Top 6 Ways to Build your Audience as a Course Creator

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Building your audience as a course creator is one of the most important things you will do. In this video, I'm going to share with you my top six favourite ways to do so 📈

Leverage SEO with Youtube 🎥

The very first strategy I recommend is this one right here… YouTube is a phenomenal tool for online course creators because it allows you to leverage search engine optimization while also getting on video and have your students get to know you and your teaching style before they ever enroll in your course.

Particularly if you're at the beginning of your journey, it can be hard to build your audience. YouTube is one of the most targeted, most strategic ways that you can do this.

And if you get a video that happens to rank well, then your audience growth can really kickstart and it can snowball from there 🚀

So what you want to do for YouTube is use a tool like Keywords Everywhere, which will help you identify what your ideal client is actually looking up when they head to Google or to YouTube.

Then you're going to create a video on that topic, making sure to use that keyword in your title, in your description, in your tags, and in all the places. (What we're hoping for is that when someone types something into YouTube, your video comes up near the top.)

This audience growth strategy has been really helpful for me personally and helps me get in front of my ideal clients and students that are actually looking for my help on my specific online course topics.

So for example, if you go into YouTube and type in “Asana team”, my video is going to come up first, which allows me to get discovered by new people:

And what's fantastic about YouTube is that it's long lasting!

So even though I created this video a year ago, that individual video is still bringing me in leads and sales in my online course business today.

Hopefully I've convinced you about YouTube… I think it is a phenomenal idea!

Use Instagram for Visibility 👀

The next strategy is Instagram; particularly using Instagram reels and trending audios in order to get my account more visibility.

Then, on top of that, what I've been doing is using an automation so that if someone comments a particular word in the comments under my reel, then it will automatically send them a DM so that they can go and join my email list.

Here’s what that automation looks like:

This has been hugely beneficial and helps actually get people from social media off onto our email list, which is one of those things that we really want as course creators.

So that's what I've been doing on Instagram. I have a video that walks you through exactly how to do that. You can watch it here!

Repurpose Content With Pinterest 📲

Now, one thing you want to be doing is making sure that you are making the most out of every piece of content that you create. So every YouTube video, every Instagram reel that you create, you want to try and get as much visibility on that and send as much traffic to it as possible.

So that's where the next tool comes in: Pinterest!

With Pinterest, you can repost your reels or Youtube videos directly onto the platform.

All you have to do is create a few reels for every video that you create and make sure to share it there as well. This is what I do with every single YouTube video - I create four different pins leading to that video and then share that out on Pinterest.

For Pinterest, you absolutely have to learn from my student-turned-friend, Isabel Talens. She is a master at Pinterest and she's actually hosting a free training soon. You can sign up for that here, so that you can attend that and learn how to leverage Pinterest for your business.

Just like YouTube, Pinterest is long lasting, which is why I love it. For example, pins that I pinned years ago are still driving traffic to my website today. That's what we want - leveraged strategies!

Leverage Other People’s Audience 👥

The next strategy is leveraging other people's audiences. If you feel like it's a slow grind and you're like, “okay, I'm not building any momentum”, then what I would recommend you do is get in front of an already pre-established audience.

Right now, there are other people out there in your niche that are also serving the same ideal client, just in a different way. What you want to do is partner up with those people. They can refer people to you and you can refer people back to them.

Utilizing the strategy will bring me up to 500 leads in one day compared to what I'm able to do by myself.

Then from here, you can actually take it a step further and you can set up a partner sales funnel. Most people know about automated sales funnels that we're going to send people to ourselves, but what about setting up a sales funnel that your partner can send people to 24/7, 365 days of the year?

This is what I call my Profitable Partnership System and I teach it inside Passive Profit Accelerator.

In a nutshell, what you do is you get together with another person in your niche. You guys host a free training together, and then you take that recording and you put it into a sales funnel (this way you can use that recording to build your email list and your audience for many years after this).

Utilize Affiliate Marketing 🚀

The next strategy is creating your own affiliate program! This is going to allow you to turn any happy student of yours into a brand ambassador.

What you're going to do is allow them to sign up to be an affiliate, which means they can then go and spread the word about your online course - and, if someone ends up purchasing based on their recommendation, then you're going to pay them a commission.

This is a fantastic strategy because it doesn't cost you anything upfront. You're only going to do payouts once the sale actually comes in.

I would be leveraging this for any happy students, but also for any of those people in your niche that you end up partnering with; turn them into an affiliate so that they are even more incentivized to spread the word about your course.

Plus, if you use a tool like Kartra or Kajabi, you'll see that setting up your own affiliate program is actually built into the software. So it's not as complicated as it seems to set that up!

Marketing With Instagram and Facebook Ads 📢

Finally - the last strategy is for those of you that do not want to rely on organic methods only - and that is Facebook and Instagram ads.

I'm with you on this one. I love building my audience organically, but I also like the security that paid ads bring to my business.

For example, if a particular video, let's say doesn't do well and doesn't grow my audience as much as I was hoping, I still have Facebook and Instagram ads running, which helps grow my audience no matter what.

Yes, obviously it does have a cost associated with it, but it brings that security knowing that no matter what happens organically, your audience is still being built.

I mentioned this one last because I think it's important to validate your online course first. However, after you have done that, then you can start to figure out ads while yes, they are more complicated in 2023 there are ways around that you can get creative.

For example, you can create tripwires and little offers to help you earn back some of that increased ad spend.

So those are my top six strategies for building your audience. Thank you so much for watching. If you liked this post, give it a thumbs up, leave me a comment and I'll see you soon with another video.

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