Let's Discuss Course Promotion Strategies

Timilehin · February 21

Hello everyone,

I'm excited to connect with fellow Udemy instructors. I specialize in digital marketing and course promotion, helping instructors get more visibility and sales.

Creating a great course is one thing, but getting it in front of the right audience is another challenge. I’d love to hear your experiences with:

The biggest challenges you've faced in promoting your course
Marketing strategies that have worked for you
Free and paid methods you’ve tried

Let’s share insights and learn from each other. Looking forward to the discussion!

Kamil · February 22

I have been active on Udemy for close to 9 years. The only promotion strategy that's worked for me is utilising Udemy's promo announcement twicea month. It always brings in a few extra sales.

I can't speak for others but I don't recall anyone ever saying that paid ads have worked for them. I also don't recall in this forum anyone sharing noteworthy results with social media promotions.

The truth is Udemy invests tons in promoting our courses and it's hard to beat that.

If I am missing some effective approaches, I would love to know!

Mehul82 · February 22

I agree with you @Kamil

Udemy does a great job in promoting courses and also giving fair chances to new courses to get momentum. The sales performance solely depends on the quality of a course.

With just a year on Udemy, there are decent sales of my courses without spending any extra effort and money on external marketing. Though I am promoting courses on social media and my website, its not quite effective and takes time to generate sales from those channels.

I am continuously being approached my digitial marketers to promote courses but I haven't try it yet. They normally utilize free coupons to enroll students and ask them to provide good reviews but the weightage of such reviews is less compared to paid enrollments. Please correct me if I am wrong. The only good thing about it is it shows more students and reviews to attract new students but again if the course quality is not good, you will have a bad review from paid student! Any one here tried such a marketing with free coupons and what's your experience?

Regarding Udemy promotional announcements, it can be done within existing learners to cross sell courses. Correct? I tried it only once so far. Please share some more insights about how to use it effectively. Thanks!

Prof_Luiz_Valerio · February 22

I also share @Kamil and @Mehul82 opinions. Free coupons halp to gain hundres or thousands of students to your course(s) but oftentimes the students do not engage with your content at all (i.e., they do not watch a single minute of your course) and neither leave reviews. Basically, they are just numbers and nothing else. Besides, they do not enroll in other paid courses you are offering. I believe that, in addition to invest in providing a qualified courses, as rightsly said by the colleagues, it is also a matter of being luck enough to offer courses that meet certain demands. Anyway, hope my insights are useful to the discussion.

Kamil · February 22

Regarding free coupons: I strongly discourage anyone from using them for promotional purposes, ever. They are never worth it. Students who enrol with free coupons will never value your course, including its content and delivery. They will have no incentive to leave you a review, not to mention a good review, because they invested nothing in your course. They are also unlikely to actually start your course and complete it because they are likely enrolled in many other courses they got for free. If you have something of value to offer, do not devalue your expertise.

Manjushri_73 · February 22

I've tried a few course marketing ventures, largely LinkedIn, and find they can be very expensive with 0 results. There is an awful lot of marketing hype out there. Although I've been told my course is good, so far, I've had no sales at all on Udemy. I've been advised to have friends review it, or give free views for a review. I don't like bugging friends and have learned that "free" often does not work. People are less motivated to take the course.

I'd love to hear some good suggestions.