Use PR and SEO to Increase The Sales for your online course
Making your course online is only the first step. Once your course is created then the next thing to do is to enrol students (easier said than done! ).
Do you have a marketing strategy? Or have you been a victim of the assumption that just because you have a course online that other people will magically discover the course.
It's a pity to bring bad news, but if you want to maximize your return on your efforts put into developing your course the first step is to make it known.
The two most efficient ways to achieve this is via the PR (Public Relations) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Gone are the days where you had to reach deep into your pockets and hire an expensive PR firm to get your company visibility. If you're familiar with what to, you can make it happen yourself.
Keep an eye out.
The same goes with SEO. You no longer have to spend vast amounts of money hiring the services of an SEO agency. If you are able to engage your customers with valuable content, then you can send clear signals to the search engines.
In this thorough guide, I'll give you some tips for actionable how to make use of SEO and PR to boost your online course sales.
PR Tools and Tips for increasing the sales of your course
Step 1. How to Find Journalists
If you're working on your own PR, the first stage is to locate journalists that specialize in your area. If, for instance, you're a teacher of Social Media Marketing you'll want to find journalists who specialize in reporting on marketing on social media.
And, guess what?
Google is as good a beginning point as any...
Search in Google and then click on the News tab to locate journalists writing about your course topic.
Similar to this:
Now start checking the authors of these pieces to see how they might be able to assist you in your PR campaigns.
Take a few minutes to verify whether the person who wrote the article of the piece is a regular reporter on your particular subject.
Based on your results from the search, you can begin to build the Google Spreadsheet with the following columns:
- Reporter's name
- URL of the article
- Links to the Twitter profile of the reporter
- Link to the website or blog for the reporter (if it is available)
- Email address (if it is available)
- Your Notes
In our case there could be
- Jayson DeMers
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/09/28/9-things-social-media-marketers-get-wrong/#5107342a4b2f
- https://twitter.com/jaysondemers
- http://www.audiencebloom.com/
- Email?
- Chief Executive Officer and Founder of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based company for content marketing. Regular columnist for Forbes.
Here's a sample of a spreadsheet of reporters that I put together:
>> aim is for you to make a a list of 20 reporters in your niche.
Google is good, but not always the best. It is difficult to know the topic of your conversation be with these journalists and what typical topics of interest that you share with them and who is the most relevant journalist you can contact right now, and what is their reason for doing so.
JustReachOut helps you identify the most appropriate journalists and provide a rationale to contact them. You enter a keyword and the program will tell the journalist who's writing about your topic and the reason you should reach out to journalists. The tool also provides email pitch templates to write your pitch, email support from reporters' team members to aid users send direct emails to journalists directly from the platform as well as an automated team that checks every single email before it's and sent.
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Step 2. How to Connect With Journalists
Once you have the list of journalists you want to connect with, and you're now ready to take the next step: Connecting with them. onnecting to them.
In the example below you can see this particular journalist is willing to receive solicitations. She even lists her contact details (Email/Twitter/Website):
For those that don't share your contact information it is necessary to investigate a little more. But don't worry, there are several tools that can help.
#1: Hunter
Enter the company website into Hunter, and it'll give you the structure and emails.
If, for instance, you attempt to enter it will display:
58 email addresses found.Email pattern: [email protected]
If you are able to identify a pattern, you can safely determine the details of your journalist's contact.
When you search for your chosen publication on Email Format, it suggests the format that it is sure is accurate.
Here is the information it provides to :
Once you have an idea of the potential email address of your journalist, then use this tool to verify that it is valid.
Step 3. How to Build Relationships With Journalists
In the past, you've identified possible journalists in your niche and made a spreadsheet including the contact information of each.
There is a temptation to start pitching straight away.
But don't.
The first step is to build relationships with these people. It is best to begin giving before you begin soliciting.
Follow these steps:
- Respond to journalists queries on HelpAReporter or JustReachOut
- Interview journalists for articles on your own blog
- Answer to a question on Quora and ask journalists to answer the same question.
- Follow the journalists you want to pitch on Twitter. Follow the journalists you want to pitch on
- Tweet relevant content and share it with others.
- Write a genuine response on Twitter or a post in their blogs. Start sharing your personality in order to let them know your style.
- Provide them with an idea or story which isn't about the you. Yes, that's right, give them something that is newsworthy. They're journalists. They're looking for stories.
Recently, I made a video where I outline an easy step-by-step guide on ways to establish relationships with journalists. Here it is for your reference.
Here's what Rebecca Grant, a former reporter at VentureBeat spoke about developing connections first:
"If you've got an idea or a suggestion to write an article that *gasp!does not involve you, please share the idea with an editor. The team is always on the prowl for interesting stories ."
Step 4. How To Suggest Your Story to Journalists
By now you should have established a relationship with the journalists you want to approach. Taking the time to build rapport isn't a requirement to send a cold email right now.
However, what will you say in the email you send?
The last thing you want to do is tell reporters about your new course.
That's a big NO.
Go back to the top of the page.
What are journalists looking for?
-- Good Stories.
You've heard that saying before: "Stories sell newspapers."
The same applies to the internet world.
Stories that are good get shared and traffic.
Now is the time to share your experiences with media. What are you going to source them? Your blog.
In the next section in the next part, we'll explore the subject of content marketing. But before that let's look at some tools to help with your email pitching.
Digital marketing agency Fractl surveyed over 500 journalists from top publications including BuzzFeed, TIME, Lifehacker, Scientific American, TechCrunch, and more about the things they would like to see in a pitch.
Here are some key conclusions:
- 81% prefer being pitched over email.
- 69% prefer to be pitched during the morning.
