Online Courses

The Wow factor for online courses

Posted byIan Brodie on April 29th, 2022.

I've been doing a little audit of courses I've bought over the years to try to identify what persuaded me to buy them.

And that forensic-type audit is really necessary. In many cases my recollection of how I'd come to buy something was very different to what the email trail showed had actually happened.

What it revealed was three common factors behind almost every course purchase I'd made. I suspect these three factors will be common to your customers too.

Firstly, and obviously, the course was in an area that was important to me.

Not necessarily something I was actively looking to fix at the time. In fact in most cases not.

But somewhere where, when the opportunity came up, I looked at it and immediately thought “yes, that would be really helpful”.

Secondly and also obviously, the course was being offered by someone who'd built up enough trust with me that I was willing to risk my time and money on them.

At minimum, I trusted their content enough that I was paying enough attention to their emails to notice the course being offered.

More usually they'd reached a position with me where when I saw their course being offered I thought “yeah, I think they know what they're talking about and I feel good enough about them to trust them with my money and my time to go through this course”.

But here's the thing. There are lots of people who offer courses in areas that are important to me and who I trust enough to buy from – but I don't.

They're necessary conditions, but they're not enough.

What makes the difference for me, what gets me to buy from one person but not from another, is a “sit up and take notice offer”.

A wow offer.

Typically that means the course is offering something I've not seen before. A new way of thinking. A new method or technique. Something that almost literally takes my breath away with excitement when I first see it.

And usually there's some kind of associated urgency too. It's the pilot of a course, it's on special offer, it's a once-every-quarter thing.

For example, over a decade ago I stumbled across the initial release of a course that taught you how to write story-based email sequences based on techniques they use for TV series.

Many of the things I learnt are commonplace now, but back then my instant reaction was “wooah – I've not seen anything like this before – this could really work – I have to have it”.

More recently I bought a course on running mini-workshops to reach lots of people at low cost, rather than the “high ticket” stuff that's so prevalent these days. Again, a different approach I'd not seen before.

When you buy a course that you've been offered (rather than one that you've searched for based on a specific and immediate need) you really need that wow factor. That rush of excitement that comes from seeing the possibilities of something new.

Does your course pass that test?

If you emailed out an offer to 100 people right now, how many would say “wooah – I've got to get that”?

Getting that wow factor into your offer is hard. Of course it is.

But if you can get it, it makes a massive difference.

I hope to explore some different ways you can get that wow factor into your courses in the next few emails.

Online Courses

The surprising role of trust in selling online courses

Posted byIan Brodie on April 27th, 2022.

Us marketing people tend to bandy about platitudes like “people need to trust you before they buy from you” without really digging into what they actually mean.

Of course people need to trust you before buying from you. Duh.

But what kind of trust? Trust is complex and multi-faceted.

I trust my Mum to love me and think in my best interests. But I wouldn't trust her to fix my computer if it was broken.

When it comes to buying online courses there are a few different levels of trust involved. One of them you might not normally think of.

Obviously, people need to trust you're not going to take their money and rip them off. That goes without saying and I would expect everyone reading this has the sort of business that's already established that kind of trust.

But with online courses, it needs to go deeper.

Courses are complex. It's really difficult to tell from a course description if the course is quite right for you. Especially if the marketing focuses only on the benefits you'll get from it and not the nitty gritty details of the course.

Is it at the right level or is it too advanced or not advanced enough? Does it cover tactics you have the skill or desire to learn? Will it work for your particular type of business?

Because of that uncertainty, I'd want to know if the people providing the course “played nice” with buyers.

In other words, if you bought the course and discovered it wasn't a good fit would it be easy to get your money back? Or would you have to go through all sorts of “did you complete all the exercises, can you prove you actually implemented what we taught” kind of nonsense.

For many courses I'd also want to know that the seller would go the extra mile to make sure I succeeded with the course.

Maybe it's just me, but I find that when I take a course my situation often doesn't quite fit with the examples being taught and I need to ask questions to apply the knowledge to me specifically.

