Instagram marketing for course sales: 2024 strategies for maximum results

When it comes to your courses, products, or offers, people buy because of you. Because they know, like, and trust you. Isn’t that the case for most—if not all—of the offerings you sell? And these days, it’s imperative that you build your audience before you’re in launch mode for your course. How does your audience get to know you before you’re running your next course launch? Through social media platforms like Instagram. Here are some Instagram marketing tips that will help increase your course sales—for free.

A behind-the-scenes hub

These days, your phone is like what the TV was back in the 1950s—a hub for news and entertainment. Now, TV is being phased out (just like radio was at that time) and the smartphone is the new hub.

Instagram is the go-to app where you share the journey and the behind-the-scenes of your life as a course creator and educator.

Plus, when you’re sharing behind-the-scenes content viewers are able to get to know you on a deeper level. They’re also seeing the work you’re creating on your other channels like your blog, Facebook live show, or podcast, for example.

Exclusively you

As you share your journey and give sneak peeks of your upcoming projects, launches and products, your followers are invited to get to know you and your business on a level that’s unlike anywhere else. Plus, as you share the behind-the-scenes of your work with your students inside your courses, as well as your student success stories, outside viewers will want to be inside your course the next chance they get so they can get that high-touch experience with you for themselves.

As you continue to stay interesting and relevant to them, your followers will sign up for your course the day that they need it.

The key most course creators miss

Whether you have zero or 100k Instagram followers today, you can use Instagram for marketing and attract the right followers who will turn into students of your courses. Your goal? Attract quality followers over quantity.

That’s right. You don’t need 50,000 followers on Instagram to make an impact to your course sales. Even with 100 followers, you can generate sales from Instagram. Even if 3% of your followers convert and join your course, that’s three students you didn’t have before. That is why following along our Instagram marketing for course sales tips is crucial.

Is more better?

Here’s the thing: It takes dedication and consistency to grow one account well that attracts your target follower.

But most online business owners and course creators typically have two accounts. One for their personal life (cute kids, food pics, funny selfies) and another for their business life (very professional, everything branded to a T, posts that look like ads). The key to growing a high-quality following is to grow one account that’s a happy medium between the two accounts that most entrepreneurs juggle.

This means scaling back on the personal content that doesn’t relate to your target follower at all. And we’re going to add more of a human element to your business-related posts. Think: less sales driven and more people driven. The reason we do this relates to the first point: Followers enroll in your courses because they know, like and trust you as the course teacher.

Thematically you

As a personal brand, you want to choose between two to five themes that you’ll share on a consistent basis. These are themes related to you and your business. They’re also themes that your target or ideal student can relate to. For example: You’re a jewelry maker whose ideal customer is a women ages 25-30 who believes in sustainable living, loves animals, and isn’t waiting around for a partner to buy her a piece of jewelry. Then as a personal brand, you may share posts related to these themes:

• Pets
• A dating life or love life
• Green beauty products
• Independence, motivation, and drive

These themes don’t specifically relate to jewelry (and that’s the point). But they all speak to and attract that ideal customer so that they actually care about you and your business, as well as your jewelry that resonates with them.

Instagram marketing tips to implement now

1. Be authentic: Optimize your personal brand

Here are a few Instagram strategy tips for utilizing Instagram for business. Optimize your one profile to be an impactful personal brand and effective marketing tool for course sales.

Your username

Your username is also known as your Instagram handle. For example: ours is @teachable. As a personal brand, you want this field of your profile to be as close to your personal brand name as possible. Keep it simple and memorable. And avoid long, complicated, hard-to-read or, double entendre letter combinations.

Your name

The name field is the primary part of your Instagram profile. Why? Because it’s searchable. This is where you share a targeted keyword or two that your ideal followers are already searching for on Instagram.

Not sure what keywords your target follower is using?

Ask yourself:

• What niche is your account in? Travel, fashion, business, health, etc.
• What is the purpose of your account?
• Who is your ideal follower?

For example: The niche for @EliseDarma’s account is travel. The purpose of her account is to help others travel more by starting their own freelance business. Her ideal follower is someone who is interested in travel and becoming a digital nomad. So in her name field, she’s used the keywords “Digital Nomad Entrepreneur.”

You only have 30 characters for this field, so take your time finding the best search-friendly keywords.

Your bio

This is where you showcase your personal brand as a course creator and let a future follower know what the value is in following you. In 150 characters or less, you need to describe who you help and how you help them, plus include a compelling call-to-action to your link. For example: if you teach people how to make their own jewelry, the Bio could say that you help budding designers tap into their talents through the art of custom-made jewelry.

