Plan Your Course Marketing Before You Publish, Here are Proven Marketing Ideas

[LawrenceMMiller]

The following is a version of a message I posted on FB several years ago and I have republished it several times because the question about how can I market my course is one that appears with great regularity. When the new Udemy platform went live I published it in the instructors forum. But, I think many of the suggestions below are ones soon-to-be instructors should be thinking about. Marketing is not an event, it is a process that extends over a long period of time. Get started now!

None of these are an instant path to instructor success.  But, they are things that work if you are serious about building an online business on Udemy.

1. When you are planning your first course, shoot your best shot! Your first course will establish your brand and a bad hastily created course is not the way to get started. Your first course should be on a topic in which you have genuine expertise. Take your time to make sure this is a high-quality course. I am now working on my sixteenth course and I am taking three months to develop it. Take your time. Get it right.
2. BE an expert in your topic. Read, study, and demonstrate state of the art knowledge in your field. If you aren’t this… nothing else is likely to work. Some people fake knowledge in a topic in which they have no experience and it quickly becomes obvious. It results in failure.
3. Be sure that your course landing page communicates your expertise… “Why should I listen to you?” And, be sure that your course landing page communicates the “benefits” of your course, not merely the “features” of your course. Customers buy benefits, not features! The features describe the topics covered. The benefits answer the “so-what?” question. How will this change my life?
4. Remember that most of your future students will be on Udemy searching for something. That “something” are key words that they will put into the search bar. Think carefully about the key words your future students may be search for and be sure they are in your title and/or your subtitle. This is how students will find you.
5. Your promo video is what catches students after they land on your page. Spend ten times the amount of time perfecting your promo video as you do on any other lecture. State the benefits of your course, your qualifications, and invite them to join you. These are more important than outlining all the topics (features) of your course. Also, remember that buying decisions are not simply “rational” decisions; they are emotional decisions, and that is about how you make them feel! Smile! The viewer is asking him/herself, “do I really want to spend hours with this person?”
6. Be your own “brand manager” and build your brand. Brands are built over time by building trust in your marketplace. Brand value is created by being trustworthy, creating consistent value for your customers, over time. The most successful instructors are focused on “marketing”, not just “selling.” Know the difference.
7. Identify Facebook and LinkedIn groups related to your subject matter. Join them. Participate in discussion.
8. Demonstrate expertise by publishing a blog/website with your biography, articles you have written, a page for your courses, and regular blog posts that are educational, value-adding posts. Google the names of some of the more successful instructors and you will find their personal websites.
9. Then, share these blog posts or articles with all relevant groups on LinkedIn or FB. Your LinkedIn page should have articles by you, on your area of expertise. Prove that you are a “thought leader” in your field.
10. Build your own email list by capturing visitors to your website. I use Sumo, but there are other WordPress plugins to do this… oh, use WordPress for your blog. You don’t have to be a web development expert to create a WordPress website.
11. Your Udemy students will become your own mail list in that you can send both educational and promo announcements. As you build the number of students there is a multiplying effect when you share what you write.
12. After your first course, plan to develop additional courses in your area of expertise. The more courses you have the easier it is to launch a new course by marketing to your current students.
13. Obviously, do a great job of developing your on-camera presence and your courses. Engage in continuous improvement. Alexa Fischer’s Confidence on Camera course is excellent for improving your on-camera presentation skills.
14. Develop a YouTube channel where you can upload the introductory lecture(s) to your courses and include a link, with a discount coupon, to your Udemy course.
15. Develop a Facebook discussion page for your students and to publish articles (the same ones as on your blog page and LinkedIn page.
16. Watch Scott Duffy’s course on Udemy SEO Marketing.
17. It is a consensus of experienced instructors that paid Facebook ads do not work.
18. Do not give away of free courses or thousands of free coupons. Those who take these coupons are not likely to go through the course and are likely to leave poor reviews. Give away a few free coupons to those on your personal FB page, those who know you, and may go through the course and may give a good review. This is something to do only at the first launch of a course.
19. Do not even think about purchasing reviews!!! They are now spotted and removed by Udemy’s Trust and Safety group.
20. Have patience… you are building a business and like starting any business, it is not a get rich quick thing. It takes patience and persistence. Udemy is not a path to quick riches and it is not “passive income.”
    
