5 Steps to Creating Free Content That Attracts Your Ideal Customers Video Lecture | Online Course Creation: Build your Course from Scratch - Professional Skills

[Tyler] Hey, this is Tyler, and in this video,
I'm going to talk to about creating free content
that attracts your ideal customers.
So once you've got your course created, one
of the best ways you can attract students
with your course, is to create some free content,
get that content online, and let it do the
work to attract your ideal students, your
ideal customers, to you.
So in this video, I'm going to walk you through
5 steps to creating content that attracts
your ideal customers.
I'll give you an example of an article we
created to help our community and actually
ended up attracting more customers us here
at Thinkific.
So the first step to creating content that
attracts your ideal customers is to identify
who your ideal customer is.
So you got to think about who that target
audience is because if you don't know who
your target audience is, it's going to be
pretty tricky to find them on the Internet.
So you want to think ahead of time, who is
most likely to take your course, who is your
course most going to help, and who is that
ideal student for?
Once you have that clarity of who you're trying
to reach, who your course is for and who your
content is going to be for, then the next
step is to identify a specific problem that
they're facing.
So that’s step two, is to identify a specific
problem, or pain point that target audience
is facing.
And the best way to figure out what those
problems and what those pain points are, is
to look on the internet and find questions
that your target audience is asking.
And there are a lot of places you can find
people asking questions.
One of them is Cora.com.
Start typing in some keywords related to your
course, your industry, your niche, and you'll
see people asking questions about that topic
on Cora.
Again, a question is a reflection of a pain
point or struggle that somebody's facing.
It's something that they're stuck on, and
they're going to the internet asking questions
to try to get the answers to help them solve
the problem.
So Cora is a great place you can go.
Another place you can go is Facebook groups
or LinkedIn groups, and pay attention to the
questions people are asking within those groups,
and again you're looking for groups that are
related to your topic, to your industry.
Another place you can find questions is in
the comments sections of blogs about your
topic, and also in the reviews of books on
Amazon that are related to your topic.
A lot of complaints, frustrations, and questions
appear in those comments and in those reviews
on blogs and books about your topic.
And the best place to get some questions from
your audience, if you have an audience, is
to ask them directly.
So if you got people on the email list.
send them an email that says, “Hey what
are you struggling with?
What questions do you have about this topic?”.
If you've got a business already, and you
have questions coming in through customer
support, pay attention to those questions
that people are asking your support team,
those are a great indication of pain points
and the struggles that your customers are
already facing, and are looking for some answers
to.
Another thing you can do is survey your audience.
Just send them a quick survey, whether it’s
through email or through social media, and
get them to fill out some of those questions.
So that you get some of that feedback and
learn a bit more about what struggles and
what challenges they are facing.
So that’s step two.
So once you get some of those responses, and
you have a good idea of what some of the questions
your target audience is asking online, now
what you want to do is create a piece of content
that answers that specific question.
And don't hold back, try and create the best
piece of content online that addresses that
specific question.
If you found other articles on the internet
that cover the same thing, take the best from
all those articles, and even more to it and
try to publish the best article on the internet
the answers that question.
In the long run that will outrank those other
piece of content and those other articles
that are already on the internet, and you'll
start to attract all those people that are
searching Google, or search some forums, searching
some blogs and they're searching for the answer
to that question people are going to start
recommending your article as go-to resource
for them to find the answers that question.
Step for, is to create what I call a content
upgrade.
So this is a free resource that you give away
from your piece of content, so if it was an
article for example, at the end of the article
you want to give away something that they
would actually have to download, and give
you their email address in exchange for it.
You might call this a lead magnet, I would
prefer to just call it a free resource, or
a content upgrade.
It could be some additional training, maybe
a checklist, or a worksheet, or you know a
PDF document, or a summary of that longer
article that you just published.
Something that complements the content that
you published, and that's helpful for them,
and the reason you're doing this is because
you want to be capturing the email addresses
of those people who just consumed your free
content.
If you don't capture their email addresses
you have no way of contacting them afterward.
They might move on to other websites, and
never come back and find your site again.
So, you want to give them something that has
an incentive for them to give you their email
address.
Step 5, is one somebody is on your email list,
in your newsletter.
Step 5 is to guide them through a sales process
of some kind.
So nobody's just going to magically and rolling
your course.
You actually have to introduce your course
to them.
So you can do this in the emails that you
sent to those people who have just recently
read your free content.
You might invite them to the webinar, where
you introduce your course them.
You might even send them directly to your
core sales page, but the important thing is
that you do have some kind of sales process
that takes people from just a casual reader
of your blog, or maybe a listen to your podcast,
or a view of your videos to now considering
taking your course.
There needs to be a process in the middle
there that helps bridge the gap.
So those of the five steps to creating free
content that actually helps attract your ideal
customers and your ideal students for your
online course, and I'll just wrap up with
a very quick example.
So at Thinkific, one of the questions that
we get a lot from our community of online
course craters is how do I price my course?
I've created my course, but I don't know what
to charge for it.
We get that question coming through our Facebook
group, I've seen it asked another Facebook
groups, book reading courses online.
It gets asked our support team, through customer
support, so I know this is a topic and a challenge
that a lot of course creators are facing.
So what I did, is I went out and scared the
internet for a bunch of resources on how to
price your online course.
I talked to a bunch of course creators, I
talk to people here at the team at Thinkific,
and I ended up writing the longest article
on the internet that I found so far on how
to price your online course, and that's exactly
what I called it.
How to price your online course.
It helped all the people in our community
who are struggling to price their online course,
but it would also do because it was such a
helpful piece of content, was it got shared
around the web, and it tracked the other people
who are not even using Thinkific yet, who
are also wondering the same thing, how do
I price my online course.
They ended up finding that article, in the
article is a content upgrade, a worksheet
you can download.
If you're trying to figure out how to price
your online course, that gets people in our
newsletter, and once somebody is in our newsletter,
we offer them a chance to try our software
Thinkific to help them create and sell their
online courses.
So that article, free piece of content, solves
a very specific problem that our community
was facing.
It helps our existing customers, and it brought
new customers for Thinkific as well.
So that's just an example of how you can implement
these five steps in your business, and with
your online course, providing that free content
that helps your target audience with a very
specific problem.
Make sure you get them on an email list, and
once they're on an email list you can introduce
them to your online course, or any other products
and services that you offer.
So thanks for watching and I'll see you in
future videos of TeachOnlineTV.