This lets a potential follower know the value they get by choosing to follow your account. Be clear about what they’re in for so don’t be afraid to use the lingo and jargon of your target follower, too.

The CTA

Next, don’t forget the all-important call-to-action to the one link in your Bio. That’s right–with Instagram, you have just one link that you can drive people to (that is, until you hit 10,000 followers and can use the “swipe up” feature in your Stories to share multiple links).

The last line of your Bio needs to tell people why they should click on the one link you’re given to share on your profile. What’s in it for them? Be specific.

It could lead to:

• Your latest blog post
• A free guide
• Your latest YouTube video
• A 10% discount code to your product shop

Finally, if it fits within the tone of your brand, don’t be afraid to use emojis to add some personality or save on character space to get your message across.

2. Attract your targeted followers on Instagram

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of how you can grow on Instagram to reach 1,000 or 10,000 highly targeted followers that will become course students. Two major things will help you reach 1,000 quality followers: content shared in your posts on your feed and content shared in your Instagram Stories.

What you share in your Stories will become the content for your Highlights, which are the “bubbles” below your Bio that permanently live on your profile, directly on top of all your posts. Highlights are gold. They are like your own mini personal brand website–without followers even having to leave the app.

The types of content to share in your feed

First, let’s talk about the content of your feed and the kind of posts you will share. A lot of course creators get stuck at this part. Consider the following types of content.

Personal images

These are of yourself, your workspace, your lifestyle, etc. Basically, images that represent those themes you already chose for yourself as a personal brand.

Quote cards

Create quotes that literally speak directly to your target follower to inspire, educate, or entertain. We like to use Canva to makes these for free, and Pinterest is a great resource for inspiration.

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Copyright-free stock photos

Stock photos aren’t all cheesy. There are amazing, high-quality sites like Unsplash and Pexels that offer very Instagram-friendly photos. With curation, stock photos can take your feed far.

Reposted images

It’s best to get permission from the original poster first and then give their handle credit the caption. But some big accounts only share other people’s images. It’s possible to grow using just this tactic.

Videos

These can be quick snippets filmed while on-the-go and edited using apps on your phone, or even reposted from your Stories.

3. Optimize the content you share in your feed

One of the best Instagram marketing tips is all about optimization. We find that content has a huge impact on how fast you grow and the quality of followers you attract. Consistency is definitely key. Posting once a day seems to be the sweet spot for most. But, there’s also strategy to your content game.

When it comes to posting content, we like to use the acronym CHECT.

Content

Instagram is a visual platform. Your content in your feed needs to be high quality (in resolution, framing, and editing) and consistent to what attracts your ideal follower.

Hashtags

It’s best if you use hashtags that are targeted to your niche, industry and the lifestyle interests of your target follower. Avoid using hashtags that have millions of posts already as they’ll likely attract bot accounts or spammy comments.

Engaging

By engaging, we mean you need to engage with the comments on your posts by replying back. What’s more, engage with other accounts in your niche or industry (see more about engagement below).

Captions

Think of your captions as mini or micro blogs. Use this space to share value (educate, entertain, or inspire), tell stories about yourself or your students, share student wins, and to give hacks or tips that your target follower and future student would find insanely helpful.

Tagging

By tagging, we’re referring to a few spots like the location of the post or your location when sharing the post. We’re also talking about other accounts. For example: brands, other people’s handles, repost or feature accounts or big accounts in your industry.

As far as Instagram marketing tips go, CHECT is a solid start. Using this checklist each and every time you post on your feed, your content will attract and resonate with your target follower who’ll most likely become a course student.

4. Use Instagram Stories

Using Instagram Stories is the second component to attracting your 1,000 quality followers. But how do you know the difference between what to post in your feed versus what to post in your Stories?

As a general Instagram marketing tips rule of thumb , put your best foot forward with high-quality posts and captions in your feed. Then share your behind-the-scenes, raw moments and your “journey” in your Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories can help boost your course sales in two ways. First, it can drive attention to your latest posts. Secondly, it can permanently live in your Highlights saved on your profile.

5. Boost engagement with Instagram Stories

Since the newsfeed of Instagram is no longer chronological, all your followers may not see your newest post in their feed. This is where Instagram Stories come in handy.

You can use them to drive attention to your latest post in a few ways:

• Share a screenshot of your new post in your Stories and have fun with the text, gifs and eraser tools to create curiosity
• Share a screenshot of your feed with the latest and newest post hidden behind an emoji or blurb of copy
• Ask a question and let your followers know that the answer is in the caption of your latest post
• Share a poll with your audience. Tell them that you shared your thoughts on this topic in your latest post…so they have to go there to find out what you think!