Will my questions go unanswered? Will I end up getting feedback from someone employed by the course creator who can parrot back the party line but isn't expert enough to tweak the advice for unusual situations.

Or will the expert themselves give me the best of their thinking to help?

These are all questions of trust.

They're all things that can't really be quantified or controlled by contract or service level or known for certain in advance.

They're about whether you trust the course provider will be looking out for you. When the need arises, will they go the extra mile to help?

Of course, we don't analyse that stuff rationally before taking a decision to buy. We just get a good feeling about them and it makes it easy to buy.

Or we don't get a good feeling and we hesitate.

What gives us those good or bad feelings?

It's all the interactions we've had with that person before. Either in real life or more likely with online courses, from our online interactions.

Do they come across as a nice person in their emails? If we message them, do they take the time to answer and try to help us?

The impression you give about what sort of person you are is often as important as the “value” you give in your emails.

And that's where the final, more surprising role of trust comes in.

Because you only get to make a good impression on someone if they're actually paying attention to you. If they actually open and read your emails (or your social posts or whatever way you communicate with them).

That final level of trust is “do they trust you to always send them useful, interesting communications?”

If so, you get the chance to build the other levels of trust you need.

If not, it's game over. 

If your messages appear in their inbox but they don't trust they'll get something useful from them, they'll stay unopened. And you'll never build that deeper trust needed for them to be ready to buy.

Online Courses

Why do you really buy courses?

Posted byIan Brodie on April 22nd, 2022.

I've found there's often a big difference between why people think they buy courses and why they *really* buy.

And also in how they buy them.

It's really helpful to understand the difference – otherwise you can truly mess up your marketing.

Unfortunately, if you ask people how and why they buy, they usually tell you what they think happens rather than what actually happens.

So often a better source is to be more forensic about it. Look at the last few course purchases you or they actually made and track what happened.

You'll find there's often a big difference between your real experience for that specific course and what you imagine happens when you think more generically.

In my case for example, if you asked me how and why I buy courses I'd say that when I have a need for a course I'll go out and search for the best course available on that topic. I'll do pretty thorough research and weigh up which one I think will get me the best results, will be a good fit for me personally, and is from people who seem trustworthy.

Is that what actually happens in practice?

Yes. Maybe 5% of the time.

But when I look back at the courses I've actually bought in the last few years the vast majority of them didn't happen that way.

What happened far more often is that I got notified of a new course becoming available by someone I follow.

Usually that was because I subscribe to their emails. Occasionally it was through going to their website and very rarely because of something they posted on social media.

Now if I'm subscribed to their emails or regularly visit their website it implies I'm already interested in their area of expertise and already trust them.

And it means I rarely do a thorough search for alternatives.

Mostly I'll just check out the details of the course to see what I'd be getting, think about whether it would be useful for me, whether it's in line with what I'm aiming to focus on in the next few months, and whether I'll have the capacity to do the course.

This idea that I do a thorough search triggered by a need is a bit of a fantasy really.

I probably think I do it that way because when I do I'm actively concentrating on the process.

When I normally buy – the more reactive way – I'm not concentrating on the process so deeply or for a very long time. So I don't remember it so much.

Anyway, the important point here is that if my customers are anything like me (and my experience is they are), then they too will usually buy courses in that more reactive way.

It means that my marketing should be more focused on building a following of people interested in my area of expertise and who trust me – and then offering them something fairly unique on a regular basis.

Of course, if it turns out that your customers really buy through a more thorough search process then you need to gear up your marketing to be easily found in a search for a common need and to score well in a comparison against similar courses.

But my feeling is that for most of us, our best route is to build a following and make unique offers.

Online Courses

Less content = more momentum

Posted byIan Brodie on April 20th, 2022.

You may remember I interviewed Reuven Lerner a little while back about his Python and Data Science online courses.

You can watch that interview here if you haven't already.