- 39% are looking for an exclusive study to release
To ensure that you are aware of this that in mind, be sure to track the development of your email pitch. There are two methods to try:
MixMax is a free plugin for Gmail that includes the ability to track emails for an indefinite period of time. You have the option of choosing which emails you would like to be tracked each email or only the individual ones:
The lightning icon that has a number next to the messages you have sent indicates that somebody has been able to open your email, as well as the amount of times they opened it:
#2 Yesware
Yesware is a different Gmail plugin which lets you track email open and reply rates, clicks on links, and attachment openings. Simply click"track" before hitting send "track" button prior to you hit send and Yesware will do all the monitoring. Yesware allows you to test variations of your subject line for emails, and save email templates for later use.
No matter if your online course has been completed or not, then now is a great time to start planning the strategies. Think about which journalists you can connect with and start building connections. Be sure to provide them with great news stories.
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SEO Tips for Increasing your Online Course's Sales
SEO is the process of maximizing the number of users who visit a website by ensuring that it appears on top on the list of results returned by the search engine. For instance, if someone searches your course topic using Google or Yahoo getting your website to appear in the results of a search means no cost exposure for you.
How can you make your site to appear in the results of searches for subjects relevant to your program?
by publishing excellent content (blog posts or videos.) through your website, which people can consume for free.
Now you might be wondering how you can go about putting in all that hard work on developing the course materials, why do you need to make the content for free?
I'll explain the logic:
Through the creation and promotion of top-quality content at no cost (usually through the blog) You establish trust and authority in your area of expertise. If you can create content that is free which actually aids people, those people are more likely to purchase your product because they already know, love and believe inyou. The free content you offer helps build the reciprocity.
In the ideal scenario, you'll have a website and an audience before you start selling your course. If not, it's not too late to get started now.
The most important thing to make your blog successful is to have highly valuable material. This is what Rand Fishkin from Moz calls 10x Contentwhich is content that's 10 times better than the top results currently located in the results of a search on a specific keyword or topic.
Journalists and users prefer linking to your top worth information
The process of creating 10x Content isn't an easy task. If it was, every piece of content would be 10x.
However, you've got a distinct benefit...
- This is a fantastic online course.
- A wealth of material is at your fingertips.
- You've already identified some primary keywords and topics which your target audience would like to know about.
When you start writing content for your blog it is possible to pull from this bank of material and turn into a 10x increase in content.
Be sure to include 10x Content:
- Helps solve a problem, or answer questions by giving comprehensive, accurate, exceptional info or resources.
- High-quality, trusted and reliable, as well as interesting and amazing.
- Creates an enjoyable user experience by providing a user-friendly layout, interface, fonts, and images.
If your material meets these standards, your target audience, plus the journalists you pitch to, will automatically want to spread the word about it.
Be aware that all this stuff takes the time of a long time! Making a list of your work and managing your time is essential for getting results quickly. Recently, I shared some suggestions about how you can manage your time when you are writing or doing PR outreach, some great practical advice from other people as well.
10x Content attracts more natural backlinks and ranks more highly in Google
If Google begins to realize that your website's content is well-known, then it will increase the rank of your website within the search results. Because it's a top-quality article, other users in your niche will naturally desire to hyperlink to it.
Also, Google is a fan of organic backlinks.
After all your hard work in creating your content, remember to do the following.
1. Make sure your website is prepared to handle the torrent of traffic
- Go to GTmetrix and input your URL on the site, try your homepage URL and your top ranked or best blog post URL. Take a look at the grade you receive and what issues it highlights. The grade you receive should be of B or A.
- Use dedicated web hosting. Beware of HostGator or a cheaper service like GoDaddy which makes use of a variety of shared servers that don't have the right features for hosting and serving up WordPress or blog-related content in particular. Consider using services like Flywheel or WPEngine specially designed for hosting and serving up WordPress blog post content. This improves how your site loads, making the speed of loading faster and also helps your site rank higher in Google.
- Think about using CDN (Content Delivery Network) It works by providing other server options for users to download content (usually static resources like images and JavaScript). The result is that your site will be faster greatly, many important websites utilize this. It is possible to learn more about it here.
- Consider using a caching plugin If you've ever hit a back button on a browser because the site required more than five minutes to load, you've encountered a site without any caching. Excessive load times can limit your traffic, lower the quality of your Google index and decrease your website's overall potential. Installing a caching plugin will aid in speeding up loading a great deal. Learn more about it here.
- Optimize all of your images to ensure quicker loading times - this is a pretty basic concept but might get a little technical since it is possible to utilize CSS images to improve the performance of your images. The article below will show you how to do this and why. At the end of the day you want a grade of A or B on GTmetrix in order to improve the ranking of your blog's homepage as well as every major article that you wish to rank in the minimum. I make sure that the articles on my blog have the grade.
2. Check to see if you've got the right CTAs (calls to action) strategically placed throughout your website.
- To buy your online course
If you've not started your blog, then you should start by getting your blog online and up and running. Start planning what 10x contents you'll be able to create in order that people will be drawn to hear your story.
Add PR & SEO to your course marketing plan
Are you prepared to begin advertising your online course using these low-cost PR and SEO tactics?
SEO and PR do not have to be expensive. When you commit your thoughts to it, you can tap into the resources readily available. Build meaningful relationships with influencers and develop valuable content that will increase your online course sales.
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Dmitry Dragilev is the founder of JustReachOut.io that helps start-ups entrepreneurs and business owners pitch journalists and influencers with no assistance of PR agencies. He used PR outreach to help an entrepreneur's startup bought by Google. He blogs about PR hacks as well as SEO, on his blog CriminallyProlific.