There are so many online courses out there, Coursera, Youtube etc., so now content is a commodity. But the completion rates of these courses is less than 2%. People get busy, and have less desire to finish.
Cohort Based is the way forward. Being part of a group, with a start and end date, learning with friends, making connections, and two way learning, is inspiring.
reforge, section4, ascend, nasacademy, alive os, on deck, lambda.
Create video course that can be accessed at any time, with live classes, and accountable sessions, learning with groups and with each other, group activities.
We are preparing a load of new bootcamp programs right now and I’ve been doing some research into how to make it successful.
The most scalable model is to do training in groups of people with video courses and live sessions so the students can learn from each other. This is a hybrid between watching videos and live tuition. It has the benefits of both, watching the lessons at your convenience and doing it with a group of other students who you can learn from and motivate each other and feel the social pressure to actually complete the program.
How to do it well?
– Understand your customers – what are their needs and painpoints? It is really important to have this nailed. Doing surveys and in person interviews is really important when you are designing the bootcamp.
– Create an amazing program – this is the most important thing.
– Be super clear about what the students are going to get from the program and how valuable that is.
– Get feedback from students to make what they want
– Have clear learning goals
– Have a clear way to assess the students levels
Sell it before you make it.
It is really important to sell it before you make it. You can pre-enroll students to check there is demand and then make it. You don’t want to be spending so long creating a course and nobody wants it.
Building effective systems is essential to make it work
– Recruitment systems
– Marketing systems
– Course management systems
The less time you are spending doing routine stuff the more time you have to do valuable people to people stuff.
Underpromise and over deliver – make sure everyone is happy then you can get great referrals and it can be very easy to drive sales and growth and recruitment in the future.
Be clear about what your role is. What help do you need on it? Make sure you have enough people to help.
Marketing is the other part about making it successful. You need to have enough students to make it profitable and to attract a high calibre of students. This is about having an effective strategy of branding, creating an effective funnel, and sign up process, and using a good quality marketing strategy. You don’t have to use every channel, you can just use one. Building an audience is essential, and having a mailing list of potential students is also effective.
Some ways of attracting students:
– B2B – through outbound sales
– Youtube – building an audience (takes time)
– Google SEO
– Reaching out organically
– Facebook ads
– Google ads
– Cross promoting with another product
Luckily there are loads of resources and successful models to learn online. It’s not a new thing.
Some that I recommend are:
– consulting.com – check out how their program works
– https://academy.aliabdaal.com/ part time youtuber academy
– unpackAI
– BLCU Online Chinese program – 12 week program
– holoniq.com have some interesting resources and information about the market
