You Can’t Sell Courses Without Visibility

By: Justin Ferriman • October 22, 2015
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stacking-coinsChances are you have at least thought about selling an online course at some point.

Today there are an abundance of tools at your disposal that can make this a reality.

But here is something that no one really mentions: you won’t sell courses if people can’t find it.

Seems pretty obvious, I know, but it’s importance is often under-appreciated.

Assuming you have a course with really good content, you still need visibility. Without visibility you will not sell anything, plain and simple.

From what I have seen this is an area that most people grossly underestimate.

They spend weeks creating and perfecting their course offering. They create stunning certificates, fun badges, killer content, all wrapped in eye-pleasing design.

They dedicate time each day to work on their online course and get excited as it takes shape.

When they finish, they slap a price tag on it and “open the doors”. Perhaps they’ll pay for an online press release, or even invest in a few Facebook ads.

And they wait.

And continue to wait.

Nothing happens.

Nothing ever will.

Where They Went Wrong

As you can imagine this experience is beyond frustrating. It’s defeating, but it could have been avoided.

Think about it this way: just like creating a course takes a significant time investment, so does generating visibility for your business.

When you start creating your elearning offering, you should also start your marketing. It doesn’t matter that the course is not yet available – the idea is to generate buzz, or at least “eyeballs” so that when you do release there are people who see it!

This is the exact approach that we took when we started our company, LearnDash. Eight months prior to our official release we started on creating visibility for the project. While we were doing marketing and networking we were also building the first version.

When we did release the following year we had a healthy list of subscribers, regular visitors, and connections eager to tell people about our WordPress LMS.

There was no magic bullet to this process. It took hard work, elbow grease, and a bit of passion.

The good news is that this won’t cost you anything.

So as you plan your online course, make sure to set aside some time for your marketing approach as well and determine how you can implement it at the same time as your course build.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter