How to Promote Online Courses Using Facebook Ads

Promotion is at the heart of content marketing strategy for course creators.

It allows course creators to gain more students, deliver unique value propositions, and get more prospective students interested in your online course.

However, the bigger the market, the greater the competition you have to face. And to succeed, you need to stand out from the crowd by implementing a solid course promotion strategy.

Facebook has become one of the main channels for online course promotion for every business that wants to achieve growth. But doing it the right way is essential.

With 2.98 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide. Facebook remains essential for marketers to capture and engage prospects with unchallenged supremacy.

Facebook received $115 billion from ad revenue in advertising, and the figure is expected to grow further to reach $203 billion by 2026.

Facebook Ads are a powerful marketing tool for course promotion because:

• Build brand awareness
• Boost conversions
• Promote a specific course
• Re-engage visitors
• Upsell and cross-sell

If you struggle and want to learn how to promote online courses using Facebook ads, you’ve come to the right place.

How to Sell Online Courses with Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads for online courses are all about getting your message in front of the right audience that is most likely to be interested. No wonder 93% of marketers use Facebook Ads regularly. You can use Facebook Ads to promote an online course and see high ROI.

If you’re curious about how to promote an online course on Facebook, consider these simple steps.

• Benefits of Leveraging Facebook Ads for Online Course Promotion
• Here are a few quick tips for amplifying promotion with Facebook groups
• Here are some ways to refine the strategy that you can follow

Step 1: Setting the Foundation for Successful Course Promotion

Before you understand how to use Facebook Ads to promote your online course, you must create a Facebook page for your business. You must also have a specific content plan in mind and do at least two to four posts a week.

Why? Because prospective students click on ads, it takes them to the page. Create a Facebook ad account for campaigns with different advertising objectives. Add all the relevant information, like contact details, links to online course platforms, and a short description of how your page could help prospective students. Use targeted keywords and integrate unique value propositions to set yourself apart. 

You must understand your customer journey once you have set these elements for your Facebook page. You must know your customer persona and list their characteristics for a clear idea. 

Now, you need to choose the objectives such as brand awareness, reach, engagement, lead generation, and conversions. You must know how to sell online courses through each objective and understand that not everyone will convert.

Step 2: Leveraging Facebook Ads for Course Promotion

Creating a Facebook page is not sufficient. Your content marketing strategy for online course promotion for Facebook must include ways to leverage and add value to your page.

Benefits of Leveraging Facebook Ads for Online Course Promotion

• Increase enrolments
• Generate qualified leads
• Drive engagement
• Send more traffic
• Build awareness

As a course creator, you can reach more prospects and narrow your audience by interest, gender, or location. Use ad targeting to find people who are most likely to click. 

Optimize your Facebook ads with excellent copy, and ensure visuals that attract prospects. Most importantly, keep it short and lead with value.

Here are a few essential tips to consider for leveraging Facebook Ads:

• Maintain Facebook post consistency
• Focus on “quality over quantity.”
• Don’t bombard your Facebook page with ads and posts
• Don’t run after followers or likes
• Focus on creating value
• Keep on experimenting
• Run polls to understand your audience

Online course promotion on Facebook can be tricky since social media changes drastically. As a marketer, it is essential to understand the capabilities of a social media platform. 

For example, an online course creator has posted this Facebook Ad for 30 days course creation online course with a clear CTA, details, and highlighting the USP.

Step 3: Optimizing Facebook Ads for Maximum Reach and Conversion

Facebook Ads are strong, yet there are many competitors advertising – which means you need to know how to optimize ads to reach more audience and get the most out of your campaign.

Facebook allows course creators to maximize results through optimization with tools and tactics to reach the right people.

Skyrocket Facebook Ad optimization for courses with the help of an online course promotion agency, or simply follow these nine tips:

1. Perfect your account structure

Rather than creating separate campaigns for each audience, you can create one or three ad sets for each category.

