The #1 Shift That Will Make Your Online Course Stand Out

It’s crazy how fast the online course industry is growing. More experts are creating online courses and more people are learning through online courses than ever before. 

To make your online course stand out, there's some powerful shifts in focus you will have to make to help your ideal people find you. 

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about the number one shift we need to make to make the most of this huge growth opportunity and to avoid being left behind.

Many of you wanted to know more about how to make the shift from “general” to “specific” in your online course content. Narrowing your focus is the one shift you need to make right now to be able to stand out and have your people find you online. 

In this post, we are going to walk through how you make this move from being broad to getting specific about who your online course is for and how you can help.

Three Ways to Narrow Your Online Course Focus 

1. Who are my ideal people?

Who are you serving with your online course? Being specific about your audience can help you build a better online course and find your people online.

There's a lot of filters you can use to narrow your audience including:

• Gender
• Age 
• Role 
• Industry 
• Location 
• Interests 
• Mindset 

You might wonder if it is necessary to narrow. For example, imagine you are a life coach and you're working with your audience on finding meaning and purpose. You might think, “I could help almost everybody, right?”

Yes, you could. I mean, who wouldn’t benefit from clarity around our purpose?

But, imagine how much more specific your online course content could be if your narrowed your audience just a bit. Imagine you narrowed your audience to:

- Women in their 40-50’s

- Transitioning out of a divorce or long-term relationship

- With a strong desire to reinvent 

By narrowing your audience, it is instantly more clear who your online course serves.

Starting with narrowing your audience can also help you narrow the problem you solve.

1. What's the problem that my perfect audience is experiencing related to what I do? 

The second way to narrow your focus is to narrow the problem you solve in your online course. 

Let's go back to the example of the life coach who has determined that she wants to work with women in their forties to fifties coming out of a long term relationship or divorce. 

When she thinks about the problem of finding purpose, she can start to get much more specific about what this specific audience is dealing with in their lives.

They may be dealing with:

• The loss of friendships
• Loss of financial stability
• Loneliness
• Lack of confidence
• Relocation
• Dividing up of assets
• Family dynamics

In this example, focusing on the specific issues of this audience brings real depth to the online course you are creating. 

3) How far will you take them?

The third way to narrow your focus is by determining the scope of your course.

When you help your audience, you meet them at a certain point in their journey to achieving the results they want. In the example of the life coach, the audience is women who are coming out of a divorce and looking to define life purpose and find meaning.

What do you want your audience to be able to do after your course is completed? How far will you go in this work with them?

• Will you help them build a roadmap for a new life?
• Will you support them in implementing that roadmap?
• Will you coach them through roadblocks?
• Will you provide 1-1 support?

Notice how the answers to these questions determine the content of the online course you are creating. 

Summary 

These are three different ways that you can get specific when creating your online course so that it really stands out:

1. Who are your people?
2. What's the problem you're going to solve for them? 
3. How far will you take them? 

Think about our life coach example. When she talks to her audience about her course through a Facebook or Instagram post, she will instantly grab their attention because they know this online course is for them.  

Get specific and you will stand out to your ideal people. 

If you want to take a look at the deeper dive post about all five shifts we need to make to stand out, you can read here. <<

Let me know what shift are you working on? Who is your ideal audience? How are you going to get more specific to stand out?