With so many online courses available these days on several great platforms, it’s rather difficult for you as a content creator to push forward your own product and make it stand out of the crowd.
SEO and paid ads may help your course show higher up in the search but ultimately it will be the description that will convince a potential student to enroll in it or choose another.
Writing your course description is a valuable exercise in online marketing. More than anything else, those well crafted 100-150 words will make the difference between moderate and excellent conversion rates from your landing page.
Here are some tips on how to make your course description top-notch.
Make it short and relevant
The first thing to consider is its length. Since it is just a description it should not be as extensive as a blog post for example. Basically, you have to say a lot by using just a few words – not an easy task but not an impossible one either.
You must distill what you want to express in a few words with a big impact.
It’s essential to be specific. Even though it is has to do with marketing your online course, the description is only part advertising.
It’s important to provide all the relevant information and make it easy to read – you can even use bullet points and relevant examples to give a pertinent idea of what the course is about and how it is structured.
What will the subscribers learn?
Answering this question in the course description is paramount in increasing the number of enrollments. Strive to be as specific as you can.
Start with a statement about why the topic you are teaching is important and how the learners will benefit from knowing more about it.
Let’s say you have designed a course on conflict resolution. Instead of saying “after completion of this course you will be a better negotiator and have several key communication skills” it’s better to name these:
- You will identify a range of negotiation strategies;
- You will be able to label different phases of the negotiation process and know how to act on each one;
- You will understand the general framework for analyzing and resolving conflict
Who is the instructor and how will the material be rendered?
The course creator is as important as the content itself. Say something about yourself in the course description – who you are, where your passion for a particular topic comes from, what your expertise on the subject is.
The learners have to connect with you before they can do so with the content.
Presenting the methods of teaching is also very important because it will give potential subscribers an idea about what to expect – for example if you have included video tutorials, additional links to relevant sites or quizzes for them to test how well they have assimilated the modules.
It’s also good to note if there are any prerequisites to taking your course so they don’t find themselves in over their heads once they start it.
What language should you use?
Your aim is to get people engaged and interested. You won’t achieve that by writing something that reads like a dishwasher instruction manual. What you need is a story – the story of taking your course and the ‘happily-ever-after’ that is subsequent to it.
To accomplish that you must be positive and focus on the benefits. The ‘what’s in it for me’ part is paramount in any learning endeavor as people need to see the payoff that will come after the effort they put in.
To put it in a nutshell, your course description needs to be a highly informative sales pitch that will both get potential subscribers excited and offer them a clear picture of what they would be signing on for.
Additional tips for making your description stand out:
- Use direct, simple language;
- Address the learner directly (say “you will learn” instead of “at the end of the course the students will have learned”);
- Don’t sell the course, sell the knowledge and skills it will bring;
- Use real-life examples;
- Include testimonies from former learners;
- Avoid stuffy language;
- Don’t overuse caps, bold or italic.
Potential subscribers reading your course description are right on the edge of pushing that Enroll button. The way you word it will make the difference between them going further or going back to the search results.
