Top 10 Best Ways To Market Your Course, Class or Workshop Business

Looking for the best ways to market your teaching business and get more bookings? We have you covered with our top 10 best ways to market your courses, classes and workshops. Whether you're on a shoestring budget or just looking for more inventive and creative ways to get out there, we can help.

If you’re new to marketing your online courses and in-person classes, putting together the best marketing strategy may seem overwhelming. But don’t worry, you can do this! You may be thinking you need to speak to a consultant at a marketing agency to see if their company can manage your marketing campaign. However, with these simple marketing solutions, the truth is you can definitely market your teaching business online yourself!

Baluu is an all in one booking software and teaching platform that can help with many of the marketing methods listed below!

The top 10 best ways to market your course, class and workshop:

1. Facebook advertising
2. Craft Fairs
3. Instagram
4. Reviews
5. Newsletters
6. Offers
7. Youtube
8. Photography
9. Corporate events
10. Free trials

1. Facebook advertising

Although this comes at a cost, this form of marketing is a fantastic way to reach new customers online in a targeted way. In this day and age, tackling social media is essential for marketing your classes! It's an important way to market your class, connect with the world's largest social network, and find your target audience. With Facebook's micro-targeting feature, you can get your message in front of the right people at the right time.

With it's targeted approach, using Facebook advertising to market your classes is one of the best ways to get amazing return on investment.

There are many ways this form of marketing can benefit your teaching business,

• Your classes will become more visible to a large audience of potential students (over 2 billion people use Facebook each month!)
• Teachers can specifically market to their target audience. For example, teachers who run hen party craft workshops can make sure women over the age of 18 are more likely to see their ads
• Facebook allows teachers to use videos as well as images in their ads.
• Users of this social media network can tag their friends in your ads or share your ad with their friends.

To get started, you'll need to set up a Facebook page. Make sure your page is full on content and links to your website (if you have one!)

Next, you'll need an amazing piece of content which you will use in your ad, video works best. Then test different audiences e.g. male vs female and different age ranges.

The aim of marketing your course on Facebook, is of course, to boost your sales and bookings! Students that discover your classes through Facebook, may want to book your classes on Facebook too. Facebook allows you to link to your website so students an book directly from your website.

However, many booking softwares, such as baluu, can integrate with Facebook! This means students who view your ad can easily book your classes without leaving Facebook.

Baluu is an all in one booking software and teaching platform which helps teachers manage their teaching business and take bookings. With Baluu, teachers can create a customised booking widget which can be integrated into their Facebook page. Another great thing about Baluu, is that teachers can manage bookings from their website, Facebook page or anywhere else they list their classes all in one place!

As well as helping teachers market classes, baluu can also help businesses organise bookings for events and experiences!

2. Arts, Craft and Food Fairs

Another cost to factor in to your marketing budgets. Craft and art fairs can range from the very expensive to completely free community projects. We have some of the best craft and art fairs across the UK so it shouldn't be hard to find one near you!

Putting you face to face with your customers, craft and art fairs are a great place to research your target market better and understand exactly what they are looking for in a course or workshop.

Whether you sell the products you also teach how to make, or invite passers by to take part in mini workshops during the fair, it's a great place to answer questions and explain more about you and what you do.

Arts, craft and food fairs are not only a fun way to market your classes, these fairs can benefit your marketing strategy for many reasons,

• Teachers can get direct feedback and reviews from customers which they can take on board.
• This is an opportunity to refine your classes. Teachers may choose to shape their classes around customers feedback.
• Understanding what makes your classes stand out and what students enjoy about your classes means when you do choose to run paid ads, you can emphasise these aspects of your classes and perhaps your USP.
• When attending a craft fair, you are not only getting student insights regarding your class, you're also selling your products and your classes. A true win-win!

This marketing strategy may be beneficial for teachers who are in the early stages of their teaching career. This marketing techniques allows teachers to get perspective about what elements of their class attracts students, which is valuable for marketing their classes in the future!

3. Instagram

With the growing influencer culture, Instagram is a very simple but effective way to market your courses. Your presence on social media will say a lot about you and your brand. It's a place where many customers go to view your recent activity and become more familiar with your brand, making it an amazing place to start marketing your courses!

