Use SEO and PR to boost The Sales for your online course
The process of creating your online course is just the start. When your course is completed it is time to enrol students (easier said than done! ).
Do you have a marketing strategy? Or have you made the mistake of thinking that because you have a course online that other people will magically find the course.
It's a pity for being the one to share negative news. However, in order to maximise returns 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 through PR (Public Relations) as well as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Gone are the days when you need to dig in your pocket to employ a costly PR company to help your business get visibility. If you know what do to, you can do it yourself.
Keep an eye out.
Same goes for SEO. No longer do you need to shell out huge sums of money on the services of an SEO agency. If you can engage your customers with valuable content, then you can send clear signals to search engines.
In this thorough guide, I'll provide some practical tips on how you can use PR and SEO to increase the sales of your online courses.
Tips and Techniques for PR for Increasing Your Course Sales
Step 1: How Do I Find Journalists
When you're doing yourself PR, the initial thing to do is find journalists who are in your field. For instance, if the course you're taking is Social Media Marketing you'll want to look for journalists who are specialized in the field of reporting on marketing on social media.
And, guess what?
Google is as reliable a place to start as any...
Search in Google and then click on the News tab to find journalists who write about the subject of your class.
This is how:
Then, start looking up the authors of these articles to see how they might be able to assist you with your PR efforts.
Spend a couple of minutes to verify whether the person who wrote the article of the story is a well-known journalist on your particular subject.
After you have viewed your results, you are able to begin building the Google Spreadsheet with the following columns:
- The name of the journalist
- The URL for the article
- Link to the Twitter profile for the reporter
- Link to the site or blog page of the reporter (if there is one)
- Email address (if there is one)
- Your Notes
So, in our example it 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?
- Founder & CEO of AudienceBloom the company that specializes in content marketing based out of Seattle. A regular writer for Forbes.
Here's an example a spreadsheet of reporters that I compiled:
>> The aim for you to create an inventory of 20 reporters within your field.
Google can be good, but it isn't always great. The tough part is to understand what your conversation starter will be when you meet these journalists, what are the common topics of interests 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 will help you locate the most appropriate journalists and also provide you with a compelling reason for why to reach them. You enter a keyword and it will show the journalist who's writing an article about the keyword, and also why it is important to contact the journalist. The tool also provides email pitch templates to write your pitch, assistance via email from the reporters' team members to aid to directly send email to journalists via the platform as well as a team which human verifies every email before being and sent.
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Step 2. How to Connect With Journalists
After you've compiled the list of journalists you want to connect with, you're ready for the next step: connecting with them. connecting with them.
Below, you can see that this particular journalist is ready to accept requests for pitches. She even lists her contact details (Email/Twitter/Website):
If you don't have the contact information it is necessary to investigate a little more. But don't worry, there are a few instruments that could aid.
1. Hunter
Enter the company website into Hunter The program will show you the format as well as known email addresses.
If, for instance, you try entering it will return:
58 email addresses found.Email pattern: [email protected]
When you have a known pattern, you are able to determine the details of your journalist's contact.
#2: Email Format
In the event that you locate the desired publication using Email Format, it suggests which format it is most confident is correct.
As an example, this is the information it provides for :
Once you have an idea of the potential email address of the journalist, then make use of this tool to confirm it.
Step 3. How to Build Relations with Journalists
In the past, you've identified possible reporters in your field and created a spreadsheet with their contact details.
You may be tempted to begin pitching immediately.
But don't.
First, you need to nurture connections with them. It is best to give before you begin making requests.
Take these steps:
- Answer journalist questions on the HelpAReporter or JustReachOut
- Ask journalists to write articles for your own blog
- Answer to a question in the Quora website and request journalists to answer the same question
- Follow the journalists you'd like to reach out to on Twitter
- Share relevant tweets and retweet them.
- Write a genuine response on Twitter or a post in their blogs. Begin to share your style and personality with them in order to let them know the way you present yourself.
- Offer them the possibility of a story or idea that isn't about the you. You're right. offer them something interesting. They're journalists. They want stories.
Recently, I made video in which I describe a step by step of how to build relationships with journalists. Here it is for your reference.
Here's what Rebecca Grant, a former reporter at VentureBeat she said about building relationships first:
"If you have a tip or an idea to write an article that *gasp!does not involve your company, then share it with a journalist. We're always looking for stories that are worth telling. ."
Step 4. How To Suggest Your Story To Journalists
By now you should be establishing a rapport with journalists that you would like to approach. Making the effort to build rapport means you don't have to write a cold email now.
But what exactly do you intend to write in the email you send?
One thing you don't want to do is tell the journalists about your brand new course.
That's a big NO.
Return to the homepage.
What do journalists want?
-" Good Stories.
Ever heard the saying: "Stories sell newspapers."
Similar to what happens in the online world.
Stories that are good get shared and visitors.
It's time to start sharing your stories with the media. Where are you planning to get them from? Your blog.
In the next section next section, we'll look at the subject of content marketing. But before we do that, let's review some of the tools you can use to aid in your email pitch.
Digital marketing company Fractl surveyed more than 500 journalists on top websites including BuzzFeed, TIME, Lifehacker, Scientific American, TechCrunch and many more to find out what they are looking for in a pitch.
Here are some of the key findings:
- 81% would rather be pitched by email
- 69% prefer to be pitched during the morning.
