Do you want to create a course to teach digital marketing to future students? Do you want to be able to charge students to take your course? Did you start a business and want to add additional value by teaching others how to market your product/service effectively? If so, you’re in the right place! In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps to create a digital marketing course for online students, so you can get started and begin charging students for your knowledge.

Step one: Decide on the scope

The first step is to determine the scope of your course. What are you teaching? What skillset do you plan on developing? The more you know up front the less likely you’ll run into problems later on when setting up your course. You don’t want to create a general business course that covers numerous aspects of digital marketing, but rather want to focus on a particular area of interest. For example, if you’re an experienced marketer and know SEO/inbound marketing inside and out, but don’t have any experience creating courses, it’s better to skip right over this step and move on to the next.

Step two: Create a syllabus

Your syllabus is the guide that will help your students understand what to expect from your course. It will give them a general idea of the material they’ll need to know and provide important information about any assignments or due dates. Creating a strong syllabus is critical for a successful course. Students will not be satisfied with a watered down version of what they signed up for. The more you know up front the less likely you’ll have to scramble to come up with content late in the game.

Step three: Gather your materials

In order to create the best possible course, you’ll want to gather as much content as possible. Luckily for you, we’re marketers and understand the importance of content. The better the content the better. When creating your course, look for any blogs, articles, cases, or white papers that you feel will help your students succeed. If you’re struggling to come up with content, try out a content marketer. They will help you come up with unique material for your course, and can also help you distribute your content to increase its reach. Having high-quality content is important because it will help attract and retain more students. If your school paid for your MBA and you’re just throwing together a series of case studies, then you’re missing out on the value that a well-designed course could provide.

Step four: Design your courseware

With your materials gathered, you’re now ready to begin designing your courseware. The design stage is crucial because it will impact how your students learn. This is especially important if you’re teaching online students as they’ll have to spend a considerable amount of time looking at and working with the materials. Choose a theme for your course that will make the material more accessible to students by using color, pictures, and bold text. If you want to create an immersive learning experience, consider using a tool such as KahnAcademy’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It provides an interactive whiteboard-like experience for students while still keeping your voice the central guide.

Step five: Test your courseware

One of the most crucial steps in creating a course is testing it. Even after you’ve designed a courseware, the best course doesn’t guarantee success for your students. Testing is important because it allows you to discover any flaws in your courseware before the end of the term (more on this later). If you’re teaching online students, you’ll want to make sure that the material is accessible on a variety of devices, with the expectation that they’ll be using them to study.

Step six: Create a detailed plan

With your courseware tested and ready, it’s time to create a detailed plan. This will include everything from course objectives and benchmarks to the amount of time you’ll need to spend on each topic. While you want to avoid having too many details, knowing exactly what you’ll teach and when is essential. The more you know up front the less likely you’ll be to run into problems later on when planning your course.

Step seven: Create a marketing plan

The last step in creating a course is to build a marketing plan. If you’re teaching online students, this is especially important because you’ll want to be sure that you promote your course effectively. A good marketing plan will include everything from advertisements on Facebook to SEO strategies. When creating your marketing plan, be sure to include keywords, as well as more specific ones such as ‘SEO tutorial for beginners’, as these are the terms that Google and other search engines will identify and rank your content according to. Having a strong marketing plan is important because it will allow you to gain more students and potentially earn more money. If you’re worried about not having a strong enough marketing plan, try out SEMrush, which provides SEO analysis and planning tools.

As you can see, there are seven steps to creating a course; however, many successful businesses start with just a few of these steps. Once you get the hang of creating a course, it’s relatively easy to continue creating more. Did you create an online course for future students? How did you find the process?