As a business owner, you already know that taking your teaching online can tap into a global market.
In fact, the benefits of online courses and membership-based business models can complement your core offerings and help you:
- Work less, while earning more money so you can spend time with your family
- Become a highly-paid and sought-after leader in your industry
- Help more people than you could doing 1-1 work
And, when leveraged correctly, these offerings have the potential to take your business to a whole new level.
Large businesses and corporations are also taking a page from the online business playbook and turning to online courses to onboard new employees, and distribute company or department training internally.
They’re also creating training and memberships to expand the user-experience with their brands.
Why? The benefits of online courses are huge.
Let’s take a closer look at 5 benefits online courses have and how you can incorporate them into your business.
1. Make a Bigger Impact
One of the most attractive benefits of online courses is having the ability to expand your reach, and scale.
If you’re currently serving your customers in a 1:1 setting, the only way to earn more or generate additional revenue is to increase your rates, or work more hours to serve more customers.
While both are viable options, it’s not always the most sustainable for you or your potential customers.
Rather, a more lucrative and efficient strategy is to create an online portal where your training can be distributed.
Through the use of LMS software (what does LMS stand for?), that can protect pre-recorded videos, and supplemental materials and resources, your expertise can be packaged and delivered via a private member’s only area.
The only limits on enrollment and your reach are those you put in place if you’d like to cap the number of people in each cohort. Alternatively, you can adopt an evergreen model to allow for rolling enrollment.
While you will need to invest time in building your course, and marketing it, you’ve opened your business up for more organic growth via search and word of mouth from raving course participants.
2. Teach Once, Students Learn At Their Own Pace
Online courses make it possible for you to offer your knowledge to people in various ways to adapt to their learning modalities, this is great to keep in mind as you develop an online course.
You can deliver your course content through videos, transcripts, and audio files so the end-user can digest the content in a way that most benefits them, without requiring any additional time investment from you.
Course participants can also revisit the material as often as they need to improve their retention of the content they are consuming.
And, to take things one step further, course creators can incorporate quizzes to test their participants’ comprehension and use it as motivation to unlock the next lesson. This is all part of the process of how to design an online course that best fits your needs and audience.
Many course owners are adding gamification their online courses by adding a points or credit system to reward students for logging in and passing each lesson or level of the course on their way to completion.
Many LMS plugins make it possible to reward your students with a certificate on completion, as well, in acknowledgment for all of their hard work. This is also a great use case if you deliver online certifications.
As a result, your students will increase their success rates with your courses and keep them coming back to you as a repeat customer because they trust in your process to deliver results.
This is beneficial if you offer formal CEUs or another type of certification.
3. Bring People Together in Communities
An unexpected benefit of online courses is the community aspect.
Online learning critics might argue that you lose the camaraderie and support course participants receive from in-person or 1:1 delivery, but the reality is quite the opposite.
With the advancements in technology, and ease of delivering group calls for Q&A sessions, as well as private Facebook communities, more and more online courses are able to offer a support network and community that far exceeds the walls of a traditional classroom.
Course creators can integrate forums for discussion within their online course delivery platform, and even use a member directory so course participants can connect with other members on their own terms.
4. Deliver a Unique Learning Experience
When you package your services and knowledge up to deliver in an easy-to-digest digital format, one of the greatest assets and benefits of online courses to you as the course creator is the power of automation.
Not only can the entire enrollment process be automated, from purchase to access, but the delivery format and promotional period can be as well, thanks to the technology available.
That means that each student gets the online learning experience they need, in the order and format that benefits them the most.
Email marketing platforms and marketing automation systems allow you to schedule your emails in advance. Automation even makes it possible for you to build an automated email funnel that sells your online courses for you while you sleep, or take a much-deserved day off.
If your course is dripped so lessons are unlocked at a predetermined interval, for example, on a weekly basis, your CRM or marketing automation system can work in conjunction with your LMS to drip access to course participants.
You can also tap into automation to deliver your course content on a progress-based release schedule so students can work through the course material at a pace that caters to their learning style.
See our growing list of CRM comparisons here to discover what’s possible.
You can also set and forget the sales funnel once you’ve tested it and optimized it for conversions.
Paired with an LMS to deliver your course content, you have the ability to completely automate your entire online course setup and sales process.
Due to the increase in LMS software on the market, it’s easier than ever to create a members-only area on your site to house your online courses.
When using an LMS plugin, you can grant access to your course or material as soon as someone clicks the buy now button. Your participants can get started right away while their excitement and motivation is at its peak.
5. Earn Passive Income
Last, but certainly not least when it comes to the benefits of online courses is passive income – the holy grail of online business.
While, not all online courses carry a hefty price tag, and many may be offered for free as a lead magnet, these free courses most often translate into an up-sell for a premium course or program, requiring no additional effort on your end, once the course and sales automations are developed.
You’ll wake up daily to additional money in the bank.
Who can say no to that?
Long-term Benefits of Online Courses
Once you have your delivery dialed in, and start to reap the benefits of your online course, don’t stop there.
Keep your participants coming back for more by adding additional courses inside your members-only area for easy upsells and cross-sells while your students are excited and actively engaged with your training.
As you add additional offers and courses, this opens up the possibility for you to build recurring memberships, and in turn recurring revenue – every business owner’s dream.
