Does Thinkific, Teachable Market Your Courses
Thinkific and Teachable are two of the most popular white-label learning management systems (LMSs) available on the market. They’re equipped with various functionalities to make selling online courses easy for instructors and businesses.
But one of the biggest challenges content creators face when they want to leverage such platforms is how they will market the courses.
After all, content creators don’t even need to create courses themselves as they can simply leverage private label rights (PLR) courses.
The biggest challenge is figuring out how to efficiently advertise the courses to the intended audience. Platforms like Udemy leverage on-site promotions, paid ads, and affiliate marketing to help market instructors’ courses.
And while such platforms may have their benefits, they also have their disadvantages which is why instructors sometimes prefer white-label platforms like Thinkific and Teachable.
But do these platforms offer any form of marketing options to their clients? Do they help content creators reach their targets?
Does Thinkific Market Your Courses
No. Though Thinkific doesn’t promote courses for course creators, they do provide an Experts Marketplace and a Fiverr Store of vetted agencies and freelancers who can assist with a range of tasks, including creating a marketing strategy.
The Thinkific Store on Fiverr is a partnership with Fiverr where Thinkific provides vetted and approved agencies and freelancers dedicated to building, launching, and marketing online learning products.
These agencies and freelancers have been approved by Thinkific and are also familiar with the Thinkific platform and the needs of online course instructors leveraging the platform.
The Experts Marketplace is Thinkific’s own marketplace of expert partners who can help course creators with a wide variety of tasks, including marketing strategy and custom web development.
These services by Thinkific (Experts Marketplace and Thinkific Store on Fiver) do not market courses for creators but simply provide experts with the necessary skills and experience to help in the development of effective marketing strategies and more.
So, if you’re planning on selling online courses using Thinkific, you should already have a plan to market the courses or you can simply leverage the available experts and freelancers to develop strategies to aid in marketing.
You can also leverage third-party course marketing agencies available on the market to market your courses. Check out this article to find out more about the top online course marketing agencies.
Does Teachable Market Your Courses
Teachable does not promote courses for course creators. That said, Teachable has a marketplace called Spotlight or Discover, that features some of the best courses sold through Teachable.
Keep in mind that Spotlight is still experimental at the moment and may only accept a limited number of courses. These courses are selected based on the course quality, number of students, testimonials, and number of chargebacks.
This means new instructors with no student testimonials and a lower number of students would find it difficult to get their courses on Spotlight.
Instructors using Teachable can choose to opt into Spotlight or opt out if they’re already using the service. Teachable doesn’t charge any upfront fees for using Spotlight but takes a 30% revenue share.
Like every marketplace, course creators would need to identify avenues to differentiate themselves from competing products on Spotlight.
Spotlight also allows content creators using platforms like Thinkific, Podia, and Kajabi to sell their content on their marketplace.
Does Thinkific Have A Marketplace
Although Thinkific does not have a marketplace for courses, it does offer a marketplace of vetted experts and freelancers on its “Experts Marketplace” and “Thinkific Store on Fiverr” to assist course creators in creating marketing strategies and more.
The Expert Marketplace consists of experts in course design, creation, marketing, and more. Irrespective of where you are on your course creation journey, you’ll find an expert to help you reach your target.
While the Experts marketplace may be geared towards bigger jobs, the Thinkific Store on Fiverr is geared towards smaller jobs.
How To Promote Courses To Students
Creating an online course is one thing, but marketing it can be challenging. While courses on popular marketplace platforms like Udemy may receive some level of publicity, it can be quite challenging when you’re using a white-label learning management system.
But if you’re able to do it well, you stand to make significantly higher revenue than you would if you were selling on a public course marketplace platform.
So how do you promote your courses to students to start making some revenue?
Use Online Course Marketing Agencies
Instead of focusing your attention on marketing courses to students, you can assign the task to online course marketing agencies. These agencies have years of experience in digital market, especially in the field of online courses.
They ensure that you get value for your money whether in social media advertisement, email marketing, or other. Additionally, these platforms optimize pages and your platform for higher search engine rankings (SEO strategies).
Some of the most popular online course marketing agencies include Think Orion, Thrive Agency, and Single Grain. Check out this article to find out more about these popular online course marketing agencies.
Social Media Advertisement
Social media marketing is essential in the field of digital marketing. Facebook for instance has close to 2 billion daily active users globally. This makes these platforms a great asset in the field of digital marketing.
You can leverage social media platforms to conveniently target specific demographics. Irrespective of the social media platform you choose, it’s advisable to announce your courses early.
Before launching the course, you can share tidbits of information and expand your social media following. You’ll already have an engaged user base at your disposal once the course is ultimately launched.
Google Advertising
Google’s advertising program and solution, Google Ads, allows companies to place advertisements across a wide range of its products and wider search network.
Running paid ads is an effective way to advertise your course, with budget being the only real limitation. You can market your course to two of the world’s largest search engines (Google and YouTube).
Offer Discounts/Free Courses
Word of mouth remains one of the most effective approaches to marketing. And the best way to get people talking about your product is to provide some form of discount or offer free lessons to the first few 100 or so students to enroll.
If all you want to do is give a discount, you may simply study the prices of comparable goods and undercut them. Leveraging a free for a limited number of enrollment strategy might be highly successful if you were able to create some sort of audience anticipation before the launch.
Customers like to read reviews before making a purchasing decision and this includes students. Discounts and free lessons ensure that you receive significant student reviews to motivate potential buyers.
Affiliate
Offer students some form of returns for promoting your courses. Affiliate marketing remains a great way to get people to market products.
Students are integrated into various communities and are socially very active. Simply offer them an opportunity to make something from promoting your courses.
Affiliates can significantly increase your marketing reach by pushing your products to their network. They can get paid a commission in exchange for each new sale they bring your way.
Reviews
Get reviews from your existing students. Even in cases where your existing students have reviewed your courses on your website, it’s advisable that you invite them to review the course on a platform like Trustpilot.
Customers understand that service providers can easily manipulate reviews on their own platforms. However, reviews on third-party review platforms cannot easily be modified making them more trustworthy.
Don’t expect them all to sing your praise. Take any negative review as an opportunity to improve and respond promptly and appropriately to such reviews.
So, get your existing students to review your courses on these platforms in addition to your website or learning management system.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a long game to play but very rewarding when done properly. While you may not get visitors to your courses instantly, a good understanding of modern SEO practices, content and patience will get you there.
This is especially useful when you don’t have or want to spend money on Google Advertisement or any other form of premium advertisement. However, you need to start early if you want enough traffic to make this strategy successful.
