How To Increase Enrollment In Your Online Courses

Easy-to-use LMS solutions like LifterLMS have already solved the first challenge of creating the dream platform for your learners. The next big challenge is how to get more enrolments. For your business to grow, scaling up through enrolments is the main issue that concerns you now. Today, we will discuss what areas you should look into and what you can do about them.

Setting Goals

Let us understand first what areas we need to hit to increase enrolments and build the pillars of the journey we need to take. It will not be a one-off or one-sided task; to get more enrolments, you will need a balanced combination of efforts to successfully increase enrolments. For any learning platform, the learners and the courses are the core elements that should drive enrolments. But in reality, a lot of other things come into play.

An increase in enrolment can come as a result of:

Higher traffic to your platform though reaching more people
Having a good sales strategy implemented to drive enrolment
Building up a reputation through positive reviews or referrals
Engaging current learners to take new courses
Having courses that are in demand
Giving our offers and having a competitive pricing

We will now dig into how these goals translate into individual projects for your platform. Achievements in these areas should impact higher enrolments and sales growth and streamline your business.

Mapping Your Learners

Understanding who your learners are is the most critical piece of work around which all of your platform’s activity would revolve. So, suppose you have done this before launching the platform. In that case, you should revisit it, detail it further, update it if it has become outdated, and draw new insights from it.

What to look for?

Look at the pain points of your learners; why do they want to learn a topic through an online course in the first place? Due to demographic and geographic differences, the answer may vary. Important motivators might be to earn more or create an earning source after completing the learning journey. Some people want to do better in their existing careers, while others are looking to transition into another career. For example, we had an interview with Udemy data science course creator Frank Kane. You can read the case study we have made from the conversation on our success story section. We will publish the full interview on our LMScast soon. Frank received a lot of queries from his learners about what they need to learn to become a technical manager from a system engineer. Understanding the demand, he created a career transition course just for that, and it has become his bestseller.

To perfectly map your learner’s persona, you can look into this free course. It comes with a worksheet when you register for the 5 day 6 figure challenge.

Pricing is sensitive

Pricing also plays a crucial role in driving your enrollments. People might not sign up if your price is too high for the market. But if the same course is divided into several, enrollments might rise. Spending capacities and each learner’s overall LTV (lifetime value) should be considered. Some platforms also offer payment in credits and installments and different rates for learners from weaker economies. If you do not talk openly with your prospective learners, this will remain a silent factor that will drive them away, and you will not even know it.

To nail your pricing strategy, take this free course from our founder Chris Badgett.

Also, this video should help if changing your pricing structure is on the table.

Produce Quality Courses

Once you know what your learners want, create a need-demand analysis to identify the gaps. Check back on your courses if they sufficiently meet the topics or chapters. Work on developing and improving those courses. Let your learners know about your improvements, and use the social channels.

Create Magnet Tools

This is the part where you can generate new leads. Your courses may be great, but a little demonstration will put you miles ahead in generating more leads and converting them to actual enrolments. This strategy to create magnet tools may include free courses, resources, insights, workshops, or webinars.

Onboarding – take it easy!

These are your chances to build awareness of the courses and the quality of your platform. One important thing to remember is to keep the onboarding process as simple and short as possible. If your lead capture form/tool has too many fields, or if you are asking for too much information, the learner might just give up. It is an easy pitfall that might get overlooked.

Increase Outbound Marketing

Usually, enrolment through a new lead has a long journey and is costly compared to existing learners. To keep your CAC low, create relevant courses that may be useful to your existing learners. For example, if someone is taking speaking courses, you could also offer them writing courses.

For better outbound execution, you need a great CRM system (luckily, some LMS already come with the necessary features) to segment your leads and sources. Send them email newsletters, offers and

Build an Inbound digital ecosystem

Engage with content marketing

Social media may be one of the areas where your prospective learners are spending time. They may also be involved in social events and community groups. So, based on the study you have done earlier, create a content marketing plan relevant to their interests. Short informative videos, quick tutorials, and podcasts with your star learners or instructors. Interviews with popular instructors and career trends from a specific skill – are great ideas that you can pick from to create organic awareness.

Complete the journey

For your paid advertising, create as particular audience groups and targeting as possible and try to place all your channels into a form of the learner’s journey. From not knowing about your platform to first time discovering, building positive association, considering doing a course with you, trialing a free course or webinar, seeking answers about the outcome of a query, and checking with others who have done the same course and their options and finally buying the course and later maybe doing another course with you. Your digital marketing should touch base with the learners’ many stages.

If you find yourself in awe, take help from a professional, get the sales funnels and digital lead generation ecosystem in place and see the performance. The goal of your digital marketing activities should be to land your audience as much as possible on your course pages.

Listen to feedback, showcase positive results

Most often, what we overlook is the feedback. eLearning platforms created with LifterLMS can support reviews and comments on each course and instructor. It can even offer discussion areas where you can keep an eye out for what learners love and what is giving them pain. Regularly do surveys with your learners with forms built into the course, platform, or email.

Capture as many positive reviews as possible (better if video) and make it a part of your content marketing strategy so that it aids in their decision-making.

Optimize

Incomplete payments

There are many ways you can optimize the performance of your platform or lead generation tactics which will result in higher enrolment. The first problem that course creators face is incomplete checkout. This means that the user is still unsure about the course, did not find the correct payment method, is waiting for a discount to kick in, or simply forgot. In any case, you need to nurture them so that, based on their condition, they are convinced to complete the enrolment.

As we said before, registration should be simple and quick. So experiment with what kind of registration is driving you the most conversion. We understand that it may be lucrative to gather as much possible information on the user to understand them better. But you also need not be greedy.

Low course completion rate

The second major issue course creators face is the course completion rate – which on average, is 30%-60%. Not completing the course could mean several things if your learners are not achieving with the course. Either they are not enjoying it, or it was an impulsive decision to enroll. So, at this stage, you need to engage them in conversation and assist them, invigorate them. After all, the more people who are going out with your course and getting benefitted in real life, they are also spreading the word about your eLearning platform.

Measure success & next steps

If you have come this far in implementation, take a bow. Now, deep dive into all the key indicators from all your activities. What worked best, and what did not work? Where you can reduce the cost and get similar results, where you can do things differently – consider these all. Look openly into the feedback you have received, plan on them, and put them into your roadmap.

As we have discussed so many things that you can work on, we hope that you have a better idea of how increasing enrolment is not just a simple act, but a web of activities that bring forth the result.

If you have already seen success with enrolment, please tell us your tips in the comments.