    

The above is only my advice, but they are informed by the experience of many other successful instructors,

[MariaG · Accepted solution]

Thanks for (re)sharing, Lawrence. Great tips!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

If an instructor follows most of what you've mentioned, what is the benefit of sending the traffic to Udemy versus selling his/her courses on their own site?

I mean, if I'm an instructor and I'm putting in all this marketing effort that you recommend, why would I send the traffic to Udemy? If a person reads my blog and subscribes to my YouTube channel and signs up for my email list (all things you suggest), it means the person trusts my brand already. If the person trusts my brand already, why wouldn't I sell to the person right from my own site - at my own price - without sending them to someone else's site?

I don't understand what the benefit is to sending people who trust me away from my site to another site, where my competition lives and where I have very little control over price?

I mean, your marketing ideas are all very sound - I just don't get why you would do all that and then send people to Udemy, instead of keeping the person on your site, where you have additional upsell opportunities.

[VipinJoshi · Accepted solution]

Great Advice Lawrence. Great tips!

[DanielPule347 · Accepted solution]

very useful tips and will come handy as i prepare to publish my first course

[MariaG · Accepted solution]

Thanks for (re)sharing, Lawrence. Great tips!

[SharonRamel]

Great advice as always @LawrenceMMiller 

[Hypnodan]

Great advice @LawrenceMMiller, one thing I was talking to someone the other day about where they said they have spent months creating a course, have now published their course but no-one has taken it was that I hear this a lot from authors I meet where they spend ages writing a book , press publish, get no sales and then ask how they should get sales. I point out that people do things the wrong way round, they publish the course or book and then only if they get no sales do they start focusing on marketing, whereas they should be focusing on marketing before they have started their book or course and building an audience and excitement for the course etc from before the course is made so that to an audience the course getting a release date becomes an event to focus on and people look forward to when the course will be released.

A common response I get is "but I'm not into marketing or using Facebook/Twitter etc, I just want to be a writer/trainer not spending all my time marketing"

I explain if you do nothing it is unlikely people will find or buy your product, if you leave it all until after you have created the product then you will have a lot of work to do, but if you are always marketing yourself and products from early development then you can just do a little bit most days and it doesn't feel like much work, in fact it can be the thing that gives you short breaks from your work.

All the best 

Dan 

[Clicktolearn]

Hola Lawrence,

Great tips, extremely inspiring. I'm creating my first course and I'm taking my time before publishing it on Udemy. 

I think the information you give is brilliantly detailed and it has really encouraged me to finish creating my first course and becoming an instructor on Udemy.

Muchas gracias

Marco

[SheharyarR3548]

Awesome advices , I will surely work on them! Thanks

[DeniseFletcher]

@RahulSinghrksyou might find this useful.

[VertexLearning]

Very detailed and well written. Thanks. 

[enjamulahsan]

Do you think paid marketing like facebook ads are necessary to bring people on the course? And how does $199.99 , 95% site-wide discount offer works for courses does it really bring sales?

[LawrenceMMiller]

@enjamulahsan, No, I don't think FB ads are necessary to bring people to your course and many instructors have found FB ads useless. There are many other ways to promote your courses and your own personal brand and network. 

Do the discounts bring sales? Yes. This is very obvious. When Udemy has their big sales (November and January) the volume of sales almost doubles. 

Something all instructors should understand about Udemy marketing: I have spoken with some of the key marketing people who had previous jobs at Google and other leading Internet commerce sites. They are extremely analytic, data focused, and constantly experimenting. They know internet marketing very well. It is a science and they are constantly engaged in that science. They could tell you exactly how much a change in price, up or down, increases sales in different markets and in different categories. They are not just guessing. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

If an instructor follows most of what you've mentioned, what is the benefit of sending the traffic to Udemy versus selling his/her courses on their own site?

