The 3 Types of Online Courses You Need to Grow Your Business

The Online Course Market 

One of the largest growing markets has been that of online learning. According to Stratistics MRC:

The internet has opened up a whole new way to learn, with knowledge right at our fingertips no matter where we’re sitting or what device we’re using. Whether it’s a full degree program or a short set of tutorials on a specific skill, people are buying online courses.

And with the availability of low-cost and free platforms (such as Teachable) for delivering engaging programs, any business owner or individual can create and sell their own course. You don’t need to be a computer or tech whiz to set it up.

The best part about online courses is their versatility. You can use them in several different ways to grow your business, and you already have knowledge you can put into a course. You just have to decide how you want to leverage courses to achieve the most growth. Then pick a relevant topic that will entice your audience to sign up.

The rest is all about building the course itself, which you can do with our ready-to-teach content, and then telling people about it.

So let’s get started with that first, critical step – deciding where you’ll leverage online courses in your business.

Overview of the 3 Types of Online Courses for Growing Your Business:

Create These 3 Online Courses to Grow Your Business

Many of the articles and programs you’ll see being promoted have to do with selling online courses to grow your income. And that’s definitely one powerful growth hack. However, there are 3 main places in your business where courses will have a dramatic impact.

At the most basic level, your business consists of:

1: Lead Generation – Finding customers

2: Sales and Revenue – Selling something to those customers

3: Customer Retention – Selling more to those same customers

Focus on creating a course in each of these places and you’ll be well on your way to double and triple digit expansion.

Online Course Solution 1 – Lead Generation

As part of building a business, you’ll have identified a target market or “ideal customer” who you want to serve. Those people are always looking to solve a problem, reach a goal, develop a new skill, or tackle some challenge that affects their lives.

With a free online course, you can address their needs and achieve three benefits at the same time:

1. Attract potential customers to your business… where you can build a relationship that leads to sales
2. Demonstrate the value you can provide… which also leads to sales
3. Build a list of people specifically interested in that course topic… which increases conversions and makes selling easier

Start by creating a mini-course that’s related to one of your products or services. Make it something that people will see results from in a short space of time. And when you add those people to your email list, either tag them as interested in that topic or add them to a list dedicated to that topic.

Share the opt-in or registration link for your mini-course on your blog or website, in social media, in guest blog posts, with your current subscribers, or even in Facebook Ads (if your audience is there).

Now you have a list of people who are eager to learn more and who already recognize that you can help.

Online Course Solution 2 – Increase Revenue and Sales

Without something to sell, you have no revenue. And unless you have multiple offers to sell, you’ll always run the risk of seeing your income dry up.

That’s why you need to diversify your paid offers, and online courses make it easy to do.

Take the topic you addressed in your free mini-course and expand on it to go more in-depth.

1. Identify where people want to be when they’re done with the course
2. List the steps they need to follow to get there
3. Explain the details of how they can implement those steps
4. Use a variety of media (text, video, worksheets) to create your course
5. Create a sales page that explains the benefits of your course
6. Tell your list of interested leads that it’s ready to buy

You can learn more about how to create an online course in several other articles on our blog, starting HERE

The key to success and simplicity is to start with your free mini-course to build a list of interested leads. Then sell your course to those subscribers. It’s a natural step for them to buy and it doesn’t require heavy marketing, promotion, or advertising on your part.

Online Course Solution 3 – Customer Retention

Finding leads and converting them to customers may seem like the most important part of growing a business. But keeping them coming back and buying again and again can be your biggest growth success factor.

With online courses, you can:

1. Help your customers get results from their purchase… which leads to happy customers who give testimonials
2. Provide additional training that helps them take their success further… which leads to repeat purchases and loyal customers

In this case, your courses can be either free or paid, or both.

Start by asking your customers what challenges they’ve had with their previous purchase. Then create a free mini-course to address a specific part of one challenge.

Share that course only with customers, so that they know they’re getting something special that’s only for them. Gather feedback and interact with those customers to identify what your next paid course should be.

Then create your new online course using the same process as your first one. You already have a ready market of customers, waiting for you to go live.

Ready to grow your business with online courses?

Use our free Online Course Business Builder Worksheet to identify the 3 types of online courses you’ll use and how they fit into your current business.