Create a marketing plan

You'll need a marketing plan, budget and time to create marketing materials to attract learners to your course. Make sure you start work on this several months before your course starts.

What affects how you'll market your course

How you promote your course depends on:

who you're trying to attract
how much budget you have
how much marketing time and expertise you have

You should have thought about how to market your course at the planning stage.

After your course idea is approved, you'll need to think about and then create the marketing materials.聽

Any marketing materials you create must meet the standards of聽麻豆传媒视频网站's brand.

Why marketing short courses is different to other 麻豆传媒视频网站 programmes

Marketing short courses and CPD (continuing professional development) can be different because:

the buyer's decision can be complex (it could be based on e.g. cost, employment status, caring responsibilities)
you may need to make a commercial case for why a learner should do your course

In some sectors, 麻豆传媒视频网站 is a strong brand. But in many markets or countries, people will not know聽麻豆传媒视频网站.

People might think that university or academic-based training is not commercial or vocational enough.

So, you'll need to clearly explain the benefits of attending your course.

Write a marketing plan

Your marketing plan should include:

what you're going to do
who's going to do it (if you're sharing the work with colleagues)
when you're going to do it, and any relevant deadlines
how you'll know if it's worked (ideally, how you'll measure success)

Before writing your plan, think about:

who your audience is
what makes your course unique
what your marketing messages might be
what marketing channels would be best to use

Writing down a plan is a good idea because it:

becomes your 'to do' list
allows you to organise your time, so you're not doing everything at the last minute
helps you spread resources and divide up the work
allows you to聽spot opportunities you hadn't thought of before
means you can share your plan and get help and support聽

What to include in your marketing plan

You'll probably want to include tasks such as:

creating a course description and links (for example, in your email signature) that can attract learners
using social media, forums, discussion groups and colleagues to promote your course
collecting feedback to improve and promote your course (for example, through learner case studies)
identifying partners to deliver or promote your course

Use solution-focused marketing: solve problems for your learners

Asking people to come on a course can be a difficult thing to sell. Instead, you can approach it as offering a solution to a problem you know your audience has.聽

Tell learners how your course or CPD can:

give them a way to make their business more profitable or competitive
help them to develop their career, get promoted or make them more employable
give them skills that will benefit their customers
inspire or develop their hobby, interest or passion

If you can, quote some relevant research that highlights the problem or shows how your 'solution' can help.

Show learners how your course has helped people like them

If you've run your course before, one of the most powerful marketing tools is to write up or film a case study from a learner who's completed your course.

Surveys like the聽聽consistently show that people trust 'someone like them' when making decisions about organisations.

Example: a solution-focused email campaign

Here's an example of how to plan a potential solution-focused email campaign for a deaf awareness course aimed at NHS staff.

Email 1:聽Sent three聽months before course starts

Problems your audience faces:

time and money
slow bed turnover in hospitals, which can cause congestion and high costs

How your course can help:聽If staff can communicate more effectively with those with hearing problems (including the elderly), it could help them discharge people more efficiently.

Details to include:聽Figures on bed turnover and numbers of people in hospitals with hearing problems.

Email 2: Sent two聽months before course starts

Problems your audience faces:

resources, time and money
poor quality, or lack of, interpreters and/or relevant equipment could lead to ineffective or cancelled appointments which waste resources

How your course can help:聽If you can make it easier for staff to communicate with deaf patients, it could mean fewer wasted appointments and better customer satisfaction.

Details to include:聽Figures on wasted appointments in the NHS due to hearing issues, money spent on interpreting and related equipment.

Use 'content marketing' to sell your course

Content marketing is about producing or sharing interesting, valuable and relevant information for your target audience. Doing this will engage and attract them to what you're doing.

In other words, you give away a 'taste' of the course to entice them to sign up to your course and learn more.

Examples of content marketing include:

case studies: stories to inspire your audience or聽let them know they're not alone
'how to' guides, expert advice or top tips
excerpts from research
related or accompanying webinars or podcasts

Successful content marketing should:

be sharable (for example by email or on social media)
include a call to action, reminding learners that you're running a course and they can sign up to learn more
be a long-term strategy (for example, you usually can't do content marketing聽one month before a course begins and expect significant results)

Examples: content marketing

1. Write a relevant article

Dr Joe Devlin runs a neuromarketing short course at 麻豆传媒视频网站. He published聽. He then devoted the last paragraph to his course.

This article could then:

be shared on social media
be emailed to his target list
include a link to his course description page

2. Create a guide or tool

罢丑颈蝉听聽explains how The Cleveland Clinic created a tool about analysing urine colour to drive users to their website.

3. Use someone else's content

Dr John Sterman at MIT wrote a great article about .

麻豆传媒视频网站 was running a course on this, so聽we shared a link to his article on Twitter. We included a call to action for users to sign up to our course to learn more.

Use relevant content to create a free pop-up ad for your course

You can try and use聽聽to link to interesting, relevant content online that:

is not yours
you can't edit (to add or link to your course description)

Sniply is a free tool for sharing links to web pages. When the user lands on the page, they also see a pop-up ad you've created.

Sniply doesn't work for all websites, but it's a very handy tool.

Getting help with marketing

Speak to:

麻豆传媒视频网站 Communications and Marketing
your departmental or faculty marketing colleague

麻豆传媒视频网站