Get Happy Customers to Promote Your Online Course With Word-of-Mouth Marketing

6 minute read

Have you ever recommended a new restaurant or your favorite shopping place to a friend?

Then you know what word-of-mouth marketing is about.

As the name suggests, word-of-mouth marketing means promoting a product or service by leveraging what your customers are saying about your business. This type of marketing strategy often happens through a system of referrals and suggestions from person to person.

Word-of-mouth marketing is very simple and nothing fancy, yet it probably is the most powerful marketing strategy you can use to drive engagement and hype around your brand.

92% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product or service after reading a trusted review.

The key to word-of-mouth marketing is making your customers happy.

There is no secret tactic or complicated funnel involved: all you have to do is strive to provide value to your customers, offer excellent service and do anything in your power to get your customers talking and spreading the word about your business.

So how can you start leveraging word-of-mouth marketing to promote your online course business?

In today's article, we'll share our favorite ways to kick start your word-of-mouth marketing campaign and make your customers happy.

One of the challenges related to getting your customers talking about your business is that people are more willing to talk about a bad experience they had rather than a good one. Generally, in order for people to sing praise about a business, they need to have an extraordinary experience: "good" is not enough to get people talking.

For example, if you go to a restaurant and you leave thinking that the food was just "ok," you are probably not going to advertise it to all of your friends. While if you had a terrible experience with the service and food, you'd want to warn your friends about it immediately. However, for you to sign praise about the restaurant, you'll need to experience fantastic food and exceptional service.

This is why businesses that go above and beyond to satisfy their customers make the most out of word-of-mouth marketing.

So let's see some ideas you can implement to get started with word-of-mouth marketing.

#1: Craft an Amazing Customer Experience

The most important step toward leveraging word-of-mouth marketing is creating an outstanding customer experience. Without this, you cannot have word-of-mouth marketing (and if your customers are not happy with your course, you really don't want them talking to others).

So before we get into ways to push word-of-mouth marketing, it is essential that you have polished your online course and that you are ready to provide excellent customer support.

Depending how involved you plan to be with your online course, there are many things you can do to improve the customer experience in your program, let's see a few:

Welcome New Students Personally

Whenever you get a new student enrolled in your online course, why not welcome them with a personalized email? They will truly appreciate your dedication and feel welcomed into the course.

Welcome emails are a great way to start building a personal connection with your students, one that you will nurture throughout the program and will eventually lead to word-of-mouth marketing.

If you get hundreds of new students enrolled every day and you do not have time to send a personal email to each of them, you can set an automation in place and customize your welcome email. Check out this article to get more inspiration about emails: 7 Emails You Need to Send to Promote Your Online Course

Check-In With Students as They Progress

Online course creators often make the mistake of stopping to engage with their students once they make a sale. Your first sale is only the beginning of your relationship with your customers.

You can email or message your students once in a while after they purchase your course and ask them if they need any assistance or whether they have any questions. This can also help you create engagement and remind those students who didn't enroll yet about your online course.

If they don't have any questions, they will appreciate your concern. If they do have questions or are experiencing a problem, you will help them solve it, and they will be grateful for your assistance.

Offer One-on-One Support

Another way to deepen your connection with your students and provide excellent service is to offer one-on-one support.

Depending on the overall value of your course, this can be a free service or a paid add-on. In any case, connecting with your students directly and talking to them will help you leverage word-of-mouth marketing.

#2: Start a Referral or Affiliate Program

Now that you have planned how to provide great value to your students and offer great customer service, it is time to implement a few strategies to kick-start word-of-mouth marketing.

A referral program is one of the most straightforward ways to do this. An example of a referral program can be offering an incentive to your students for bringing new customers and referring friends to your online course.

So you could say that for each new sale your customers bring you, they'll get a discount on another product you offer or a monetary reward.

A similar way to approach this is by setting up your own affiliate program, where students or influencers who promote your course and bring new sales get a commission on your earnings.

Learn all about setting up an affiliate program for your online course business here: A Complete Guide on How to Launch an Affiliate Program to Promote Your Online Course

Developing your own affiliate program can be extremely challenging if you do not use a platform that does this for you. Heights Platform lets you launch your affiliate program from any pricing plan, and it’s absolutely free if you already have an account!

#3: Build a Community

An online community is a space in your online course where students can interact with each other, share ideas, discuss course topics and connect with you.

A community can help you drive up engagement, secure customer loyalty and provide even more value to your students: it is also a way to deliver outstanding customer service that will generate word-of-mouth marketing.

Heights Platform lets you build an online community right inside your program, so members can easily switch between your courses, challenges, community space, and coaching and browse all your product offerings from one place.

If you want to learn all about creating your online community, check out these articles from our blog:

#4: Connect With a Worthy Cause

Studies show that 63% of consumers prefer companies that align with their values, such as sustainability, climate change fight or racial equality.

If you manage to associate your business with a charitable or worthy cause, it will give your customers and even influencers additional reasons to promote your brand and partner with you.

To do this, you could choose to donate a percentage of your earnings to a charity or a non-profit organization of your choice.

The point here is to demonstrate how your values align with those of your customers. Charities are often strict about how you can use their name or logo in your marketing, so the fact that you are making a donation cannot be abused for profit.

#5: Promote With Influencers

Influencer Marketing is a strategy where "influencers" - social media users with a large following in their niche - review or promote your online business.

Promoting your online course with influencer marketing can have a great impact on your website traffic and boost word-of-mouth marketing, simply because influencers have gained the trust of their followers, and their recommendations can provide all the social proof the buyer needs.

Look out for influential people in your niche or area and contact them, asking them how you can partner together to promote your business. While it may cost money to promote with an influencer, it is often a much better return on investment when compared to spending money on traditional online advertising.

#6: Encourage User-Generated Content

UGC (user-generated content) is content created and shared by consumers themselves about brands or products. Research shows that 86% of millennials trust UGC as an indicator of the quality of a business.

If one of your online course students shares a post on social media reviewing your online course, this is considered user-generated content.

This type of content is word-of-mouth marketing, and it has the power to build trust and increase social proof around your brand.

To encourage user-generated content, start sharing on social media, create your own unique hashtag, ask your customers to share pictures or videos of their achievements and so on...

Customer reviews are another way to show your word-of-mouth marketing and can make a huge difference in your sales.

So make sure you are showcasing your positive testimonials wherever your can on your website, landing pages and social media platforms.

If you need some ideas to gather customers reviews, check out this article from our blog: 7 Quick Tips to Collect Reviews Easily and Increase Social Proof in Your Online Course

Conclusion

Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful yet relatively inexpensive and easy strategy for growing your online course business.

Before you start implementing this strategy, make sure you are providing value to your students and that you use an online course platform that helps you support this.

Heights Platform is the all-in-one online course platform that offers everything you need to deliver outstanding courses and leverage word-of-mouth advertising with features such as an affiliate program, online community, gamification tools, projects and much more.

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Post Topics: Build and Promote Your Course