Using Instagram to market your classes is a great way to grow your brand awareness and market new classes, courses and workshops. When you've got a new class or date coming up, you can keep your customers up to date in real time and link straight to your website for booking.

Many teachers may already have a personal Instagram account, to get started they will need to create an account for their teaching business. There are many tips and tricks that make using Instagram to market your courses very easy!

• Creating a business Instagram account gives teachers more features than a personal Instagram account. Teachers can schedule posts, view Instagram insights and much more!
• As Instagram is owned by Facebook, you can take advantage of the same audience targeting tools we discussed in the Facebook section of this post.
• Teachers can upload lots of amazing SEO (search engine optimisation) content for their classes.
• Add contact information to your business profile so students can message you and enquiry instantly.

Most likely you are a small business, which makes Instagram a great place to market your classes as you don't have to be a large enterprise to download and get started. Teachers are effectively using Instagram everyday, and you can too!

4. Reviews

What people say about your business is as important as what people see. Building a bank of good reviews for your classes, courses and workshops is a fantastic way to market your classes and build a community of students who will come back.

As you can imagine, this form of marketing is a significant way you can boost your bookings and sales! Students are more likely to book if they can see previous student reviews, here are some other reasons reviews are important!

• Replying to customer reviews shows potential students that you are proactive about communicating with customers.
• Having reviews on your classes improves SEO, which means more students are likely to find your class in the future!

Encourage students to leave a review after your class and more will follow. Baluu helps teachers in a number of different ways, even with getting reviews! When using the Baluu dashboard, teachers can send notifications which prompts students to leave a review. In case you already have reviews on third-party review sites like Google, you can add them to your website using a Google review widget.

5. Email Newsletters & Building A Mailing List

Once you've built a community of students, bring them back by reminding them what's on offer weekly or monthly in targeted email campaigns. Creating an email campaign can also alert students of new classes or discount codes!

Sending email newsletters to your community is a fantastic way to reach your customers regularly, and reward those who have subscribed with you. There are many other benefits of creating an email campaign,

• Creating an email campaign is a very simple marketing solution as it is very easy to get started!
• Teachers can remind students of their classes and engage with an audience that is already interested in their classes.
• If teachers have a tight budget, this is a very low cost marketing technique.
• Your emails can be as fun and informative as you like! Teachers can design the emails to reflect their brand as well as give updates to students.
• As well as promoting new and upcoming classes, email campaigns can be used to fill last minute spaces, offer discounts or early access tickets to your most loyal customers.

We recommend using a platform like Mailchimp to manage your lists and send campaigns. They provide a free widget that you can add to your website to grow subscribers. However, a booking software like Baluu also allows businesses to send customised emails to students too!

If you already have an audience and website that has event tracking you can utilize the power of abandoned cart copy to prompt those who left items in their cart to complete their purchase, ensuring maximum conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

6. Special Offers

Special offers, discounts and vouchers are a great way to get going and booking out your class. Although they aren't what you should use to sell every ticket, they can be very useful at reaching your baseline for minimum bookings on a class.

Offers and discounts are a fantastic way to reward loyal customers. You can share these in your email campaigns, social media or website, and decide whether you want to keep some exclusive, or open to all at certain times (e.g. the anniversary of the start of your business).There are plenty of other coupon code tools that will integrate directly with your existing website and help you easily provide coupon codes and track usage.

The Baluu teaching platform comes with tools that not only guarantee a booking with your class, but also help to market your classes to a wider range of people. For every sender of a voucher, there is a recipient just waiting to discover you.

Creating a discount code with Baluu is straightforward. Their user friendly dashboard takes teachers step-by-step through the process of making discounts! This keep teachers and students happy- another win-win!

7. YouTube

Similar to using Instagram, YouTube is a great social media tool to help market your classes in a visual way. Create short promotional videos, snippet tutorials or a trailer for your classes.

Standing out on YouTube can be hard, with more than 500 video hours added every minute, but there are a few tips and tricks you can use to succeed, like creating your own business channel and learning from your favourite YouTubers.

