After ebooks, online courses are one of the most popular business models for digital entrepreneurs.
The tech is easier to put together than ever. Audiences know that online courses are valuable and have shown they’re willing to pay. And courses are a natural showcase for the authority you build as you develop great content for your site.
They have tons of great advantages for the course creator.
But if you’re not keeping your focus on your audience and customers … it ain’t gonna work.
Like any business (online or off), your business needs to serve the needs of your audience and customers if it’s going to survive … and thrive.
So let’s talk about how to do that …
Start with thirsty learners
This might sound a bit obvious, but it’s the downfall of many failed businesses:
Can you reach enough people who want to learn about your topic?
You need to ask yourself questions like:
- Does this topic have a solid number of people who care about learning more?
- Do I have a way to connect with them?
- What are some of their painful problems with the topic?
- Will they pay to get rid of those problems?
- Would they put the time into a course to get rid of those problems?
Some topics are no-brainers. Financial advice, career advancement, and technical skills are all things people will pay to acquire.
Some can be a little trickier to pull off. In my experience, plenty of people are looking for parenting advice online, but they’re often either time-poor or their disposable income is tight (or both).
Parenting advice certainly can be a good topic for a profitable online course, but it may take you a little longer to find the right offering.
If you already have an audience pulled together — maybe you have a blog or a podcast, but you don’t have a business yet — turn to that audience and try to figure out what they’d love to get some help with.
You can also partner with someone who has the audience, but doesn’t want to deal with “all that business stuff.” Fortunately, “business stuff” is a skill set that you can absolutely develop.
Why you?
Once you’ve figured out where the thirsty learners are hanging out, and what they’re thirsty for, it’s time to decide why they should go with your course to solve their problem, given all of their other options.
Marketers call this positioning. What position do you hold in your market? Are you the expensive one? (Advice: don’t be the cheap one.) The gentle one? The strict one? The flamboyant one? The wonky one?
Ask yourself these questions to start to tease out what makes your offering different from the others:
- What’s the specific beneficial improvement you make in your customer’s life? Is it different from that offered by other businesses?
- What unique approach or angle do you use to get results?
- What memorable difference or experience can you convey?
- Is there a remarkable element to your business — something a person might mention to a friend or colleague?
- Is there a timeless aspect to your promise? Alternately, is there something about your offer that’s uniquely valuable right now?
Know thy learner
You can’t serve customers — truly serve them — until you really know them.
Knowing what they want is just the beginning. You need to know why they want it, how they want to get it, and what they’re willing to do to have it.
It starts with empathy — putting yourself in the emotional shoes of your learner.
You want to understand what they’re thinking, feeling, perceiving, and doing as they approach your topic and move toward their goals.
You can get started by building an Empathy Map — this article walks you through how to do that: Empathy Maps: A Complete Guide to Crawling Inside Your Customer’s Head. (It comes with a downloadable blank map you can fill in.)
The Empathy Map exercise takes some time, but it isn’t difficult. In fact, it’s pretty fun. But…
