As a marketing coach, I encourage my clients to use simple and low or no-cost marketing strategies to promote their business. Writing an e-course is a wonderful way to promote your business, while providing value to your current or prospective customers. In
simplest terms, an e-course is a series of e-mails that are delivered at pre-defined intervals which contain valuable content around a specific topic. E-courses consist of “lessons” which are loaded into autoresponders which automatically e-mail lessons to your opt-in list. So what do you need to know before you write your first e-course? 1. Getting started. So what do you need to get started? First and foremost, you need a good idea or concept that you can teach someone about through an e-course. For example, if you are a coach, you might offer a short course on how to write a personal vision statement or how to realize your dreams. If you are a writer, you might write a course on how to write an article. If you are a consultant, consider an e-course on key components of an effective proposal. Once you have your idea, think of 5 to 10 key points about topic. These will become subjects of individual lessons.
2. Make it short and sweet. An introductory e-course can be as long as you want it to be. It could be a short as a couple emails or as many as one hundred. If you don’t want to annoy your subscribers or lose them altogether, I would suggest assembling a 5 to 10 lesson e-course. By keeping it short, there is a greater chance you’ll complete writing of it so that you will have a nice free or fee-based product to offer to others. In addition, your subscribers will probably read it because they know they won’t be inundated with lessons from now until end of time!
3. We deliver. Once you’ve completed “lessons” which comprise your e-course, you’ll need to determine a delivery schedule. Do you want subscribers to receive a lesson every day or would you rather they receive it periodically? With today’s autoresponder technology, you can set up your e-course to be delivered at whatever interval you desire. If you want to deliver one lesson per day, you will set interval to one. If you wish to deliver one message per week, you can set interval to 7, or any other interval that works for you. I suggest allowing at least a week between emails, so just as someone is about to forget who you are, another email from you pops into their inbox. There are a number of free and low-fee autoresponders available through www.freeautobot.com, www.sendfree.com, and www.getresponse.com.
4. Free or fee? That is question. Short e-courses are usually offered for free, whereas longer ones which contain more proprietary content can range in price from a few dollars to even several hundred dollars. When you’re just starting out, I suggest offering them for free. Whether free or fee, it is important to make sure that they contain information of value. Never fill an e-course with fluff or shameless self-promotion. If you do, rest assured you will have many people unsubscribing. In today’s competitive marketing environment, a savvy marketer knows that to attract and retain clients, they need to offer value and substance.
5. It’s all about solving problems. So how do you add value to your e-course. The best way to add value is by offering information that a reader can use today which will make a difference in their life. People are busy, really busy. They’re bombarded with over 4,000 marketing messages each day. They work, have families to take care of, along with many other responsibilities. Believe me, reason they’re subscribing to your e-course is not to have one more thing to do. Rather, your e-course title or subject probably struck a chord within them. The reason people buy anything is to solve a problem. If they’ve “bought” into your e-course, they feel it’s going to help them with something they need resolved. If you want them as a client, you’re going to need to do your best to convince them that you have solutions.
