My Continuing Journey Into the Dark Art of Marketing

As I prepare to launch my first online course, and while I have been working with a variety of tools, I’m going to focus on the three major components of my marketing journey …

Planning

Undoubtedly, planning has been the most complex, and time-consuming, aspect of this entire project. Until I started writing all of this down, I had literally no idea of how comprehensive this whole process would be!

I charted my necessary steps and quickly discovered that, prior to completing step #10, I needed to complete steps #15, #21, and #32 through #37 first. This reordering of priorities became a constant exercise. Every step is related to, and contingent upon, the completion of another step. My hair is already thin. It’s now much thinner.

I first needed to determine my toolkit. I settled on …

Teachable for my school platform.
Mailerlite for general marketing but Mailchimp for students only as it integrates directly with Teachable.
Nimble as my CRM.
PieSync to synchronize contacts between platforms.
HootSuite for social updates and monitoring. I also use Buffer.
I already have premium accounts for Zoom and Calendly.

I now needed to figure out how these various components related to each other and which tool was best for which specific application (in some cases there were multiple choices).

Finally, I am faced with having to deal with a mailing list with one subscriber, me, and my current lack of social reach. I quit Twitter two years ago and waved goodbye to 10,000 followers. I’m back on it now but that turned out to be an unforced error. LinkedIn could be my saving grace. I’ll build my mailing list and do so from scratch.

I can be creative when needed and I have been fortunate enough to have a few other options to extend this reach. Very fortunate or I would probably be totally screwed.

The Course & Teachable

I created the course videos using Screencast-O-Matic. Supporting documents were created using Google Docs. All videos and documents were housed and organized on Google Drive by individual course lessons. This process took months, and God only knows how many edits, to complete.

I was faced with a variety of technical challenges but the worst was sound. Apparently, Windows 10 does not place nicely with USB microphones and so I had to source a third party app to take control of mic settings away from Windows. Problem solved.

My next step was to choose a learning platform. Unchartered territory one again. I narrowed my options down to four choices, went back and forth on two, and then settled on Teachable. It was not the least expensive option, although I did get a Black Friday deal, but I chose it because …

People said it was easy to use. Yes, maybe, but not as easy as I had envisioned. Now I understand it.
It had the flexibility and features that I had determined were needed.
They offer live chat support (weekday business hours) with their premium plans. Awesome!

Mailerlite

Mailerlite is a pretty nice piece of kit. While it does have some advanced automation and sequence (drip) features, I’ll worry about those later. Right now my focus is clearly placed on building my list and sending out the occasional newsletter and offer. It provides me with those needed tools and it is quite flexible in that regard.

I have had a lot of questions but it is quite user friendly. I chose this platform for a few different reasons …

It has the features that I wanted.
Their platform pricing is straightforward and it is very inexpensive and particularly for what you get!
They have 24/7, yes 24/7 live chat support and it is also awesome! Between them and Teachable, I struck gold twice!

Wrapping it up

This has been a real adventure for me, not to mention an education! Ultimately, my biggest challenges may have come in trying to figure out how these disparate applications would need to work together.

This included within each individual application. I had a great deal of difficulty in understanding how the individual elements flowed together. What’s the difference between an embedded subscription form, a pop-up, a promotional pop-up, and a landing page?

Do I create a landing page on Teachable, Mailerlite, this website, or all three? When one of my students visits a course, what are the procedures for enrolling. How will I and my affiliates get paid? What is an affiliate? When someone subscribes to my mailing list, what happens next? What the hell is a double opt-in?

Questions, questions, and more questions. However, I’m pretty pleased with myself in regard to what I have learned and put into place to date. This will be a continuing process, I’m sure!

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!