How to Create an Online Course That Will Increase Your App's Audience

The popularity of educational courses has increased in recent years and continues to grow. Learning and acquiring new skills has become fashionable. Does this mean that any educational course you create will immediately become admired? Not quite. Since teaching has also become trendy, courses are designed not only by teachers – some promote their brand or product through education, and others simply share information because they enjoy it. The demand for education is high, but so is the competition – however, despite this fact, education can be used as a strong marketing instrument, and below, you will be able to see why.
 

Suppose you want to boost the popularity of your app. What can you do? The easiest way is to promote it traditionally, spreading information about it so that a potential client decides they need it. A slightly more complex approach involves artificially creating demand by showing how your app helps solve a specific task. This gives the client a clear idea of how to use the product. But does your potential buyer encounter the problem described in your advertisement in reality? And if not, how can you make sure they experience it? Creating a course can help you with this.
 

What Your Course Should Be About?
 

You are an expert in your app's field, which means you know best how it can be used. And this is what you definitely need to include in your course. Nevertheless, you might wonder if your app can really be sold through a course. Almost certainly, it can! Most apps imply their uses; for example, if you created software for managing a company's accounting, the course could directly concern accounting calculations and might be called something like "How to simplify financial management in an organisation". But some apps solve specific practical tasks, like scanning documents – in this case, you need to think broader. People might need a scanner for various reasons; focus on one such need and detail the process from your target audience’s perspective. For example, you can create a course titled "Traveling to Asia: Prepare Your Documents for a Visa," not forgetting to mention in the course how convenient it is to scan everything necessary using your app! 

Try to think of a course topic related to your app, but don't limit yourself to it. Choose a problem or task within the topic that can be perfectly solved with your app's help.

Qualities of an Ideal Course
 

You've concluded that you need a course, and maybe you even have an idea of what it should cover. Below, you will find general recommendations regarding the qualities a successful course should possess. Check your idea for compliance.

• Practical approach: People usually decide to take a course if it provides them with some skills and gives them a “level-up.” The course "Prepare Your Documents for a Visa" will find its audience because it offers practical benefits.
• Relevance: Some products can be too specific to make them popular with everyone, but remember that the course audience is your potential buyers. The more people take your course, the more they can decide they need your app!
• Logic: The course must be logically structured and comprehensible because if you directly integrate information about your app into the course, audience engagement will affect how it's perceived and whether important information is missed. If you're unsure how to organise course materials, learning experience designers are there to help.
• Simplicity vs. complexity: Pay attention to the materials you want to include in your educational solution. They should be beneficial without providing well-known information, but try not to make the course too complex for your audience. Aim for the knowledge level of potential clients: it could be for everyone or specialists in a particular field. 

Please note that besides the marketing task, the course must still perform its main educational function. The better your course is organised as an educational product, the more reliable you will appear to potential buyers.

To create a quality course, like any other product, resources are necessary: effort and time. On average, creating a course takes 100-300 hours of work by specialists in various fields. To calculate approximate costs or make a course from scratch, you can contact a company specialising in custom educational materials (for example, Seturon).
 

What Is Next?
 

Suppose you've determined the topic – now you need to define an action plan and resources. Besides time and money, the primary resource here is people responsible for various aspects of course creation. Explore their functions:

• Subject matter expert (SME). Even if you understand the app you want to promote very well, your course may include issues not directly related to it. Before working on the course, try to understand if your experience is sufficient to fill the course with complete and reliable information or if you need to involve external SMEs.
• Instructional designer. In addition to quality materials, their competent presentation is equally important. The organisation of materials affects the overall impression of the course and the percentage of its complete passage. Furthermore, the high professionalism of experts often prevents them from adequately assessing whether their materials are understandable to the average user – and such a check also rests on the instructional designer.
• Illustrator. Images and videos help understand the content presented in the course and engage the client, and integrating in-app video calls can make your training programs more interactive and effective. Artificial intelligence can help in this area, but achieving consistency in style is often difficult without involving live specialists. 
• LMS administrator. A Learning Management System (LMS) is used to host courses available online. This platform provides an interface for passing, the ability to assess, and the regulation of access to the course. A special administrator handles adding a course to the platform and supporting it. 
   

These specialists work side by side to create a course. The expert prepares materials, which the instructional designer transforms into the course content. The illustrator creates the necessary graphics. After the expert assesses that the original materials have been competently processed, the LMS administrator uploads the educational materials to the platform. The instructional designer and expert reassess the correctness of the presentation of educational materials on the platform. Finally, the course is ready! How long do all these processes take? The answer is in the article "How much time does creating an online course take?"
 

Often, the same person can perform the roles of several specialists involved in the process of creating an education solution. You might be able to take on the roles of different specialists, but don’t forget about the ratio of results to labour costs. Incorporating technology like chatbots can also streamline your processes and enhance the learning experience. To learn more about this, check out How Chatbots Enhance Customer Experience. An invited expert might be able to prepare materials faster and more effectively, and a professional instructional designer will easily reformat them according to the principles of course creation.