I mean, if I'm an instructor and I'm putting in all this marketing effort that you recommend, why would I send the traffic to Udemy? If a person reads my blog and subscribes to my YouTube channel and signs up for my email list (all things you suggest), it means the person trusts my brand already. If the person trusts my brand already, why wouldn't I sell to the person right from my own site - at my own price - without sending them to someone else's site?

I don't understand what the benefit is to sending people who trust me away from my site to another site, where my competition lives and where I have very little control over price?

I mean, your marketing ideas are all very sound - I just don't get why you would do all that and then send people to Udemy, instead of keeping the person on your site, where you have additional upsell opportunities.

[LawrenceMMiller]

@Anonymous, There are a number of possible answers to your question. The most obvious one in my mind is that by marketing your course and bringing students to Udemy you increase the standing/ranking of your course on Udemy, thereby increasing Udemy organic sales. 

Yesterday, while searching courses, I found a course that has been on Udemy for three years and has a total of seventeen students and a rating of 4.7. I watched the preview lectures and it seemed to be reasoably good. So, why, after three years does this course only have 17 students? There was a recent discussion here by someone who announced that they were leaving Udemy because Udemy had failed to market their courses. When I looked at their students and ratings, it was obvious that the instructor had done nothing to market his own courses. Udemy hadn't failed, he had failed!

The more you market your own course and create a base of satisfied students, the more Udemy will market your course. I view my own marketing efforts, which honestly are not very extensive, as "priming the pump", getting the flow of students going so Udemy organic (and UFB) will then take over the marketing.

I have my own website/blog, but I have not opened my own "store" to sell my courses. There are a couple reasons I haven't done this, while I recognize that this may be working for some people, in some categories. First, I think it is a lot of work to both develop your own site, then maintain it, process payments, and most import, do the marketing to draw people to your site. When your course is on Udemy you have "shelf space" in a huge supermarket where millions of people are already shopping. If you open your own store, you are out in a desert where no one is shopping and you have to make a huge amount of noise to attract any attention.  I am too lazy for that.

Anyway, those are my views.

[OckertLotri471]

Very good post. Thank you.

[Diptopal]

@LawrenceMMiller How can you say you are lazy when you follow all the marketing steps you mentioned ? You could easily use platforms like Kajabi and follow your marketing strategies and make at least 10 to 15 times more, with your calibre. Why stick around here ?

Why are you not accounting for the huge payout increase when you host your own platform ? You get almost all your sales proceeds on your own platform. 

[LawrenceMMiller]

@Diptopal I have my own platform on Zenler. The comment  you are replying to is dated 2019.

It is extremely difficult to bring enough students to your own site to make the effort worthwhile. I make about $20k per month on Udemy by relying almost entirely on their marketing. I am accounting for the huge payout difference. I "stick around here", like other successful instructors, because it has paid off very handsomely. 

[Diptopal]

@LawrenceMMiller That's very good to know. But my scene is different. Launched the course on March 9th 2023 and have made only 600 dollars till date. Probably my course caters to a very niche audience and hence does not get traction.

It's definitely not bad for everybody, I admit. I think as far as my course is concerned, UDEMY is the wrong platform to release it on. In this pace I never see myself breaking the 150 USD mark per month. Too bad I don't have the patience to play the waiting game in hope that someday this will pick up. I'm done with UDEMY, so moving on. 

Wishing you many more years of success. 

[LawrenceMMiller]

I think you are right that your topic is one that is not likely to gain a lot of students on Udemy. It is too narrow, too technical.  My topics are intended for a much broader audience, although there is a great deal of competition in my category. 

Good luck. 

[EmmaLyons2015]

Thank you for the advice, I respect your expertise.

[Hamzarouane831]

I agree somehow, but you should note that every udemy instructor starts small.

In my opinion, if you want to build on online business selling courses, you need leverage. Being a success on udemy is one big leverage, especially if you have a fairly good amount of students.

Both business models work, the most important is to be consistent and to improve everyday.

[VipinJoshi · Accepted solution]

Great Advice Lawrence. Great tips!

[Hadher]

@LawrenceMMiller  many thanks you led me