Customer acquisition is a challenge for self-employed trainers and academies! A free demo course can help you with this. Why you should have a free offer and how to build a successful acquisition course with blink.it is explained in the article:
Digital education is booming, not least due to the current Corona crisis. Self-employed trainers and educational providers in academies who sell their online courses to companies feel this too. The demand is huge, but the competition for valuable new customers is also high. You might also be asking yourself how you can stand out from the crowd of providers, gain new leads, and boost your course sales.
A simple and effective option is free demo courses. However, your knowledge is valuable. And in the market, it often holds true that “What costs nothing is worth nothing.” Many trainers and academies shy away from offering content for free. Yet, the concept is both simple and effective – if you implement it correctly! To successfully sell online courses, we will answer the most important questions about free acquisition courses:
Why should you make your knowledge available for free?
What content should be included in your free demo course?
And how do you create an effective demo course with blink.it?
1. Why should you make your knowledge available for free?
A free demo course is fundamentally about giving your future customers an insight. In addition to specific knowledge, interested parties get an impression of you as a trainer, your methods, and goals.
In practice, free demo courses have three major advantages in customer acquisition:
The “barrier” is very low. Signing up for a free course, initially without obligations, is easier for many people than making a phone call or scheduling a personal appointment. You should definitely not neglect step two, the direct contact. We will get into that later when discussing “content.”
You have a unique selling proposition! Currently, free courses, especially among trainers, are still relatively rare. This conveys to your future customers the impression of a very modern and customer-oriented working style – a clear plus for you.
You save time! Developing new advertising materials, keeping the website up to date, and searching for new sources or contacts often takes too much time. However, if your online course is already fixed and ready for sale, you can simply reuse the content. Your content is, after all, your finished showcase – so use and showcase it instead of constantly creating new content for your marketing!
7 Selling Arguments as PDF
Sell online courses as training companions
Do you already offer your customers online support in addition to face-to-face events in a blended learning format? Then convince them with these 7 arguments for your online support:
2. What content should be included in your free demo course?
In the free demo course, ideally, you provide little knowledge, but rather create awareness for a problem. Small bites are totally sufficient. Your demo course is not meant to replace the paid course but is merely a kind of “teaser”: Focus on you and your training concept!
Selection: What content should I choose?
Below you will find a quick overview to help you select the right content for your acquisition course:
| Well suited for acquisition courses | Not suitable for acquisition courses || ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- || Content that showcases you and your concept and creates awareness for the customer's problem | Standard content without reference to you, your specific concept, or the problem you can solve || Theoretical content or basics on the core topic of your online course | Practical exercises and transfer content – implementation tips are of course in the paid offer || Teaser videos with a maximum length of 1-2 minutes (snippets from longer videos) | Long training videos or comprehensive presentations |
With these ideas, you can now go through your paid course. Consider which content meets these criteria and how much knowledge you want to disclose before your actual course.
Length: How much content do I need?
When selecting the content for your free demo course, you should consider how long your course should be. In practice, based on our experience, two concepts are particularly effective:
The One-Day Demo: This variant is very suitable if your paid course is a pure online course. You create a mini version of your large course, always selecting the first content from each learning section. Depending on the scope of your course, you then have about five to ten individual learning contents in the demo course. Interested parties can go through such a one-day course in a few minutes and quickly come to a purchasing decision.
The One-Week Demo: A one-week demo course is the right choice if your course is to accompany learners over several weeks. An example of this would be blended learning courses that you complement with face-to-face events or webinars. Time your content so that your future customers receive 2-3 pieces of content per day. Also, incorporate “blocker content” where personal support would take place if they purchased the entire course.
Some trainers or academies also offer longer demos over 14 or even 30 days. However, we do not recommend such long demo courses. After all, the interested party should also decide soon. Moreover, corporate customers often face time pressure to quickly purchase a suitable online course. They often make their decision after just a few hours or days. Therefore, don't invest your time in courses that are too long. Focus on short content that quickly convinces your customers!
Free Guide
Your ultimate microlearning guide for online courses
Your course should be short but motivating! The best fit for this are microlearning-style contents. How to create such content and entire microlearning courses is explained in the “ultimate microlearning guide”:
Conclusion: How do I convert my demo course visitors?
Once the demo course is finished, your new leads should of course become customers for your online course as well. And that is the most important part of your entire demo: The Call To Action, which is the actual call to action in the course! How your CTA looks depends heavily on your product or online course. The key factors here are concept and price.
Some successful CTA ideas from practice:
For all online courses: “Sign up for the newsletter now,” if you use this to regularly inform about news. Alternatively, “Recommend to colleagues now,” so that interested parties can spread your demo online course through social media, for example.
Pure online courses under 500€ purchase price: “Buy now” or “View course selection now.” For this, you need a connection to a shop system or a suitable overview on your website that you can link to.
Pure online courses over 500€ purchase price: “Book a phone appointment now” for further consultation or quote preparation. Alternatively: “Arrange a strategy meeting now” - here, the focus for the customer is the follow-up care. You can use online appointment booking software that aligns with the appointments in your calendar.
Blended learning courses: “Schedule an appointment for a personalized offer now” or “Book a phone appointment now.” For individualized, costly concepts with personal contact, phone calls are the most successful.
3. How do you create an effective acquisition course with blink.it?
You now know why a demo online course makes sense for you as a trainer for customer acquisition. And which contents are best suited for your demo course. The last step is the practical implementation. We will show you, using an example, how your demo course for customer acquisition with blink.it can look.
The fictional demo course “Providing Good Feedback” teases a paid online course. This is a complete 4-week online program where teams in companies learn to give and receive better feedback. And this is how the demo course is structured:
A short introductory video: The trainer welcomes the interested parties and briefly introduces themselves and the topic.
Four short learning contents on the four focus areas in the 4-week program. Each content (“Blink”) consists of a short video or graphic where the respective topic is briefly teased in its basic aspects. The contents are kept rather general and do not provide tips for practical implementation yet.
The first CTA: “The 4-week program – Book now!”. Interested parties can purchase the course directly here if they decide quickly.
The second CTA (Follow-Up): This content automatically appears 7 days after the start of the course. This way, interested parties are reminded of the course and the offer. A phone consultation is also offered.
The appearance: The demo course is your new showcase! So, you should also pay attention to the appearance. Here are 4 tips for designing blink.it courses. In this example, appropriate preview images are provided – a quick but very effective enhancement of the course!
And that’s it for the complete demo course for customer acquisition. You can set up the blink.it course so that every interested party can directly participate in the course without a personal invitation as soon as they have the link. The link to the course can be easily shared, for example, on your website, in a newsletter, or via social media. You do not have to create the individual Blinks anew. You can simply copy them from your actual course – saving additional time. This way, you can create such an acquisition course in under an hour and use it directly!
Due to the simple and intuitive operation, a blink.it course is perfect for customer acquisition (and also for your other online courses): Your interested parties will immediately find their way around and can focus directly on your content.
Do you want to try blink.it yourself to create your own online courses and such an acquisition course? Then test blink.it now with the free online demo: Participate in our own demo course “Personality Productivity” and then create your own content in your test course!
