Find the Target Audience for Your Online Course

Developing an online course is an excellent way to sell your topic expertise to a wider audience. According to Statista, over 90 percent of Americans now have access to the internet. To narrow that number down to potential customers who might have an interest in your particular course, use keyword research, audience surveys, and social media to find, understand, and create a marketing campaign for the target audience for your course.

Use keyword analytics to understand audience search

Rather than developing a program and wondering who your target audience of learners might be, find out what people want to learn from someone with your specific skills before you dive in. By building your offering around the confirmed needs of potential students, you’ll have a ready-made target audience for online courses.

An effective way to find out what audiences want to learn is to see what they’re searching for online. If you’ve ever typed a question into a search engine, such as “how to make an elearning marketing strategy,” and clicked on the result that seems to offer the best answer, you’ve been on the other end of this process.

Those questions and other search terms are known as keywords. You can develop course materials based on them and use them word-for-word in your course content. This will boost your course website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

For example, if a lot of people type into a search engine, “how to do your own taxes,” it suggests to a tax expert that there’s a demographic that might want a course on this topic. The tax expert might also add this exact phrase into their online learning materials or course landing page. That way, when someone searches the phrase, a search engine is more likely to recognize that course as relevant, and list it higher on the search engine results page (SERP).

There are many free keyword tools that will help you to find the terms and questions people are searching around your topic of expertise. If you have a Squarespace website, you can even see which keywords drive people to your specific site.

Conduct a survey of customer needs

If your course is related to your business, host a survey on your website to find out which related topics your clients and customers are interested in. This will help identify the right audience for your course and what they want to learn.

Squarespace allows you to embed surveys in your site using form blocks. There are a number of different survey templates you can choose from. If you already have a following on your website’s email list, send your subscribers a link asking them to participate. Once you’ve embedded and run your survey, you’ll be armed with reliable data on which types of course will yield the biggest audiences.

You can also share the survey page on your social media platforms and send it to your mailing list, if you have one. Many social media channels will allow you to post a poll on your page, which is useful if you’re still researching your audience and don’t yet have a website. If you’re part of an online community or forums centered around your topic of focus, those community members may be a good source of feedback.

Developing a social media schedule to promote your online course

Posting on social media is an essential part of audience development for online businesses and entrepreneurs, including those offering elearning courses. Let’s look at courses that relate to existing businesses first.

If you’re running a course to share skills you’re already known for, it’s likely you’ll have social media followers who already understand the value of your expertise. You can start your marketing efforts with messaging that promotes the fact that your audience can learn from the expert. You can discuss the topics you’ll be covering in your course, invite engagement from people interested in those areas, and drive them to a sign-up page on your website. 

Now let’s consider how to promote a course on social media if you don’t already run a related business.

It’s important to establish a brand presence on social channels specifically for your courses. Unfold helps you to do this with different social post templates that you can customize to reflect your brand personality. With Unfold, you can also plan social posts and schedule posting. Developing and sharing a continual stream of content will increase the chances that more potential students will engage with you and convert into course sales.

For newer course creators, it’s important to let your audience know the value of your course product, because you may not yet be known as an expert in your chosen topic. So, consider publishing bite-sized samples of free learning on the social accounts you’ve made for your course, like a mini course spread over multiple posts. Then, encourage people to share those course posts with their own audiences. If you have client testimonials or reviews from your first students, share those too.

The engagement you get on your posts—for example, getting more responses or likes on a specific topic or question—can also give you inspiration for course topics or modules. Giving a broad audience firsthand experience of learning from you helps interested students find you, which will lead them to your website to sign up.

With rich, multimedia courses that support video, written content, and more, Squarespace Courses lets you create your content, accept payments, promote your course and more.

Learn how to develop and sell online courses

This post was updated on August 21, 2023.