding, Sales and Marketing for online courses.
Key Area 2: Branding
You have your online courses and videos up and running for your students. Your lessons are engaging! Unfortunately, this is not enough to ensure your success. To grow your student base, you need to focus on your site’s brand. This will involve developing web pages that talk about your services, profile, news and student testimonials.
Course landing pages are also crucial in giving prospective students an overview of the topics and lessons covered. Share with them the curriculum and provide sample lessons to entice enrolment.
When building this content, a consistent appearance and layout displays professionalism and ensures that users don’t get lost in your site.
Thankfully, creating a web page has become an easier task where no programming is required. However, the key challenge will lie in your ability to create layouts and page design that suits your branding.
Unless you have a huge team, you will want a solution or tools that allow you to create layouts, tweak colours and appearance, insert images and your brand logo easily. This will then allow you to have more time to focus on your online learning content and selling.
Key area number 3: Sales & Marketing
To sell your services and get paid, you will need access to Sales & Marketing functions. The online learning business is no different.
Pricing
What is your online course pricing strategy? There are various ways to pricing your online courses or e-learning modules.
- Singe product pricing
Each course has its specific unit price. - Bundles
Offering discounts for bundles of courses, especially courses that complement each other
- Monthly Recurring charges
A monthly recurring fee that one pays to maintain their course or learning enrolment
- Membership subscription
Monthly or annual subscription to get access to all or a subset of your online learning products - Discounts
Ability to offer discounts such as coupons
- Free Trials
Ability to try for some time before paying - Sample Course Lessons
Ability to try specific lessons in your course to get a taste of what to expect
Shopping Cart
Your prospective students love your course pricing and are now ready to purchase. What is the process of purchasing? How will you facilitate the online purchase experience? You will want to ensure that shopping for your learning products is a simple and easy process.
Payments
When it comes to processing customer payments, here are some consideration points:
- How will you complete payments? There are standard payment processing options like Paypal, Stripe, 2CO Checkout.
- Can your payment processing gateway support monthly recurring or subscription charging?
- What currencies are you offering?
- What are the costs for processing payments and the timeframe for receiving funds?
CRM
Regular engagement with your base is essential not only for future sales but also for retention. You will want to inform your students and prospective leads of new updates and additions to your learning products. To do this, you need a process that allows students and future leads to opt into your marketing list. How will you encourage them to opt-in, and how easy is the process?
Engagement schedule and plan. Blasting off emails to your base without a plan can lead to negative results and encourage your base to opt-out. Having a strategy and plan about who and when you target is crucial.
Segmentation. Segmenting your base according to interests or profile can help you reach out with more targeted and relevant news. Increased relevancy raises engagement and sales conversions.
Execution. How are you executing your plan and email communications? If you have a huge student and leads base, you may want to invest in applications that efficiently perform all these functions.
Sales and Leads Reporting
You need to understand your sales performance, newsletter click-through, and open rates. With detailed reports, you will be able to identify areas that are doing well and underperforming areas.
Search Engine Optimisation
How do you ensure your search engine presence? Are your pages optimised to ensure that you are maximising your ranking on search engines? Google search is a critical source for leads, and if you optimise your site’s web pages, you will be able to generate leads without investing too much in advertising.
