How to use PR and SEO to Increase Your Online Course Sales
Making your course online is just the beginning. When your course is completed, the next step is to enroll students (easier to say than done! ).
Do you have a marketing strategy? Perhaps you've been a victim of the assumption that just because your course is online that people automatically find it.
It's a pity to be the bearer of bad news, but in order to maximise your return on the effort you poured into developing your course the first step is to advertise it.
Two of the most effective ways to achieve this is through PR (Public Relations) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
The days are gone where you had to reach in your pocket to employ a costly PR company for help in gaining exposure. If you're familiar with what to, you can make it happen by yourself.
Keep an eye out.
Same goes in the case of SEO. No longer do you need to spend vast amounts of money hiring an SEO agency. When you know how to engage your customers with relevant content, you can send clear signals to search engines.
In this thorough guide, I'm going to give you some tips for actionable how you can use PR and SEO to increase your online course sales.
PR Tips and Tools for Increasing Your Course Sales
Step 1. How to Find Journalists
When you're doing yourself PR, the initial step is to find journalists in your niche. If, for instance, the course you're taking is Social Media Marketing you'll want to find journalists who specialize in the field of reporting on social media marketing.
And, guess what?
Google is as a good beginning point like other...
Use the search engine Google and then click on the News tab to locate journalists writing about your course topic.
Like this:
Start looking into the writers of these pieces to see how they might be able to assist you with your PR efforts.
Take a few minutes to determine if the writer of the article is a regular reporter within your field.
Based on your results from the search, you are able to begin building a Google Spreadsheet with the following columns:
- Name of the reporter
- URL of the article
- Link to the Twitter profile of the reporter
- Link to the personal website or blog for the reporter (if available)
- Email address (if it is available)
- Your Notes
For example, you might have:
- 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 the Seattle-based content marketing firm. An ongoing contributor to Forbes.
Here's an example a spreadsheet of reporters I created:
>> objective is for you to make a a list of 20 reporters who are in your area.
Google is good, but not always great. The tough part is to know how your conversation opener will be when you meet these journalists, what are the common topics of interests you have with them which are the most important journalists to talk with now, and why.
JustReachOut helps you identify the most appropriate journalists and also provide you with a compelling reason for why to reach them. When you type in a search term, the tool shows the journalist who's writing about your keyword and why you should reach out to journalists. The tool also provides email pitch templates to create your pitch. help with email messages from our staff of reporters to help to directly send email to journalists via the platform as well as an automated team that checks every email before being and sent.
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Step 2: How To Join Journalists
Once you have the list of journalists you want to connect with, then you're prepared for the next step: connecting with them. onnecting with them.
Below, you will see that this specific journalist is ready to accept pitches. She even lists her contact details (Email/Twitter/Website):
For those who don't provide any contact details it is necessary to investigate a little more. However, don't fret. There are several tools that can aid.
#1: Hunter
Input the website of your company into Hunter The program will show you the format and known emails.
If, for instance, you try entering it will return:
58 email addresses found.Email pattern: [email protected]
When you have a known pattern, you can safely guess your journalist's contact details.
In the event that you locate the publication you want to read on Email Format, it suggests the format that it is certain is the correct format.
Here is what it returns to :
If you are aware of the possible email address of your journalist, you are able to make use of this tool to confirm the email address.
Step 3. How to Build Relations with Journalists
In the past, you've identified possible journalists in your niche and have created a spreadsheet that includes their contact info.
It is tempting to begin pitching immediately.
But don't.
The first step is to build relationships with these people. It is best to start giving prior to asking.
These steps are to be followed:
- Respond to journalists queries on HelpAReporter or JustReachOut
- Contact journalists for article ideas on your own blog
- Answer a question on the Quora website and then ask journalists to answer the same question
- Follow the journalists you'd like to pitch on Twitter.
- Share relevant tweets and retweet them.
- Send a thoughtful response via Twitter or a post on their blog. Be open about your personal style so they get to know the way you present yourself.
- Offer them the possibility of a story or idea which isn't about your own personal interests. Yes, that's right, offer them something interesting. They're journalists. They are looking for stories.
Recently, I made a video that outlines the steps of ways to establish connections with journalists. This video is here for your reference.
Here's the words of Rebecca Grant, a former writer for VentureBeat spoke about creating relationships first:
"If you've got an idea or an idea for an article that *gaspdoes not involve you, share the idea with journalists. The team is always looking for interesting stories ."
Step 4: How to Pitch Your Story to Journalists
You should now already have established relationships with the reporters you'd like to pitch to. The time you spend to break the ice means you don't have to send a cold email now.
What exactly will you say in the email you send?
The last thing you need to tell reporters about your new course.
That's a big NO.
Return to the homepage.
What is the goal of journalists?
-- Good Stories.
You've heard that saying before: "Stories sell newspapers."
It's the same in the world of online.
The best stories are shared, and they generate shares and traffic.
Now is the time to share your story with reporters. Where are you planning to source them? The blog you are writing.
In the following section in the next part, we'll explore content marketing. However, prior to that, let's take a look at some of the tools you can use to aid in the email marketing pitching.
Digital marketing agency Fractl surveyed more than 500 journalists from top publications like BuzzFeed, TIME, Lifehacker, Scientific American, TechCrunch as well as other publications about what they want when pitching.
