With everything that’s been happening over the past couple of years, online courses have become more popular than ever. With the global e-learning market at about 101 billion US dollars in 2019 and its forecasted exponential growth, it is expected to reach over 370 billion dollars in 2026.

However, even though there’s a significant increase in both supply and demand for this type of content, not everyone is up to date on where or how to promote it successfully.

Luckily, there’s really no need to allow this type of confusion to affect your efforts, as promoting your e-learning business has never been easier than it is now.

That being said, here are just some of the ways you can easily promote your courses and reach a wide audience of interested followers.

Rely on your Blog

When you decide to start an e-learning business, your blog posts can be the perfect place for its promotion. 

By publishing fresh content regularly, you can easily attract an interested crowd of followers who will be more than happy to further explore your offer. 

Naturally, you need to ensure that the topics you choose to cover in your blog posts match the topics of the courses you’re offering so that the connection between the two is as natural as possible. 

You can include links to your courses at the top of your website or at the end of each post. You can also link them directly in the body of your post on the relevant keyword. This will not only help you boost your exposure but will also positively affect your SEO efforts.

Use the Right Keywords

While on the topic of SEO, you need to make sure you do some research and find the right keywords for your e-learning business. 

For instance, if your online courses are related to art, you can use keywords such as “art theory,” “online art classes,” “art courses online,” and such to link back to your courses. Such a way, if you link and track the links with Backlink Management Tools, you will see that your online course gains popularity. 

Researching and finding the right keywords to rank for is an extremely important part of your digital strategy and should be approached with great care for the best results. 

So, make sure that the keywords you rank for are organic and that they match both your content and user intent. 

Or, to put it simply, look for keywords that best match what a potential searcher would type in the search engine when looking for services similar to the ones you offer.

Add a Course Page to your Main Website

Although this may sound a bit too obvious, many online lecturers actually forget to include a course page on their main website. Needless to say, this is a huge mistake, as the easiest way to promote your courses is precisely through your main website. But again, with a lot of new and exciting e-learning trends, it is easy to forget the basics.

The best place to include your course page on your website is on the main menu so that visitors can easily locate it. In case they need to go to certain lengths to be able to access your course page, chances are that they will simply bounce. 

In other words, the easier you make it for your visitors to find your offer, the more inclined they will be to browse it further. As a bonus tip: the Discovery website in your Edly product comes with a built-in course catalog and the ability to feature courses on the home page of your website. 

Add a Link to your Course to your Email Signature

Another obvious tip, yet also another one that’s commonly overlooked, is to add a link to your course page to your email signature. 

Chances are that you – like many others – send tons of emails on a daily basis. Obviously, that poses the perfect opportunity to include a link to your course page in your emails, as chances are that at least some of your contacts will be interested in exploring it further. Also, consider uniting email to SMS to increase the efficiency of your efforts.

Of course, this is only true in case they have the option to learn about your offer in the first place. However, make sure you don’t over-explain your offer here. Also, think about doing DMARC configuring to ensure that your email reaches the potential student’s inboxes.

Instead, add a simple short sentence about your courses and include a link. Then, let your contacts explore on their own without feeling pressured to do so.

Identify the Right Social Media Channels

Social media networks are the bread and butter of online marketing. So, naturally, you should most certainly use them in your marketing efforts. 

Not only do social media networks offer the perfect opportunity to market your e-learning business, but they also provide the perfect chance to connect with your audience. 

By being present on social media, you’ll be able to market your business through storytelling – one of the most popular methods among consumers. 

You can also easily build a relationship with your followers that will offer them additional value. By being able to reach out and interact with you, they will be more likely to actually want to listen to what you have to say. 

But before you start building your social media presence, make sure you identify the platforms that are the perfect match for both your business and your audience.

Add Testimonials to your Course Sales Page

As in any other type of business promotion, social proof will play a huge role here as well. And while social media offers a great platform for building social proof, your course sales page is the perfect place to show it off. 

By including customer (student) testimonials on your course sales page, you can easily let them speak for your business. 

By sharing others’ perceptions about your business, you can easily attract a wider audience than simply singing praises to it by yourself. 

Simply put, people trust other people more than they trust businesses of any kind. So, if you have satisfied customers, let them speak for you! If not, offer a few people a chance to try out your courses for free and ask them for nothing more than their honest feedback in return.  If you’re using a WordPress website to promote your courses, you may already have a testimonials widget built into your platform.  All you need to do is plug in the testimonials and you’re all set!

This brings us to our final point, which is to…

Offer Freebies

The fact of the matter is that there’s not a single person in the world that doesn’t like free things. This will not only be a great way to promote your offer, but it will also enable you to attract a wider audience and motivate your learners.

For instance, if you have a 3-class course, offer the first class for free. That way, you can easily get the audience interested in what you have to offer them without requiring them to spend any money upfront. 

Chances are that if your classes are interesting and you actually have something of real value to offer to your audience, most of them will be interested to hear what else you have to say.

Final Thoughts

With millions upon millions of potential learners out there, e-learning businesses can easily grow and thrive in today’s market. The most important thing to learn, however, is how to reach them and present them with your offer. 

Hopefully, these tips will inspire you to explore different ways of online promotion that will help you easily reach out to and connect with your future audience.

About Edly

If you are in need of a learner-focused, customized e-learning platform built for you and your users, Edly is just what you are looking for. Through its comprehensive e-learning ecosystem, Edly helps you create your own, personalized e-learning experience. Request a free demo today and let the years of experience in high-value online learning solutions of Edly’s experts do great things for you and your learners. 

About the Author

Rick Seidl is a digital marketing specialist with a bachelor’s degree in Digital Media and Communications, based in Portland, Oregon. He carries a burning passion for digital marketing, social media, small business development, and establishing its presence in a digital world, and is currently quenching his thirst through writing about digital marketing and business strategies for Find Digital Agency.