Reuven mentioned in the interview that he does an email newsletter for corporate trainers so I signed up (in all honesty, more out of politeness than anything since I don't really do courses for corporates any more).

Well, it turns out that Reuven's newsletter is excellent. Very thoughtful and full of experience-based tips on marketing and running live courses for corporates. But also lots of stuff that's very applicable to online courses too.

In this week's issue Reuven talked about how, over the years, he's learned to reduce the amount of content he teaches in his courses to get better results for his students.

Previously he was cramming them with material in order to make them as “valuable” as possible. But the effect was that his students didn't have the time to properly take on what he was teaching.

By reducing the amount of content he taught he was able to add more exercises and Q&A so that students learned what he was teaching much more deeply.

The end result was that they learned more and gave better feedback on his courses. While he had to prepare less material for each course (but think about it more deeply to structure it right for learning).

Reuven listed a number of benefits of the “less content” approach in his newsletter but I'm going to add one here that particularly applies to online courses.

Less content = more momentum.

One of the biggest problems I see with people trying to create online courses is getting bogged down creating the content.

So they either end up never releasing their course, or they finally finish it but are so worn out they have no energy to market it properly.

After that experience they never attempt to create another one. And, of course, it's rarely your first course that makes you the real money. It's your second or third or fourth.

But if instead you really whittle down the content for your course to what's absolutely necessary you can get it created quickly, get it on the market, plug any gaps, then move on to the next one.

It becomes an invigorating virtuous circle rather than a cycle of despair :)

And it actually helps your students learn faster and better.

Win win.

Anyhoo – if you do training for corporates (or want to get some useful tips you can apply to online courses too) I thoroughly recommend signing up for Reuven's newsletter.

Online Courses

The one thing you must do with a micro course to make it sell

Posted byIan Brodie on April 8th, 2022.

In my last post on courses I suggested that if you were a bit stuck creating your first (or next) online course, to try building a “micro course”.

A micro course is a short 10-30 minute course that's focused on one specific customer problem or goal.

It's much easier to get going to produce a very short course like this. You can do it in one sitting.

But if you want to sell that course (and I suggest you do as it's the only way to properly test the market) then you must do one key thing…

And that's to make sure your micro course is different to what people can get for free on Youtube or other sources.

A larger course is almost inevitably different to the free tutorials you might find on Youtube. But with a short course with very limited scope, there's a risk there's already a free tutorial or two out there.

You can make sure your micro course is different and something people will be willing to buy in a number of different ways:

Firstly, you can tweak the topic to really focus on pain points and frustrations.

Instead of a tutorial on website migration, make one that's focused on hassle free, zero downtime migration without needing tech skills.

By the way, don't make a micro course where the emphasis is on doing something for free. That'll naturally attract people who want to do things for free nand won't be willing to pay for your course!

Secondly you can teach the course in a unique way that helps them get better, faster results.

This could be by teaching your own unique methodology or giving them tools and templates they can use. Stuff they can't find anywhere else and that will make life simpler for them or get them better results.

Remember: busy businesspeople usually aren't paying for the knowledge you share. They're paying for the results they can get from it and they value getting those results faster and easier.

Thirdly you can add features to your course that they can't get with free courses.

A great example of this is to include a Zoom Q&A session where they can get all their questions answered. Or feedback on their work by email.

Adding features like this to a low cost micro course isn't really sustainable if you were going to be running it on an ongoing basis. But as a one-off to get your momentum going with courses it's well worth doing. You don't have to prepare anything in advance – just offer it as part of the course and wait for the questions to come in.

So for your micro course idea, take a look at what's available already for free and think:

How can I change the topic so it's more focused directly on the pain and frustration of my clients?
How can I teach it in a different way that's faster, better, simpler to understand, easier to get results from etc?
How can I add features that differentiate this from a free tutorial and make it worth paying for for my audience.
Or, of course, do two or three of them.

These simple changes can allow you to build a course that's easy to create and will sell well.

Online Courses

Struggling to build your first course? Try this…

Posted byIan Brodie on April 6th, 2022.

