How To Go From zero to 1000 Students enrolled in Online Courses with No Advertising budget

So you have it all planned out. It's been discovered that there's an unfinished space, you have made the lesson plan and you're excited and enthralled by it all. It's possible that you're finished with building the course. But a question looms: how do you spread your message to students who might be interested? How do you make it more visible to your intended audience? To which sites are you supposed to share your link?

There's a good thing for you: this is a resolved issue. Many authors before they created online courses to cover a variety of content. And I'll teach you the best practices that you need to build your course from 0 students up to 1000. All without spending anything on marketing.

First, however I'll dispel a common mistake instructors make when setting up to create their own course. And that mistake is that they pursue a build-first approach rather than an audience-first approach. The reason why the "build-first" approach is sub-optimal is due to the fact that you believe many things to be true. This exposes you to a lot of risks in your courses. Particularly, when it comes to what you should create and what your course structure should be.

  That said, here are the 4 key parts in this mini-tutorial for ensuring continuous, reliable traffic for your instruction:  

1. What to do to find out where the ideal audience hangs out
2. Learn to read your audience's mind
3. How do you build respect and Reputation with your audience
4. How do you share your course with a group of people who are ready to Purchase your Product

  How to Discover Where your Ideal Audience Hangs Out  

Let's imagine that you're a consultant client of mine and you want to market a class on Marketing Analytics.

First thing I'll state to you is that you'll have to pose the correct question -- you need to start by asking "who are you planning to serve" instead of "what you'd like to serve". For this Marketing Analytics case, you need to then make a choice: do you wish to target Marketing Managers, CMOs, Entrepreneurs or marketing newbies?

Say that you've chosen to concentrate on business owners.

If so your first step is to begin searching to find "where this audience hangs out". One of the best ways to accomplish this is by searching at "online lounges". Online lounges are places on the web where users discuss things related to the subject they're interested in. These can be forums, blogs, or mailing lists. My method for doing it is to follow the following steps:

1. Open up your web-based search engine (eg. Google, Bing, Yahoo!)
2. Make a search using any of the following combinations:

Forum - Profession + forum

• Profession + Topic mailing list

Professional - Topic + blog

• Profession and a forum for industry

- Profession + topic + link-sharing sites (Eg. Reddit, stumbleupon)

- Example: Entrepreneur + Marketing + forum

And just right there, I uncover 10+ forums that I could target.

There's more to come. When you've selected a forum, you must go deeper and create another search with your topic of choice. In this example, we search for discussions revolving around marketing within reddit.com/r/entrepreneur. What you want to look out for in this instance is any sign of trouble or pain in the initial post. From the initial query of only "marketing" on the subreddit. There is no luck.

How can we improve our quest to look for discomfort? Let's add "pain indicators" like "help" as well as "advice requested". Let's check out the outcomes. In just the very first page, there are a number of interesting threads.

If you've found particular threads with LOTS of complaints, then you know that you're in the right online club to spread the word to the future. If you dig deeper and conduct more investigation you'll discover that some forums will work to address specific issues, while some forums will not. This can help you narrow your marketing efforts on the areas where your desired users hang out. This is crucial for the success of your program.

From the above 15 minute exercise, we just got evidence that reddit.com/r/entrepreneur is a great place to promote our marketing course.

Check out different forums! My suggestion is that you need to identify at minimum 10 lounges online. Blogs work too (especially thanks to its highly active comment sections).

  How to Read the minds of your audience  

Now, you're faced with a many threads that clearly show signs of suffering. Let's highlight all of them and really understand who are people who are.

After you've gathered enough information, you'll start seeing trends in who your target audience is. When you recognize these patterns, you'll begin getting a good sense of what your audience feels and feels about marketing overall.

Based on the information above There are a few minor trends emerging (we'll require 10+ painful threads to really know) which suggest that business owners actually need three items: a high-efficiency digital marketing plan that requires little cash outlay, tips around cities-specific marketing and how one can position themselves to get high-value clients.

Earlier, in our hypothetical scenario, you had a desire to create a product based on Marketing Analytics. It turns out, however, that the idea might be too sophisticated (at at least for at least the Reddit Lounge online). The best option is to follow a course focused on low-budget, high-efficiency advertising, local marketing, and looking for and closing customers with high value.

The course I have planned for these pain samples will then start to look like:

1. How to Use Interest Targeting on Facebook to locate High-Quality Clients at a few dimes a Click
2. How do you build an Referral Machine by using these Pitch Scripts in Your Next Local Chamber of Commerce Event
3. How to Discover the Needs Only high-value clients have

Course Title: "How to Get High-Value clients using hyperlocal, Hyper-targeted and hyper local Marketing"

If you dropped that course within the Reddit market, I'm confident that will get momentum. See what evidence-based marketing gives us?

  How to build Trust and Reputation with your audience  

Beyond discovering pains, however it is important to make yourself an authority within these online salons.

It means offering bite-sized tips anytime you experience these problems. By "bite-sized," I refer to something that's from 1 to 10 words, but that is practical enough for the person to use.

In this way, I would answer the person who said "haven't found FB to be useful" as well as "need an effective plan" with this form:

"I realize that you will require an effective digital plan given the budget you have. It is a surprise, however to learn that you consider FB ads not to be useful. I use FB ads quite often in my business consulting, and this is how I suggest you do the right targeting for high-quality clicks for $0.40 or $0.80 per click.

1. ONLY make use of interest targeting. Set everything else to default.
2. If you are using interest targeting be sure you select at least 10+ interest and leave out interests with a significant reach. A large number of clicks for each interest can translate with a higher price per click. If I was targeting people who are interested in marketing, I would use interests by using gurus like 'Neil Patel', 'Derek Helfpern and 'Darren Rowse', etc. I would leave out 'Gary Vaynerchuk' because his reach is way too big!
3. Make sure that the TOTAL reach doesn't exceed 800,000. individuals.
4. Get your test started! Be sure that the test is set to $5 per day. NEVER use the lifetime budgeting option.
5. If your earnings exceed $1/click, then you must cut off interest with the greatest reach and add more 'niche' interests
6. If you are looking for ideas about "niche" topics, look up for the right tools, influencers and then check the idea"

If you offer advice in such low-level and actionable detail You will earn respect and authority within your field.

  How to Distribute Your Course with an audience that's Ready to Buy your product  

"Isn't it a violation of the law to share URLs? !" "What if I am blocked? !"

You probably have had this thought. They're valid claims. In order to to solve the issue, all you can do is include inline links in your posts and pair this with other links not related to your web site. This helps drive the sense that you intend to be helpful and not be spammy. This is a real-life example of in which I attempted to assist someone having trouble with landing pages:

Through these four general, strategic steps I was able to increase my website to get around 4k-5k organic visits a month. 89% of these came from direct links. See the data below from SimilarWeb. The company has not spent a dime on advertising in any way.

Give lots of actionable, free value to the world and the world will be awestruck by you back. I wish you the best results in your journey!

  Kenn Costales is a growth hacker and online course creator who is passionate about exploring new methods of marketing items online, without investing a penny.