2. Set up the pixel with Google Tag Manager

Install the Meta Pixel to build a custom audience and lookalike audiences, track conversion rates, and create a marketing campaign.

3. Consolidate your conversions

Once your Meta Pixel is set up, create one ebook download conversion event to get a total conversion count.

4. Choose the right bidding strategy

Facebook offers five different bidding strategies: the highest volume, value, cost per result, ROAS goal, and bid cap.

5. Optimize for your objective

Fine-tune Facebook Ads according to your audience setting and options like conversions, views, link clicks, impressions, and much more.

6. Target parallel interest

Think outside the box, and choose a parallel audience instead of targeting an identical audience. For example, prospects search for universities and colleges rather than online courses.

7. Target the influencer’s audience

It’s a creative way to compete in Facebook Ads and reach an audience who follow influencers are fall into your prospective student persona.

8. Scale with automated rules

Monitor and tweak rules; for example, pause low-performing Facebook Ads for a while, and increase the budget for a campaign to reach more clicks and conversions.

9. Create a funnel strategy

Nurture Facebook Ads throughout your enrollment funnel strategy to ensure you make them take action and translate into revenue.

Apart from this, you can optimize Facebook Ads and promote online courses with affiliate marketing, as it will help you reach a wider audience and target prospects from their target market.

Step 4: Amplifying Course Promotion with Facebook Page and Groups

Page and groups are the best way to gain engagement and spread awareness for online course marketing with Facebook Ads.

A Facebook group is an excellent place for course creators to share information, gain insight and build relationships with prospective students. It is a great way to stay connected with the community and grow your audience.

Here are a few quick tips for amplifying promotion with Facebook groups

• Build a network
• Use Facebook live videos
• Run contests that include giveaways
• Conduct polls
• Engagement posts

You can also use your Facebook page to promote online courses on social media to increase awareness and engage prospectively. For example, if you just created an online course page and want to reach more people, a Facebook ad can help them reach and accomplish your goal.

There are plenty of ways to optimize your Facebook page, but you can follow these quick tips:

• Give your page a personalized look and feel
• Use high-quality visuals and videos
• Enable the call to action button
• Promote Facebook page everywhere
• Use Facebook stories and live videos
• Consistency is the secret

Also, as an online course creator, you can leverage your social media channel to promote your Facebook page and group. As prospects will be happy to connect and engage with a credible course creator with high social visibility.

Step 5: Measuring Success and Refining Your Strategy

Now that you know how to run Facebook Ad campaigns for online courses, you must understand how to measure success and refine your strategy.

It seems like a pretty straightforward thing, but the problem is basic metrics don’t tell the whole story. You need to look beyond these metrics and use analytical insights to measure success holistically. These basic metrics that you need to monitor include:

• Impressions
• Reach
• Frequency
• Cost per impressions

Metrics show how the target audience perceives your Facebook Ads and how relevant and frequent they are. Refining your strategy to build a sales funnel for your online course to convert customers would be best.

Here are some ways to refine the strategy that you can follow

1. A/B testing: Compare one or more ads to understand which performs better.
2. Lift testing: Test the target audience that could see your Facebook Ad while others didn’t.
3. Experiments: Brand surveys, holdout tests, and using A/B testing.

Course creators can get the most out of Facebook Ads by understanding the basics of metrics and performance. Lastly, it’s important to take some time to analyze your Facebook Ads performance and understand what’s working best and focus on campaigns accordingly.

Final Words

Now that you know how to promote online courses using Facebook ads, you can set up your campaign to spread brand awareness, generate traffic, and gather leads for your ideal prospects.

Get creative and monitor your ads’ performance so you can make necessary changes and enhance the outcomes. As an online education marketing agency, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the curve and utilize effective strategies to promote your courses and expand your reach. 

By mastering the fundamentals of Facebook Ads, you can power your course business and maximize its potential.