Online courses are the rage right now and with the global e-learning marketing that is predicted to reach $325 Billion by 2025, entrepreneurs, businesses and established institutions are tapping into it.

Since there are thousands of courses out in the world, how do you make your online course stand out amongst all the others? What are real people doing to market their course as they are establishing their business in the online space?

Lucky for you, I am going to share what I am doing with lessons on what I am learning so you can glean how to market and sell your course as we move into 2020. Hang on tight, but it’s (still) a wild ride!

How so stand out amongst your competition.

Although I am still learning this one as there are tons of blogging courses out there that people can take. So what makes mine any different?

I have to look at my expertise, my love, and my genius and exploit that as I created my course, The Confident Blogger: Go from Unknown to Unforgettable. One thing I spent the most time on was content creation, content strategy, and repurposing. Those are the top three things I love about blogging and want as many entrepreneurs to know how to do.

When I am promoting my course, I will focus on promoting that my course will teach you how to generate content and then take that content and repurpose it into a variety of different platforms that communicate the same message so that your company will stay on brand.

Also, look for ways how your course represents you because no one can represent you better than you can.

Get Testimonials.

I really feel testimonials make the difference. I have tried to sell courses without testimonials and I felt that I didn’t get as much attention as when I actually had testimonials from real people on the course.

What I did was I asked people to be betas for The Confident Blogger for $97, knowing that I would eventually sell the course for $297+. I offered my betas three group coaching calls during our time together so they can get the most out of the course and I can understand what was working and what wasn’t working.

After The Confident Blogger was complete, they gave me testimonials so I could use on the landing page, webinars, and any other marketing activity I would use in regards to the course.

Have an Affiliate Program.

Affiliates can help promote your course while you’re in a launch because they will be sharing your course, webinar or challenge to their audience, thus expanding your reach without you doing all the work.

It’s hard marketing as it is and it feels glorious to know there are other people who are helping you promote when you’re not able to or your budget doesn’t allow you to buy ad space.

Now the thing I am finding with affiliates is that it can be expensive to get a program to keep track of your affiliates. I found ClickMagick to help me create affiliate links to give to my affiliates so when they promote, they use their link so I can keep track of who came from who. ClickMagick is $27/month, which fitted well into my budget.

I used WebinarJam to host my webinar (you can get 60 days of WebinarJam for $1) because WebinarJam tells me the IP address a person signed up from and ClickMagick track the IP address. This is how we figured out how to track a subscriber in case they turn into a customer so I can compensate the affiliate who led them there.

Moving forward, I’m not going to use WebinarJam. I am going to create an evergreen webinar that will be on my website so my affiliates can promote my webinar at different points in their marketing calendars. Now I’m not sure how I will keep track of my affiliates, but if you ask, I will tell you 😉

Consider an Influencer.

This is my next step in the process. I want to either collaborate with a minor or major influencer who has a list and is making money from their own online courses who would consider selling my online course too.

I have already reached out to John Lee Dumas, Amy Porterfield, and Sarah Morgan, all who got back in touch with me to tell me they are not looking for collaboration. Why go small when you can go big?

I’m still working on finding an influencer to collaborate with, so remind me, and I’ll tell you how I found him or her!

Collaborate.

I am partnering with Nadalie Bardo and my friend, Alisa Connor, to add more value to my course while they promote their course. It’s one way to collaborate and Nadalie already has established herself as a minor influencer. She’s awesome, by the way.

I also reached out to Rahul from Your Blog Mentor, and he’s going to help promote my course as well when the next launch happens. I found him on Pinterest and just asked.

Conclusion.

There are so many ways to promote your online course that there’s really no right or wrong way here (except NOT to promote!). Don’t be scared to reach out to the “big names” and don’t be afraid to ask those you follow to either collaborate somehow or be an affiliate to create more reach.

What I would suggest that you do is pick one to two different ways that you’ll focus on with your course promotion and start there. I’m starting with affiliates and influencers. I’m asking and seeing what the response is. If it’s no, thats okay! I get to ask again!

Be bold in your request and focus on the difference you’ll make in people’s lives and be committed to that and not so much on the outcome.