Your first course won't make you millions.

Not unless you're very, very lucky or you already have a big audience.

But what it will do is get the ball rolling. Build momentum. Prove to you that you can do it.

With that first course in the bag your second becomes exponentially easier to create. As does your third, fourth or however many you want to make.

But getting that first course out the door is often hard.

So here's a suggestion to make it much, much easier: create a micro-course.

A micro-course is simply a very short course focused on one specific problem. Ideally you'll be able to teach it in something like 10-15 minutes. Maybe 30 tops.

Often the thing you teach is a small but valuable part of a wider skillset. For example, in every course or workshop I've done on email marketing I've taught a module on email subject lines. That module could be a micro course in its own right.

The advantage of micro courses is twofold.

Firstly, because they're small they're easy to create. I reckon I could create a decent micro course on email subject lines in a couple of hours.

I'd gather some of my existing material and models. Do a quick search for new examples of good subject lines. Outline what I wanted to teach. Rattle off a few slides. Record a video.

I could have it out “on the market” the next day and be getting feedback.

Secondly, they're actually good for learners.

We might feel we're giving more value by cramming more into a course but usually our customers want to learn the minimum possible to achieve the outcome they're looking for.

With a micro course we're focusing on solving a small but valuable problem. Out customers should be able to start work on solving that problem after taking our training in just 15 minutes or so.

That means they're getting results faster and not wasting any time.

Now of course it's difficult to charge a huge fee for a micro course so you're not going to get rich creating one. But as we already said, you never get rich from your first course anyway.

So why not make it easy on yourself and make that “first course that isn't going to make you rich” quick and easy to create.

Get some momentum going. Get some early adopters who'll give you feedback, get great results and give you great testimonials.

And prove to yourself it's not as hard as it looks to make a course.

Online Courses

The final benefit of getting your course out fast

Posted byIan Brodie on March 30th, 2022.

This is going to be my last post extolling the virtues of live pilots and other ways of getting your course out onto the market fast.

But it's an important one.

There's a great story in David Bayles and Ted Orland's book “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” that my friend Lee told me about.

The story is about a ceramics teacher (although on investigation it turns out that the true origin is a photography class but the authors didn't want the story to be about a media they were known for).

Anyway, the story goes that the ceramics/photography teacher used to split his class into two groups. He told the first group their work would be graded only on quality. He told the second group their work would be graded only on quantity (ie on how many items they produced not how good they were).

At the end of the course when the works were graded it turned out that ALL the highest quality works had been produced by the group who'd been told they'd be graded on quantity.

What had happened was the “quantity” group had produced a high volume of material and learned from their mistakes each time and got better fast.

The “quality” group had spent so much time trying to make high-quality items (despite not really having much skill initially) they hadn't produced much at all and had less to learn from.

Quantity leads to quality.

A similar thing happens with your online courses. In this case, though, speed leads to quality.

When you're creating your course you should – of course – try hard to come up with a great topic and find the right audience. And you should talk to them to figure out what they want from the course and try to build a course that meets those needs.

But in the real world, your customers never know exactly what they want, you can't possibly interpret what they say perfectly, and you can never build the exact right course that matches what you think their needs are.

If you go through the process quickly in a few weeks you can probably build a course that's 70% or 80% right. If you agonise and try to get it perfect and take 6 months, you might get it 90% right.

The problem for the “agoniser” is that in those 6 months the person who created their course quickly can have gone through half a dozen revisions and updates to the course and got it to 95% or more based on actual customer feedback.

You can never get a course right without feedback. So as long as your initial version is decent and helps your customers get results, your best bet by far is to get to that point of feedback fast and iterate.

And not only that, by then the person who launched with a live pilot or found some other way of getting to market fast will also have onboarded way more customers and been paid a lot more than the “agoniser” who's still on their initial round.

It just takes a bit of courage (and humility) to accept that the first version of your course can never be perfect – and so to just get on with and get it done fast.