YouTube may seem daunting, as many teachers may have only viewed content on this platform and never thought about creating content to post! However, there are lots of ways YouTube can help you market your classes,

• With the growth of social media, video marketing has become more popular and effective!
• Teachers can give an overview or taster of their class. Giving students a demonstration of how and what they will learn boosts their trust in your brand.
• When using YouTube, teachers can also post SEO content, again this makes classes more visible.

Uploading videos to YouTube opens you up to their massive audience (like Facebook, more than 2 billion logged-in monthly users worldwide!). YouTube allows you to use your videos elsewhere, like your website or the Baluu virtual events room.

When using the Baluu virtual events room, teachers can embed and link YouTube videos that may inspire students before the class takes place!

As well as inspiring students, within the 'Get Ready' tab, teachers can welcome students and give them an overview of what they will learn in the class as well as how they can prepare.

The virtual events room is also where students can join live online classes or access pre-recorded class content.

8. Great Photography

Quality imagery is crucial for marketing your classes. The title and snapshot is the first piece of information the customer sees of the class, and this has to leave a good impression.

Having great photography can be beneficial when marketing your classes for a number of reasons,

• High quality photography and images make your class look professional and inviting!
• Showing pictures of your classes helps your brand seem trustworthy to students browsing you content.
• Often students make an unconscious snap judgement of classes based on their images, so it's key to leave a good impression.
• Although there are professional photographers out there, teachers can have fun taking their own photos at a very low cost.

Good photography will also help you stand out from your competitors on websites like Baluu or Obby and on social media. These don't need to be taken with a professional camera if you don't have one (but even better if you do!) as the quality of mobile cameras in 2022 is incredible and getting better all the time.

However, if it's within budget, booking a professional photographer to come and take photos during a class is a great way to get quality images in action and give customers a real sense of who you are and what to expect on your class.

Unsure where to start? Why not book a mobile photography class and improve your skills.

9. Build and optimise your own website

Often teachers believe that they need tech experience to build their own website. However, this really isn't the case! There are many website builders out there, like Baluu, which help teachers build their own branded teaching website. To use a website builder, teachers need no coding experience and no tech experience!

Not only is creating your own teaching website incredibly straightforward, having a branded website can also help you market your courses,

• Teachers that have a branded teaching website, again, seem more trustworthy to customers and potential students.
• When writing class descriptions, teachers can add SEO content, meaning they are more likely to be at the top of the search engine results. This is a significant form of content marketing!
• You can list any additional information about classes on your website, for instance do you offer one-to-one online classes? Or in-person corporate team building workshops? List these classes on your own website.

Baluu helps teachers with many aspects of selling and marketing their courses online. Baluu's website builder guides teachers through every step of making their website. From designing their homepage to organising their schedule, Baluu helps teachers every step of the way!

10. Free trials

Lastly, who doesn't like a freebie?

Market your classes to family, friends, friends of friends or those within your community to help get started. Use local messaging boards and Facebook groups to offer free trials of your class in return for an honest review and the hope that word of your good name will travel far!

Marketing your class with this technique can help grow your brand awareness, get reviews and test your teaching style! There are other benefits to this marketing style listed below!

• Having a limited time that students can access this free trial creates a buzz around your class.
• Spreading the word of your free trail is easy, just pop it into your marketing email campaign.
• As mentioned, you can get an insight into the experience of your students with their honest feedback and review after the class.
• Students who attend the free trial can share your class on their social media and tag your teaching business account in the posts!

Classes with free trial students are also a great way to get honest feedback on what could be improved for next time, what could be added or what could be taken away. Other members of the craft community are a great place to start - they may have experience you don't. Practice makes perfect!

Need more teaching advice?

Creating a marketing campaign for your teaching business can be a lot easier than you think! Promoting your brand on Instagram and advertising on other social media platforms such as Facebook is a great way to start for many reasons. You are probably already familiar with these social media websites and how they work, so getting to grips with its target marketing features to promote your brand shouldn't be too overwhelming! With a range of simple yet highly effective and successful marketing methods such as email campaigns and encouraging reviews, you can get creative producing your own marketing strategy for your small business.

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