One of the challenges in today’s times is a promotion for a marketing purpose. Therefore, promotions of educational courses have become very important especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. People are keen to explore several options in order to pursue online education. Many educational institutions and online platforms are taking initiatives to promote and project them as a brand. Promoting online courses have become important and also many innovative ideas need to be put in place so as to attract the audiences to enroll for the respective courses. Online courses ranging from engineering, cyber security, advanced computational modeling and digital branding and marketing have emerged rapidly. Not always paid ad campaigns could be run considering the budget constraints. However, considering the level of competition with the similar kind of courses being offered by the here are few steps in order to promote distance learning courses in 2021:
· Emphasize on Creating Niche Courses
Niche and long-tail always get preferential treatment in the internet universe. Some of the niche courses such as Human Capital Management or Energy Management are very niche courses, especially in India. This niche course will immediately boost you to the top of search results, help bring traffic to your website, and create awareness for other courses you offer.
· Consistency in Creating Content
Creating content consistently is the single most important investment that will keep bringing prospective students. Content should be devoid of any promotion or sales. People must be educated with the services offered by the SMEs for the courses they teach.
· Offering Complimentary Courses
Promotional offers are eye-catchers for the people. LinkedIn Learning has been instrumental in imparting complementary courses. Sales and increased business will eventually follow, but free courses shouldn’t be used as a “hook” to bring more students. Premium courses that gets paid gains traction and ultimately boost admissions.
· Testimonials Column
In order to find a better job, people pay for upgrading to online courses. When promoting your online courses, it’s powerful to have your alumni talk to the camera about their journey and how your course helped them land a well-paying job. Turning alumni into marketers helps in boosting the traction and confidence in people to opt for the respective courses offered.
· Promote Your Instructors
It is important that you have an “Our Team” page on your website for prospective students to see who are going to be their instructors and how qualified they are. Many global universities such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and others have promoted their team of expertise. Promoting the team on social media gives an added advantage on a global platform.
· Use of Social Media for Promotion
In today’s fast changing world, social media has changed the way of people’s thinking. It has deeply impacted people’s spending. Instagram creates a good outreach amongst people to gain traction for the respective courses. Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp are one of the top trending social media platforms.
· Spending on Google Ads
Although Google ads are one of the expensive parts of course’s promotional campaigns. However, it will be the most transactional and result-oriented campaign that will deliver quick results. Creating three different campaigns with three different bid strategies (Impression share, Conversion, and Maximize Clicks), spares similar budgets equally, and then pauses the ones that aren’t as effective as other campaigns.
· Creating Local Content Silos
The key to creating a local content silo is to make a homepage-like location page, optimize it around that location, create local content internally to link to it, acquire links from local websites, and acquire backlinks from industry-relevant pages. It works like a charm.
· Partner Up
Partnering up with the latest online learning management tools such as Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle has enhanced the quality of the eLearning content. LinkedIn Learning as a partner or global educational institutes could better explain to learners how much easier it can land a job if they pick your online course.
That’s why distance learning has gained a wide publicity today. With the advent of technologies, people are benefiting from this new form of learning.