So you want to create an online course and you want it to be awesome. When you take on the task of creating an information product, don’t settle for less than absolutely amazing. Overdelivering on expectations and adding great value to your customers is the only surefire method to success.
Rememeber, people don’t trust advertising – they trust the opinions of other consumers. This means that word-of-mouth is your best chance. If your product sucks, people will know. If your product is mediocre, nobody will talk about it. You have to make sure it is really, really good.
That being said, I also recommend you don’t linger too long – aim for getting the product out there. The sooner you start, the faster you learn. After all, it’s not how you start, it’s how you end up.
First, solve the problem
It all starts with understanding the problem you’re solving. People are buying your course for a reason – they want to scratch the itch they have. If your course doesn’t solve a problem, it will be difficult to sell.
Solving the core issue should be your #1 priority and everything else is extra. You HAVE to get this right.
Your course should
- give solutions to the problems your client wants to solve;
- give solutions to the problems your client doesn’t know he has, but should solve;
- be practical and have ready-to-implement content (the more specific, the better);
- use a mix of mediums: text alone is too boring; all video can be too time-consuming (with text they can just scroll down or search for something specific, whereas in video or audio they don’t know what’s coming).
So your first goal should be to understand what the problems are. Pay attention to what people are saying and asking about your field on Twitter, LinkedIn Answers, relevant forums and blogs.
Determine the ultimate goals for the end user – why is this person buying your course – and make sure your course contains everything that will help the user achieve her goals.
1-2-3
The best courses give clear instructions: first do this, then that. People who buy online courses don’t have the time to go through hours and hours and hours of training materials (there are universities for that) to figure out what exactly they should do.
Organize your course chapters in a logical order and structure every piece of content in a 1-2-3 format whenever possible.
Short and to the point
Everybody is crazy busy these days and making time for learning is difficult. Business books can be frustrating because they are often 250 pages long, while the key learnings can be summed up in 10 pages. There’s no reason why your course should make the same mistake.
Have you read the book Re-Work? (You should). You can learn a great deal from this book about creating kick-ass courses. 2 main things:
1) Keep your chapters (videos, text content etc) short! If you have hours and hours of video material, try to make each video 5 minutes long, max. Anyone can find 5 minutes to watch a video – and people will feel that they’re making progress. Nothing creates more motivation than making progress.
People want instant! They don’t like hard work. It’s a known fact that most people don’t complete the online courses and books they buy because they’re simply too long.
2) Don’t mull over it, go straight to the point. You want to make a point and teach something. Don’t go into in-depth background stories and all that – just focus on the key learning right away. Your customers will appreciate that.
Also – people can remember maximum 3 points from a presentation, so don’t try to teach more than that. If you have more important points to make, break them into several chapters/videos.
Show me and I may remember
Showing something is way more effective than just talking about something. That’s why using video is way better than just plain text: you can show stuff. (Ideally you use a combination of both)
If you’re a sales trainer, you can show your emotions, facial expressions and even enact sales meetings and scenarios. If you’re teaching people how to use a particular software or an online tool, you absolutely need to use screencasts (recordings of your computer screen). They’re so easy to create with Camtasia Studio or Screenflow (for Mac).
For beginners or advanced level?
Often I am asked if the course materials should be aimed at someone who is a total beginner or someone who already knows something. The answer is: it depends on your target group. If you’re not sure, create 2 courses: beginner level and advanced level. This way you can make sure that your course materials are not too hard or too obvious + you can upsell the higher level courses to people who bought your entry level stuff.
The beginner market is always the largest in terms of number of potential customers and there’s only a handful of people who are the top experts. This means that it is a good idea to price your entry level products lower and advanced level courses can be much more expensive.
Put some personality in it
Plain dry text puts people off – this is your chance to convey your personality and make the content not only useful, but entertaining. Portraying a strong personality is also a great way to stand out from the competition (think Tom Peters or Gary Vaynerchuk).
People like to feel that they know you a little bit, and developing that kind of a relationship helps your sales figures. After all, the money is in the repeat purchases and you want them to buy your next products, too. All the top information marketers constantly release new products. Your current product is your best sales tool.
Seek external input
You know your stuff and you have good ideas, but a fresh pair of eyes is always good to have. Even the best writers have editors and other people who give feedback on the content and structure.
Before you launch your product it’s a good idea to show your course to A) other experts in your field and B) people in your target group. These people can give you feedback on things like
- is the structure of your product clear and logical?
- which content needs more in-depth explanation?
- what parts are unclear?
- what kinds of concerns do they have as a user about putting the know-how into action?
- which content could be added to the course?
This feedback helps you add what you missed and generally improve your product (or get validation that everything rocks!).
Do a pre-launch for the first X amount of customers
Once you’ve got the feedback and you’ve further improved your product, it might be a good idea to do a pre-launch for your product.
What this means is that you sell access to your online course only for the select few (first 10, 20 or 50) for a reduced price – and everyone who joins has to give you feedback. You communicate in advance that you will improve your product based on their input.
More sales, better product
This increases your sales by creating scarcity (limiting the amount of people who get the low price), and helps you get testimonials right from the start and you get valuable feedback directly from your customers.
If it turns out your course is missing some important stuff, they’ll forgive you since you prepared them in advance and charged them a lower price. Now you can make your course better and do another launch for the general public.
Expand the product range
You will want the work you do in your business to serve you in as many ways as possible. The best way to do this is to really focus on one niche (where your initial product is in) and then develop a whole range of products for that niche.
It’s so much easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one.
When you work on that one niche, you will end up developing a database of buyers and people generally interested in your niche. Now when releasing new products for the same niche, every product becomes more successful because of your relationships. Gaining the trust of somebody is very hard, but once you do, you can use it.
When you release your next product, you don’t have to start from scratch anymore -you already have a list of clients and affiliates you are working with.
The clients who were happy with your first product are more likely to buy the second one. At the same time, if you get new customers for your second product and they like it, they might want to buy your first product too. And so on and so forth.
Customize the content for specific customer segments
You can also customize your original product to fit a more narrow niche. Let’s say you have a fitness product. Now you can take your general fitness program and turn that into a customized product for pregnant women, or a fitness program for the elderly. Just brainstorm about the different types of users of your product.
Another approach is breaking your complete course into several smaller products focusing on just one single aspect (getting rid of belly flab, getting beautiful thighs etc). You can sell the smaller course as a cheap product to lure customers and when somebody buys it, you offer the complete course as an upsell.
Create a separate website on a different domain for each of those products and customize the product offering and your sales pitch accordingly. Now a single product that you created could become 10 different products. That is some serious leverage.
Hope this was useful
Do you have anything to add? Any great tips for creating awesome online courses? Share it in the comments.
Image: monday’s child
This is absolutely EPIC advice. I can’t believe that there are no comments! Great stuff I will definitely be bookmarking this.
Thanks Jennifer!