According to Reuters, the global e-Learning market is on track to hit $275.10 billion by 2022. This means the online course market is one of the fastest growing industries on the internet. To date, Thinkific course creators have earned more than $200 million teaching their expertise.
To help you tap into this opportunity and make the most of your year ahead, we looked to our top course creators and compiled a summary of five key trends to watch in 2020 to level up your business.
Here’s a sample of one of the key trends to watch in 2020.
Your Customers Are Your Best Marketing Tool
Too many course creators are fixated on customer acquisition. Like ravishing beasts, all they want is more. In this tireless hunt for new customers, they often overlook the most valuable customers of all – their current customers.
In 2020, successful course creators will ditch the traditional sales funnel in favor of a model that goes beyond the sale: the marketing flywheel.
Jim Collins explains the marketing flywheel concept perfectly. “A flywheel is an incredibly heavy wheel that takes huge effort to push. Keep pushing, and the flywheel builds momentum, eventually turning itself and generating its own momentum – this is when a company goes from good to great. A flywheel is also a self-reinforcing loop made up of a few key initiatives. Those initiatives feed on, and are in turn driven by each other, building a long-term business.”
As a course creator, one of the most important things you can do to ensure you build this momentum is to focus on providing a great student experience. By building high quality training and ensuring your audience finds value in your content, you’ll increase your overall customer lifetime value (LTV) and spark your referral engine.
Building Your Marketing Flywheel:
1) Start the momentum by inviting your audience to enrol in your online course. If you only have a small audience, make it a priority to monitor their activity closely, and make sure their success is a high priority. If you already have a large audience, inviting them into your program will get you started with some wind behind your sails.
2) Once you have a group of students who have experienced your program, identify where they received the most value by surveying them, and looking at course completion rates.
3) Ask your students for testimonials and add these to your marketing materials to leverage social proof.
4) Provide your audience with the tools to advocate on your behalf. Give them swag or marketing material. You can even consider incentivizing them to promote your programs.
5) Create a repeatable workflow based on feedback received from your students, and aim to automate touchpoints with your audience. Setting up an automated email workflow is a great way to optimize your program and provide increased value to your audience.
6) Continue spinning this flywheel and soon enough you’ll see your efforts pay off though customer advocacy raising your business to unparalleled success.