6. Use Instagram Highlights

Your Instagram Stories are an excellent place to be consistent on sharing the themes you already selected as part of your personal brand. Why? What you share in your Stories can later be saved as Highlights on your profile (those “bubbles” that live right below your Bio).

Highlights are hugely powerful on Instagram because they are like your own mini personal brand website. As a course creator, you want these Highlights to mimic the topics you’ve already featured in your website’s navigation bar, as well as feature tangible peeks at your course and student successes.

Here are some ideas for Highlights you could feature on your profile:

• Top Tips
• Faves
• Student Reviews
• Contact Me
• Team
• Podcast
• Tutorials
• Freebies
• Templates
• Weekly Review

By strategically sharing updates in your Stories that can be saved as evergreen content in your Highlights, new followers will quickly get a sense of your expertise as a course creator within the first few moments of finding your profile.

7. Go behind the scenes

Behind-the-scenes (BTS) content is a great way to connect with your audience. It offers exclusive access, which can make them feel valued and build trust. It also offers an authentic, human touch that is often lacking in picture-perfect social media feeds. To that end, it might require less editing and therefore be easy to produce. 

8. Lean into UGC

User-generated content (UGC) is content that is created by your customers, people that have tried your products and are willing to share their experience. While videos are increasingly popular in the world of Instagram marketing, photos, testimonials, reviews, and comments are also beneficial. UGC is a form of social proof, helping you build trust among your audience. It can also help widen your reach by introducing your offerings to the user’s network, boost engagement, and create community. You can create a hashtag specific to your brand to encourage your audience to engage and offer incentives for UGC with giveaways and contests and/or partnering with micro-influencers. There is no one-size-fits-all method, so experiment accordingly. 

9. Get carousel creative

The carousel feature on Instagram allows you to post more than one photo or video—up to 10—to your feed, allowing viewers to swipe through. This gives you, the course creator, more space for creativity and your audience an opportunity to engage by swiping. You can use this feature to share information, tell a story, introduce an offering, and more. In addition to story-telling and educating, a carousel could be used to show different features or modules of your course or spotlight testimonials and social proof. 

10. Consider collaborations and cross promotion

As mentioned above, partnering with micro-influencers can support your UGC strategy. Additionally, you might brainstorm other opportunities for partnerships and collaborations. Cross promotion is when you promote another brand or creator in exchange for them promoting your online course. Consider what brands or individuals align with your online courses and how a partnership can be mutually beneficial. 

11. Offer live sessions

Another way to connect with your audience is to go live on Instagram. This offers your audience the opportunity to tune in with you live, perhaps for a tutorial or Q&A session. You can also gauge interest in a topic area or offer a snippet of content you’ll be covering in your online course. At the end of the session, you can reuse the content by saving the video and posting the replay to your grid. 

12. Interact to increase engagement

If you want engagement from your audience (and you do!), you need to engage and interact with your audience. In addition to boosting your engagement for the sake of the algorithm (in other words, for Instagram to prioritize your content), this is an important part of your strategy because it creates a sense of community. It makes your audience feel seen and connected. That human touch is important for building and strengthening relationships. 

13. Set clear goals

While it may seem obvious that you’re using Instagram marketing for course sales, get even more clear and specific about what your goals are. What is the sales number you’re trying to hit? How many customers would you like to convert? Who are you trying to reach? Beyond that, where are your Instagram promotions leading your potential clients? What is the CTA? Is there a clear path that guides them to your course landing page? What stage of the marketing funnel is your content? Once you know where you’re going, you can outline a clear path to getting there. 

14. Review analytics

Reviewing the analytics of your Instagram posts via Meta Business Suite can offer valuable insight into what is and isn’t working. This can save you time and money by knowing where to focus your resources. Meanwhile, you can get a better understanding of your audience through demographic stats, as well as spot trends based on what is performing well. Take advantage of this wellspring of information that is available to you. 

15. Boost posts

Once you have quality content that meets your goals, you might consider boosting them through Meta Business Suite to expand your reach. Promoting on the platform allows you to allocate a budget, set your audience, and track how well your Facebook or Instagram ads do.

16. Show proof

As we’ve explored, social proof is the psychological idea that customer decision-making is influenced by others. UGC is one form of social proof. Others include testimonials, media mentions, numbers and ratings, and more—all of which you can use for selling courses on Instagram. Choose a range of testimonials that highlight various benefits—not just praising the course but why and how it provides value. It can also be helpful to include credibility boosters, such as the reviewer’s name, title, company name, and even photo.  

Wrap up

Instagram growth is about consistency—one of the top online course marketing tips we can share. Stick with it, aim for quality over quantity, and keep going. Follow these simple Instagram marketing tips to build your brand, attract an audience, and sell your course.

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