When starting your own course, there are tons of tools out there. For example, you can take a look at 5 tips for designing eLearning courses and follow the latest trend in eLearning: microlearning to ensure you’re producing quality content.
But, we want to go even more in-depth than giving you a run-down of the basics. In this article, we’ll discuss starting your own course: where to start.
Mapping Out Your Course and Defining Your Niche
It takes much more than a good idea to develop an online eLearning course. While it’s a good start, you’ll need much more than that for your concepts to come to fruition.
Since the end goal is to create a course worth paying for, you’ll need to dive right into some of the initial steps. For starters, you’ll need to map your course and define your niche. Start by identifying your target audience and then figure out your niche.
Here’s how.
Start by Identifying Your Target Audience
Competition is fiercer than ever for eLearning course creators. If you start looking around, you’ll quickly find that the resources available for online content are vast. While this might be discouraging to some, it shouldn’t be.
Instead, let this information propel you forward as you create a course that blows your competition out of the water. In order to do that, you must have to take the time to plan things out. Start by identifying your target audience.
1. Find Your Target Audience
To provide clarity, your target audience will be who your course will be aimed at. Not necessarily the students, but the people responsible for making purchases on behalf of students’ education. Think of your target audience as the ideal customer for your eLearning course.
You want to get as specific as possible when you’re working out who your target audience will be. Think of different demographics to help hone your efforts, such as:
Interests
Location
Income
Gender
Age
Really take the time to sort this out. If it helps, think of an individual and give them a name. The more specific you can get about this person, the more effectively you can focus your design and marketing efforts.
Take a look at your current demographic data if you already have existing content available, such as a blog, Instagram, or YouTube channel. In planning your eLearning course, identifying your target audience will become the foundation upon which you will build.
2. Understand Their Pain Points
Once you’ve figured out your target audience, you will want to deep dive into their present situation. For example, figure out what learning gaps they are currently dealing with and how you can improve upon that. Identifying existing pain points will give you a leg up and prove to your target audience that your content will help make their lives easier.
Ask yourself the following questions to get a better understanding:
Who needs assistance they aren’t currently receiving?
What are their pain points or critical struggles?
What hurdles can you help them overcome?
Who could benefit from your expertise?
You’ll likely find that you don’t readily have the answers to these questions available. Thankfully, you can conduct an interview-style questionnaire or survey of your target demographic to gain insight into some of their existing pain points.
Before you start designing your eLearning course, take to social media or email to get as much data as possible on your target audience. It will help you in the long run.
Remember that the goal is to provide something different than what’s already out there. Make a difference to the people you’re creating your content for by understanding the learning gaps before the design and build process. Ultimately, work towards creating the best possible resources available for your eLearning students.
3. Figure Out What Demand Currently Exists
While you’re really starting to hone in on your target audience, now is the time to determine what current demand exists for your eLearning course concept. Unfortunately, your eLearning course won’t sell if it’s in a niche with no demand. It won’t matter how genuinely captivating your content is.
A simple way to figure out the current demand is by looking at the competition. Identify your top competitors and see what their courses in your niche are currently offering.
Researching your competition’s work is also helpful in identifying what you can develop in the courses that will make you stand out. As you’re going through their offerings, think to yourself about what you can offer that will be more improved.
4. Then, Figure Out Your Niche
Go in-depth and hone in on the details of a particular topic to formulate a successful eLearning course. Avoid taking a broad-brush approach to a big topic. In the end, the most specific courses yield the most success.
In order to be able to narrow things down, you’ll need to establish your niche. If you’re unsure how to do that, the best places to look at your professional background and personal interests.
Professional Background
You can draw on your professional background to help guide you to your niche. To create an online course that people will want to enroll in, consider how your professional experience and education can be used.
Think of a few questions:
When you started your career, what topics did you wish you’d known about?
What resources did you need that weren't available?
How could you have been taught better?
What did your colleagues struggle to grasp?
Personal Interests
Being a topic nerd is the path to becoming a great course creator. Your personal interests are a great place to start when it comes to discovering a topic you know all the ins and outs of. After all, you’ll have to transfer this information to your students in your course.
Final Thoughts
With so much competition today with online eLearning content, it can be challenging to conceptualize standing out. Thankfully, you can take your idea and develop it into a leading course if you take the time to do your homework ahead of time.
Mapping out your course and defining your niche will lead you on the path to success. But, you won’t get very far without first identifying your target audience.
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