When you are just starting to sell your online course, you might not know where to begin, how to approach your ideal customers, or even to find out if there are enough people out there who would be interested in buying it.

How amazing would that be to be able to put your course idea in front of the right audience so that you can measure their reaction and evaluate if it's something worth building?

What's even better is to actually pre-sell your course and get a commitment from those interested. This will give you the right dose of confidence and energy to get your course up and running in no time. 

 But where to start from? 

Facebook!

Whether you are trying to drive more leads and sales to your online course sales or build brand awareness, Facebook can help at every stage of the customer journey. 

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3 Ways to Use Facebook for advertising an online course 

1. Facebook Lives

Facebook heavily focuses on the success of live videos and encourages users to go live more often. But how do you sell more courses with Facebook Lives?

Here are 3 kinds of best Facebook Live content to help boost your online course sales.

• Host interviews either with a previous student who took your course and is having great success, a social media influencer, or another industry expert.
• Create a 45-60 minutes masterclass to teach a specific topic relevant to your online course, then offer a discount on the course at the end.
• Share some out-of-the-box or cool things you are doing with social proof lives.

2. Facebook Groups

There are two different ways to use Facebook groups to promote your online course to the 200+ million people in Facebook groups.‍

Use other people's groups. ‍

Start by choosing groups that allow members to post content every day because many have created their groups to sell their own products, so you don't want to join this kind of group. 

Instead, look for generalized groups that allow people to post non-spam content. After you join, treat the group like your email list and start dripping your best content. Remember that participating in the community is key to the success of this strategy. The recipe for success includes answering questions, posting questions, and taking part in general discussion while dripping your content.

Your own Facebook group

Whether you choose to make it free or paid, make sure it is valuable and build a community around it. Dedicate enough time or hire someone so you don't let questions go unanswered, give practical advice and encourage members to add value as well. After building a community, you can start nurturing them to buy your course with offers, webinars, etc.‍

3. Facebook Advertising 

This is the most common yet the most challenging way. Facebook ads can be the biggest waste of time and money if you don't have an excellent feel for your customer persona. Things like demographic information, language, and major pain points your ideal customer is having are the pre-requisites of your Facebook Ad's success. After you have a deep understanding of all this, you can then use Facebook's granular targeting to create audiences based on interests, demographics, and habits. 

The secret to all Facebook marketing is continuous testing and tracking. Start by building a few different types of ads (3-5 versions) and split test them to see what your audience responds to. 

Ensure that your ads send them to the first step of a sales funnel to get their email address and nurture them before making the sale. Start with a 7-day test with a budget of at least $100 a day to get enough impressions and clicks to evaluate your best-performing ads better.

 Below are some general benchmarks for a successful Facebook advertising campaign. 

Average conversion rate = 9.21%

Average click-through rate = 0.90%

Average cost per click is $1.72

If your campaign numbers are way below the above values, pause your ads, and you might want to consider hiring a Facebook ad specialist to assist you.

Download FREE The Complete Facebook Advertising Checklist for Online Education HERE ‍

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Think Orion's support is only a chat away if you need help with anything online-course-advertising related. We're online marketing gurus who know exactly how to find the users you are looking for and turn them into longtime subscribers who generate monthly recurring revenue.