Advertising online education is a whole thing on its own. To make ads successful for online courses, you need a different approach compared to other marketing channels like organic traffic and email marketing. 

Don’t be one of the many people that fail because they attempt to run ads with the wrong mindset and strategy.

Get out of the short-term mindset! 

Educators and creators that put out online courses and educational products often have misconceptions about how ads work, leading them to quit too early when they don’t see immediate results. 

This combination of unrealistic expectations and a flawed approach prevents them from achieving their desired outcomes.

To get started successfully, you need to focus on a few foundational elements both in terms of mindset, and consequently, of strategy.

Commit to the Process for the Success of Your Online Courses

Commit to the process of running ads for your online courses with a long-term mindset. Avoid the approach of trying it out half-heartedly with a minimal budget and no real plan to hold yourself accountable and stick to it.

Embrace continuous improvement by always testing and investing strategically in this channel. Advertising works, especially if you have a good product and solid organic traction. You just have to dedicate yourself to the ongoing process of refinement and growth.

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Think of advertising as a long-term strategy for your business, not just a one-month experiment. 

This in no way means throwing money at the process without seeing any returns. It’s about consistently improving your approach within a sustainable budget, actually achieving measurable results and continually optimizing and moving forward based on these results.

Maximizing Budget and Time

Many fail with ads because they don’t commit enough time or budget. They spend a couple of hundred dollars, run ads for a few weeks, test only a few variations and neglect proper tracking. Then, they conclude that ads just don’t work for them. This is both short-sighted and ineffective. 

Instead allocate a consistent budget each month to correctly approach ads like the long-term investment they are. Think of it as a continuous process that will be running for your business for years to come. 

Advertising online education successfully means you’re always testing and as a result always finding new winning audiences, entry points into your funnel and offers that resonate with your audience. 

Paid traffic is different from organic traffic and it’s important you recognize this fact as it also means admitting you’re in need of a different strategy.

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What works for your organic, won’t work for your paid campaigns.

Your organic audience is already familiar with you. They are the ones that follow you, subscribe to your emails and overall have developed a trusting relationship with you and your brand. 

When you post to this audience, you might see immediate results. Paid traffic is a different beast entirely. You cannot expect your results to be the same or to obtain them as straightforwardly as pitching your email list a new product. 

With ads, the noticeable results won’t show up right away, and this is what typically makes people steer clear of incorporating them into their business strategy.

But organic growth invariably hits a ceiling, limiting how far your brand can go. Paid traffic, on the other hand, gives you the means to tap into large audiences as you leverage platforms like Meta and Google, bringing in people that haven’t discovered your brand yet. 

Keep in mind that paid traffic is about paying to get more people to see your brand and enter your funnel. But just like with organic traffic, it takes time for new audiences to warm up to you. So you may pay for their initial engagement without seeing immediate returns.

Understand your metrics so that you can set realistic expectations and view paid and organic strategies differently. This is a mindset shift that’s essential for long-term success with ads.

Key Metrics for Online Course Ads

One common mistake people make when running ads for their online courses is not setting clear goals. They might just start running ads as an experiment without defining the outcomes they want to achieve with it. 

Naturally, there’s not much to gain from that. 

To run ads successfully for your online education business, there are 4 key metrics you should consider:

Focus on these metrics to set clear goals, measure your progress and refine your strategy to achieve better results. 

Strategic Ad Spend for Advertising Online Education 

When running ads for your online courses, a good goal is to liquidate your advertising spend each month. 

For instance, if you have a $100 course and spend $1000 on ads monthly, making 10 sales to break even might seem pointless to some as they think they’ve wasted time and money. 

They fail to understand that breaking even is actually a great initial target because of the additional benefits of advertising.

Beyond immediate sales, running ads exposes your brand to thousands of new people. These people might not buy right away, but they do become aware of your brand, choose to join your newsletter, sign up for your lead magnets, and follow you on your social media platforms. 

This is a desired engagement as over time, it increases your potential customer base.

If you have a range of products, both low-ticket and high-ticket, breaking even is a strong outcome. Those initial 10 customers of yours may purchase more products in the following months, during sales or when you release new products. They might also refer others to your brand.

Additionally, the people who saw your brand but didn’t buy immediately are now on your list and might purchase in the future. 

Breaking even month after month means you get to maintain your cash flow while continuously growing your customer base and engagement. This compounds over time, increasing your ROI and profits monthly. 

Therefore, aiming to break even on a monthly basis is quite the solid benchmark. 

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Conclusion

Running successful ads for online courses demands a unique approach. Too often, educators give up too soon, driven by unrealistic expectations and a lack of understanding about how ads truly work.

To succeed, you must shift your mindset away from short-term gains and commit to a long-term strategy. 

👉Here👈 we can help you run ads by yourself.

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Stay focused, keep learning and approach online course ads with the patience and dedication they deserve.