- 39% are looking for exclusive research to publish
With that in mind, you need to make sure that you track the progression of your email pitch. Below are some tools you can try:
MixMax is a plugin for free to Gmail which provides the ability to track emails for an indefinite period of time. It is possible to choose which emails you would like to be tracked each email or only the specific ones.
The lightning symbol with a number next to the messages you have sent indicates that somebody has been able to open your email, as well as the number of times they opened it.
# 2 Yesware
Yesware is another Gmail plugin that allows you to keep track of email opening and reply rates, clicks to links as well as attachment open. Simply click"track" before hitting send "track" button before you hit send and Yesware does all the monitoring. Yesware can also help you test variations of your subject line for emails and lets you save templates of email for future to use later.
No matter if your online course has been complete or not, now is a great moment to begin planning the strategies. Think about which journalists you might be able to meet and begin to build connections. Remember to offer them great stories.
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SEO Tips to Increase Your Online Course Sales
SEO is the practice to increase the number of users who visit an online site by making sure that it appears on top in the search results returned by a search engine. If someone is searching for your course topic using Google, for example, having your website appear in the results of a search means an opportunity for exposure for your business.
How do you get your website to show up on search results when you type in topics related to your course?
By publishing great information (blog posts, videos, etc.) on your website that people can consume for free.
You might now be asking how you can go about putting in all that effort in creating your course material, why would you want to share your content as free?
Let me clarify the reasoning:
By creating and marketing excellent content on a budget (usually via blogs), you establish trust and authority in your field. If you can create content that is free which actually aids people, those people are more likely to buy your course because they are familiar with, trust and are confident inyou. Content that is free builds reciprocity.
In the ideal scenario, you'll have a blog and an audience before marketing your course. But if not, it's not too late to begin one today.
The most important thing to make your blog a success is having high-quality material. This is the kind of content Rand Fishkin from Moz calls 10x Content- material that's 10 times more valuable than the top outcome currently found in the search results for a given keyword phrase or topic.
Journalists and readers would prefer linking to your top worth web pages
Making 10x Content isn't an easy task. If it was, each piece of content could be 10x, right?
But you have a unique benefit...
- This is a fantastic online course.
- There's a wealth of information available to you.
- It's already clear some key keyword phrases and themes that people are searching for.
When you start creating content for your blog, it is possible to pull from this library of ideas and then turn it into 10x content.
Be sure to include 10x Content
- Solves a problem or provides the answer to questions by giving complete, precise, and exceptional info or resources.
- Is high-quality, trustworthy, useful, interesting, and remarkable.
- Provides a positive user experience through the user layout, interface, fonts, and images.
When your content meets those criteria then your audience, plus the journalists whom you approach, will automatically want to share it.
It is important to remember that all this stuff takes some time. A lot of time! Prioritizing your tasks and managing your time is essential for getting results quickly. Recently, I shared some suggestions on how to manage your time while writing or doing PR outreach, some great practical advice from other people too.
10x Content attracts more natural backlinks and rank higher on Google
Once Google begins to realize that your content is popular and it is able to push your page higher within the search results. And because it's a high-quality article, other users in your niche will naturally be inclined to share it.
And Google is a fan of natural backlinks.
After you have completed your work producing the content, be sure to take the next steps.
1. Make sure your website is prepared to handle the influx of traffic
- Go to GTmetrix to type in your website's URL Try your home page URL and your top ranking or most popular blog posting URL. Look over your grade and what issues it highlights. The grade you receive should be that is"B" or "A..
- Utilize only dedicated web hosting. Do not use HostGator or something less expensive such as GoDaddy which makes use of a variety of shared servers and are not designed to host and serve up WordPress or blog content specifically. Look at services such as Flywheel or WPEngine specially designed to host and deliver WordPress blog post content. This optimizes the way your page loads and makes your page load time faster, in addition to helping to rank your page higher in Google.
- You should consider using CDN (Content Delivery Network) This works by providing different server nodes to users to download resources (usually static content such as images or JavaScript). The result is that your site will be faster greatly, many major sites use this. Learn more here.
- Think about using a cache plugin If you've ever hit a back button on a web browser and the page required more than five minutes to load you've visited an uncached website. The excessive load time can hinder the amount of traffic you receive, decrease your Google search rank and lessen the potential of your site's. The installation of a caching plugin can aid in speeding up loading significantly. Learn more about it here.
- Optimize all of your images to ensure quicker loading times It's a basic concept but might get a little technical since it is possible to utilize CSS Sprites to make the images. The article below will tell the steps to take and what to do. In the final day, you should have a score of A or B on GTmetrix in order to improve the ranking of the homepage of your blog and for all the major articles you'd like to rank at very least. I like to make sure the articles on my blog have this rating.
2. Make sure you have applicable CTAs (calls to action) strategically placed throughout your website:
- To buy your online course
If you've not started your blog yet, you need to get your website online and up and running. Plan out what 10x-quality articles you could create to ensure that people will be drawn to hear your story.
Add PR & SEO to the marketing strategy for your course
Are you prepared to begin advertising your online course using these low-cost PR and SEO tactics?
PR and SEO don't have to cost a fortune. If you put your heart to it, you can utilize the resources available readily available. Develop meaningful connections with influential people and produce valuable content to improve the number of sales for your online course.
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Dmitry Dragilev is the founder of JustReachOut.io that helps start-ups and entrepreneurs pitch journalists and influencers with no assistance of PR agencies. In the past, he used PR outreach in order to have an enterprise acquired by Google. He blog about PR tricks along with SEO in his blog at CriminallyProlific.