Here are a few of the most important results:
- 81% of people prefer to be marketed by emails
- 69% would prefer to be pitched in the morning
- 39% of respondents are seeking exclusive research that they can release
In this regard it is important to be sure to track the progression of your email marketing campaign. Below are some methods to try:
MixMax is a no-cost plugin that works with Gmail which provides unlimited email tracking. You have the option of choosing whether you want to track all your emails or specific ones.
The lightning icon that has a number next to your messages will indicate that someone has opened your email plus the number of times they have opened it.
# 2 Yesware
Yesware is another Gmail plugin that lets you keep track of email opening and reply rates, clicks on links, and attachment openings. Just click"track" before hitting send "track" button just before you hit send and Yesware will do all the tracking. Yesware also lets you test variations of your email subject line as well as save email templates for later for use.
No matter if your online course has been complete or not, this is the perfect opportunity to plan these strategies. You should think about the journalists you can establish connections with, and then begin building connections. Make sure to give them excellent news stories.
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SEO Tips to Boost the Sales of Your Online Course
SEO is the practice that aims to maximize the number of visitors to 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 the presence of your site in the results of a search means an opportunity for exposure for your business.
How do you get your website to show up in search results for topics relevant to your program?
Through publishing amazing content (blog posts or videos.) on your website that people are able to consume at no cost.
You might now be asking how you can go about putting in all that hard work on developing your course material, why do you need to make free content?
Let me explain the logic:
In creating and promoting high quality content for free (usually via the blog), you establish confidence and credibility in your area of expertise. If you produce content for free that actually helps individuals, they are more likely to purchase your product because they are familiar with, trust and are confident inyou. Content that is free builds reciprocity.
Ideally, you'll have a blog or an audience prior to selling your course. But if not yet, you don't have to wait to get started now.
The most important thing to make your blog effective is having high-quality content. This is what Rand Fishkin from Moz calls 10x Contentis content that's 10 times more valuable than the best result that can currently be found in the search results of a particular keyword or topic.
Journalists and readers prefer to hyperlink to your premium value web pages
Producing 10x content isn't easy. If it were, then each piece of content could be 10x, right?
You have an exclusive advantage...
- This is a fantastic online course.
- You've a mountain of content available to you.
- There are a few primary keywords and topics that your audience is craving.
If you are creating content for your blog, it is possible to pull from this bank of material and turn into a 10x increase in content.
You must ensure that you have 10x Content
- Solves a problem or answers questions by giving extensive, exact, outstanding details or sources.
- High-quality, trusted, useful, interesting as well as remarkable.
- Provides a positive user experience via the user interface, layout, fonts, and images.
If your content is in line with these requirements, then your readers, plus the journalists who you've pitched to is bound to want to spread the word about it.
Be aware that all of this takes time, a lot of time! Making a list of your work and managing your time is crucial for achieving results quick. I have recently shared some advice about how you can manage your time while creating or conducting PR outreach, some great practical advice from other people too.
10x Content attracts more natural backlinks, and is ranked more highly on Google
Once Google starts to see the quality of your content It will then increase the rank of your website within the search results. Since it's an excellent piece of content other people within your field will want to link to it.
Also, Google loves naturally-generated backlinks.
Following all the hard work you put into in creating your content, remember to follow these steps.
1. Be sure that your site is prepared to handle the torrent of traffic
- Go to GTmetrix and enter your URL into the site Try your home page URL, and then your most placed or top blog post URL. Check out the grade you receive as well as the problems it identifies. The grade you receive should be either B or A.
- Utilize the dedicated web hosting. Beware of HostGator or something cheap such as GoDaddy which uses a bunch of shared servers. They do not have the capacity specifically for hosting or serving WordPress or blog content specifically. Consider using services like Flywheel or WPEngine which are designed specifically to host and deliver WordPress blog post content. This improves how your page loads and makes your page load time faster, as well as helps you rank better on Google.
- Consider using CDN (Content Delivery Network) It is a service that provides different server nodes to customers to download and install resources (usually static content such as images or JavaScript). It speeds up the speed of your website greatly, many major sites use this. It is possible to learn more here.
- Think about using a cache plugin If you've ever clicked the back button in a web browser and the page took more then 5 minutes to load, you've encountered an uncached website. Excessive load times can limit your website's traffic, reduce the quality of your Google index and decrease your website's overall potential. The installation of a caching plugin can assist in improving load speeds greatly. Learn more about it here.
- Optimize all of your images to ensure speedier loading of your website It's a simple concept, but it can get somewhat technical because you might need to use CSS images to improve the performance of your images. This article will teach you how to do this and the reasons. When you are done with the day, you should have a score of either A or B GTmetrix to rank your blog homepage and any other major posts that you wish to rank on at least. I make sure that the articles in my blog are rated with the grade.
2. Check to see if you've got the right CTAs (calls to actions) strategically placed on your site:
- To buy your online course
If you haven't yet started your blog then get your website operational. Start planning what 10x articles you could create to ensure that people will be drawn to hear your story.
Add PR & SEO to your marketing plan for your course
Are you prepared to begin marketing your online course by using these cost-effective PR and SEO strategies?
SEO and PR do not have to cost a fortune. When you set your mind to them, you'll be able to tap into the resources readily available. Build meaningful relationships with influencers and create valuable content to increase your online course sales.
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Dmitry Dragilev is the founder of JustReachOut.io that helps start-ups and entrepreneurs reach out to journalists and influencers without the help of PR firms. He used PR outreach to help an enterprise acquired by Google. He blog about PR tricks as well as SEO, on his blog at CriminallyProlific.