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The Latest CourseStorm Articles You Don’t Want to Miss
As we move into the new year, we’re very excited to look ahead and get a jump on the new projects we have lined up. But at this time it’s also important to look back and reflect on the things we’ve learned leading up to this point. At CourseStorm, we’re all about growth and we think the content we publish will help any program grow in a successful way.
That’s why we’ve gathered the latest CourseStorm articles you don’t want to miss from 2022. We think these topics are important to review as you move forward into the new year. We hope these refine your strategy for success, or if they’re new subjects for you, we hope you learn important aspects to consider when running your program. Enjoy!
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7 Creative Marketing Ideas to Promote Your Courses
The Super Bowl isn’t just a night to determine the National Football League champion. It’s also known for smart and creative ad campaigns. Sure, those companies have multi-million dollar budgets to help them come up with creative marketing ideas. But, you don’t need to spend a fortune to do some creative marketing of your own.
The adult learning market is projected to grow 12% by 2028. With a little innovation, that increased demand could turn into more interest in your offerings and more students in your classes.
Informal ed may not have a Super Bowl-esque event that brings competitors head-to-head in the ultimate marketing challenge. But social media, print media, and in-person events offer opportunities to show off your program. Here are 7 inventive and low-cost creative marketing ideas that will help promote your courses online and off.
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How to Find The Best Marketing Channels For Your Program
Today’s digital world offers plenty of options when it comes to choosing the best marketing channels to promote your program. You could write emails, compose a blog post, post flyers around town, draft a Tweet, take out ads in your local paper, choreograph a dance for TikTok, curate a Pinterest board, design a LinkedIn ad, record a video for YouTube, go live on Facebook…
Even if you had unlimited time, energy, and money, creating content for all those marketing channels might not be a good idea. Why? Because every marketing channel is different. Some may be more or less helpful in promoting your classes. Let’s look at how to experiment and find the best marketing channels for your classes.
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How to Build A Strong Course Marketing Team From Scratch
If you’ve been handling course marketing on your own for a while, you may wonder if it’s time to bring in some experts. Building a course marketing team, or even just hiring a marketing professional, can help you save time and get better results.
Not that you aren’t doing a great job so far, it’s just that marketers are specialists. They’re pros at understanding your students, choosing and using marketing tools, and helping programs navigate the wide variety of digital platforms that can help market your courses.
We’ll help you understand the many different marketing specialties and uncover what you need to know to get the best marketing support.
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How the Principle of Social Proof Can Help Sell Classes
Imagine you need to buy a new washing machine. It’s been a while since you purchased one and you don’t have any strong preferences for which brand to choose. How do you narrow down your options? Most people will either get recommendations from friends and family, or go online and start reading reviews. Both approaches use the principle of social proof: looking at what other people are doing to decide on a course of action.
The principle of social proof can be a tremendous marketing asset because humans are social creatures. We tend to be influenced by the opinions and actions of those around us, both consciously and subconsciously. Your students are no exception. Let’s take a closer look at how you can use the principle of social proof to recruit students and sell classes.
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6 Student Appreciation Ideas To Show Students You Care
Your program couldn’t survive without its students. In fact, without students, there’s no reason for your program to exist at all. Their choice to register for classes literally keeps the lights on. With so many cheesy, difficult and expensive student appreciation ideas floating around the internet, what can you do to show students that you value their support?
You’re already off to a good start by offering quality classes that students need and want. But, if you want to do a little extra you don’t have to break the budget. The key to an effective appreciation campaign is to show students you care about them as individuals. So your efforts don’t have to be expensive or showy. Small, personalized acts can go a long way toward building student loyalty and helping to retain students. Here are six student appreciation ideas to show your students how much you value them.
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How to Reduce Class Cancelation Rates To Keep Students Happy
You want to deliver on the promises you’ve made to students. That means offering quality classes and minimizing cancelations. Although weather or illness will sometimes result in last minute schedule changes, you try to keep your class cancelation rate as low as possible. No one likes to call off a class due to a lack of registrations.
Yet, sometimes it really is better to cut your losses and not hold a class so you can preserve resources and energy for something else. Your goal shouldn’t be to eradicate cancelations entirely. Focus instead on keeping your class cancelation rate at or below average. We’ll show you how.
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How to Time Your Holiday Marketing Strategy
The holidays can be hectic, especially if you have something to market. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a prime time to promote classes as gifts or get students lined up for the new year. But what about the holidays themselves?
As you plan your holiday marketing strategy, you may tend to avoid scheduling messages to go out on the days just before Thanksgiving or in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The thinking goes that people are focused on holiday celebrations and spending time with family. They probably won’t want to engage with marketing messages, right? But there’s one big problem with that logic — it doesn’t reflect how people actually behave.
We’ll show you how to plan a holiday marketing strategy that makes the most of people’s shopping and social media habits around the holidays.
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How to Raise Prices Without Losing Students
Costs are rising everywhere. That means buying materials for your classes, paying instructors, and just keeping the lights on is more expensive than it used to be. Unless you have an endowment or other major funding source, and in many cases even if you do, it might be time to increase class fees to help bridge the gap.
Knowing you need to raise your prices is one thing. Actually making the change is another. You might be worried about upsetting students, or fear that raising your prices will make classes less accessible.
Those are reasonable concerns. But, in the long run, raising prices really can be in everyone’s best interest. We’ll show you why and how to raise your prices while keeping students happy.
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Smart Strategies to Keep Classes Affordable for Students
Prices may be rising everywhere, but your mission hasn’t changed. You still want to provide personal enrichment and quality education opportunities to people in your community and beyond. That means you need to offer affordable classes while supporting the financial stability and long-term success of your program.
Achieving that balance might not be as difficult as you think. To start, expand your thinking beyond the list price of the course. We’ll share some tools and strategies you can use to keep classes affordable for the greatest number of students even if you do need to raise prices.
