As course creators, it can be easy for us to assume that our students “know” the basic things about the subject we are teaching, but often the basics are where the seeds of interest for our student’s learning and search to find our courses starts.
Nurturing and educating our students starts long before they enroll in our course. It really starts with the initial searches potential students make, and this is where Educational Marketing can really assist us in gaining new students for our courses.
So what is educational marketing? This form of marketing is all about educating potential students on our course topics, and expertise and creating a path that then guides their journey into our courses.
In essence, it gives us a pathway to connecting with our students before they enroll. Let’s dive straight into it!
Skip ahead:
- What is Educational Marketing?
- Why use Education Marketing?
- The Keys to Successful Education Marketing
- Educational Marketing Tools
- Things to Remember
What is Educational Marketing?
In this digital and tech-savvy world, customers have more “choose me!” coming at them than ever before. Educational marketing is an amazing way to stand out from the competition. As course creators, we already love teaching, so educational marketing falls right into our strengths.
Educational marketing fills the gap between students searching for a course, and enrolling in a course, feeding breadcrumbs of optimized content, and nurturing the student to purchase our courses.
This form of marketing places you as an expert in your field, giving your potential students the opportunity to know more about the topic you teach. It allows them to create a better relationship with you, and really focuses on the ‘know, like, trust factor. And most importantly they get to see how you teach, which is what we are selling them in our courses, our “teaching style”
Like anything in marketing, Education Marketing is like a tree. It starts with a seed.
When we educate our market, we grow our audience. By answering their questions, we can create optimized content our audience needs that become our lead magnets. Webinars, eBooks, and free course snippets are often used as a lead magnet to answer questions about your topic in educational marketing and start the transaction with an exchange of knowledge for an email address.
Why use Education Marketing?
First and foremost, we are educators so education marketing is a natural step. With education as our superpower, this is a form of marketing where we can really dominate. We love what we teach and that passion comes across in education marketing and is contagious.
96% of visitors who come to your website aren’t ready to buy. – (Active Marketing)
It is easy to think that everyone who “needs” our course is ready to enroll, but in reality, most students are checking out our course and comparing it to other courses available.
So when we market our courses it is really important to look at our marketing content to see if it shows how we teach, what we teach, and whether potential students are like to connect with us, and our course.
By using educational marketing we can show our teaching style, answer questions they may have before purchase, and show that we know our stuff so they can trust us to teach them.
Education Marketing Grows your Audience
By educating your market, and answering questions they have about the topic, you establish a reputation for being knowledgeable in your field.
Potential students are more likely to follow you, subscribe to your channels, and opt-in to your lead magnets. You can connect with potential students, build trust and nurture the relationship through to beyond purchase.
Education Marketing Builds Trust and Loyalty
When your students learn something from you, they get a win.
Their trust increases with each win, and that trust creates loyalty to continue learning from you and eventually purchasing your products and services.
Education Marketing Builds Authority
You are seen as the expert in your field and get a reputation of being known as the go-to person teaching the topic.
By sharing useful content, you can position yourself as the leader in the industry, provide real value and build a loyal community.
Education Marketing Continues the Relationship
Once you have the students, continuing to educate them is key to ensuring they remain engaged with your brand.
That means nurturing through the course journey using nurture sequences and offering wins within your courses to take the next course.
The Keys to Successful Education Marketing
There are plenty of ways to use education marketing to market your course, but there are a few key areas that you need to address to ensure that you’re successful.
Address the Needs of Your Student
Your students have come looking for a course because they have a need. What is that need? What questions are they asking? What are their pain points? Tools like AnswerThePublic are a great way to find out what people are searching for around your course subject.
Create Valuable Lead Generation Content
Giving potential students valuable information in exchange for their email is where education makes a difference. You can build an email list by giving away a free download like an ebook or offering a free webinar. When you offer something useful, potential students are more than likely to give you their email addresses.
Give Them a Win
What can potential students get from the free ebook or webinar? What can they learn from us that they haven’t already? Engage with your students and give them access to more information. Let them know that you’re right there with them in the learning journey.
Set Time to Follow Up
What happens to the lead after getting the free ebook or after attending the free webinar? Make sure that they get a follow-up email so that you can nurture a call to action that will eventually lead to you making an offer for your products and services.
Wondering how to create a good educational marketing campaign? In our Education Marketing Toolkit we share the education marketing tips and the tools that we use and recommend to tap into the power of education marketing to lead potential students to your courses.
Educational Marketing Tools
You already have access to the base information for some great educational marketing tools.
Using what you have in your course, and your knowledge of the subject, you can create tools such as:
- Blog posts
- Live and evergreen webinars
- Cheatsheets and ebooks
- Guest writing, and appearing in other people’s audiences
- Social media platforms where you can share valuable content
Knowing the types of tools your potential students respond better to will allow you to tailor your marketing and offers.
Things to Remember
Education Marketing is Ongoing
Education marketing doesn’t stop; it is an ongoing part of the student cycle. Students will be seeking the information at all stages of the cycle almost every day.
Automate by Using Evergreen Strategies
Evergreen marketing like eBooks and blogs, along with social media automation platforms and tools are great ways to nurture your leads without needing to spend hours every day doing so. Evergreen marketing works well with information that doesn’t expire. It can be updated as needed, but the essence of the information stays the same.
Use Nurture Sequences
Once your potential student trusts you with their email or time, value and nurture that. Providing a valuable nurture sequence builds on the trust you have developed with the student and shows you care about their education.
Education marketing can be a great way to market your course. By utilizing a few select tools, you can grow your audience and gain a reputation for being someone who knows their stuff.
We have a full educational marketing toolkit which is free to download on the Course Creators Circle website.
