Is anybody else tired of courses being the answer to get rich quick AND the focus being on selling first? I’ve done some venting on this before, but let me be clear: selling a course is not the same as building a course and I need all ya’ll to please stop lumping them together.
Marketing research typically comes from a place of understanding what will make someone buy. Knowing if someone is willing to buy what you’re laying down is totally necessary. However, if you don’t want your course business to fizzle out and die (as many get rich quick schemes do), then focusing on learning is going to be critical. Learning research comes from a place of understanding potential learners needs and experiences so you can help them succeed. That can then be used to sell, but the other way around isn’t true. Knowing what they’re willing to buy isn’t enough to help you understand them as learners.
Why is this important?
It changes the questions. And the questions determine the answers. You get more impact for your effort starting with questions about learning And using those for marketing then trying to use marketing research to build a course why because the learner research will help you better understand the core of the problem and how learning can help marketing research can help you understand pain points but not what the learner thinks the solution is.
An example: When I first set out to help people with video my market research was telling me that people were overwhelmed and didn't know where to start my 15 years experience teaching video in formal education was telling me that learners new to video needed structure, but really what people need to learn to create video for their businesses was confidence. It was the thing that came up most often when I focused on what potential learners felt they needed to learn to be able to do it. I could have given them all the how-to in the world, but if they weren’t confident, then it wasn’t going to help them.
I’m not a confidence coach. I help with confidence while learning the thing, but people needed to do some work before they get to me because confidence wasn’t the thing I wanted to teach on.
How would you flip traditional marketing questions on their head to focus on learning? So there are marketing questions and then there are questions focused on marketing courses. To cut through the crap I’m going to start with course marketing questions and map learner questions to them.
This is just a short example list, and I’m going to hone in on the types of responses you might get by phrasing your question one way versus the other.
For example, if you asked someone who might potentially be interested in your course on creating a business as a mompreneur, and you ask gender, age, and socioeconomic status, what do you actually know about them? You know their gender preference, you know how old they are, and you know how much money they make. While those things can tell you about their buying power and if you want to stereotype them, it tells you what words and images and emotions you might tug on, but it tells you nothing about them as a learner.
If, instead, you asked how much time they have available to learn new things, whether they like to consume content via text, video, audio, static images, how much experience or knowledge they have about this particular topic, etc., that, my friend, will give you information you can use to design a learning experience AND turn around and sell it.
You’ll know that they only have 5 hours a week to listen to audio on their commute to and from work and kids activities and they’re brand new to the world of being an entrepreneur. This tells you it needs to be audio based with images they can look at later and that you need to start from the basic information. It also tells you that you can market the course for the busy parent who feels like a goddamn chauffeur.
You have an idea of the emotions tied to the actual problem you’re solving as opposed to making guesses based on traditional demographics.
Let’s do another one.
If you’re doing traditional market research, you might ask “What challenges are you facing in starting your business as a mompreneur?” That will give you insight into an issue they feel like they’re having in getting started. It might be time, it might be not knowing where to start and then getting overwhelmed, climbing back into bed and crying - just kidding they have kids there is no climbing back into bed.
This can help you sell to the particular pain point that they list, but does it tell you their pain points in making a change?
If you focus, instead, on asking what change they hope to make in taking a course on starting a business as a mompreneur and what goals they’d have coming in, then you know what’s going on in their lives that feels like a mountain, what goals they’d be coming to you with (so you can make sure those are in alignment). This will help you create a course that includes removing obstacles to change. And then you can turn around and sell to those emotions - sell to the change you can help them make.
Ok, last one. If you ask a busy mompreneur in the making how much they’re willing to pay for an online course, all you have is a number that may or not be arbitrary. Even if you asked specifically about buying a course on getting started as a mompreneur, all you know is a potential price. That’s not bad information, but it’s only good for selling. If you start out with asking what makes a training VALUABLE to them, then you know what they value in a learning experience. You can follow it up with asking the money question if you need it, but the value outside of the money is critical to your course.
What other common marketing questions can we flip the script on? Let me know in the comments!
Comments
Post a Comment