Top 5 Online Course Marketing Tips that Leverage Pinterest For your Future Launch

Online course marketing for your future launches can be overwhelming, but with a long term plan in place each release of a new course or open enrollment period will be much more efficient.

If you have ever experienced the stress of wondering where your next customers were going to come from, or if you would have enough students enroll in your course…you are definitely not alone.

You’ve poured your heart and soul into your online course!

Below we cover a few tips to help support your online course marketing efforts using Pinterest as a traffic driver.

Setting your Pinterest Marketing Expectations

Before setting up your account, here are a couple of things to keep in mind with Pinterest marketing for your business.

First, Pinterest is a long term game!  It will not work as fast in comparison to turning on a Facebook ad.  It takes time to establish a foundation and see traction on Pinterest, because it’s a search engine and not social media.

Second, it is an amazing tool and source of traffic for most businesses!  It’s a source of quality organic traffic you can utilize in combination with any paid ads both on Facebook and Pinterest.

Finally, there is work on your part to contribute content.  If you were trying to do the same on YouTube or Google, you have to produce consistent content of your own.

Next, we break down some top tips to get Pinterest marketing working for your business.

5 Online Course Marketing Tips to support your Business and Future Launches Using Pinterest

Tip #1: Pinterest for Business Foundation First

Your Pinterest account foundation is so important!  It’s what we use to build everything else off of. Optimizing and setting up your account the right way is key in helping to attract your ideal customers and clients on Pinterest.

Here is a helpful “get started checklist” when setting up your Pinterest for business:

1. Set up a Business account – important to see analytics and a must for running ads
2. Claim your website – Pinterest has a few resources on how to get started
3. Enable Rich Pins – Pinterest also has resources on how to do this.
4. Keyword Research – find and make a spreadsheet of those keywords related to your niche that people are searching for (we use these later)
5. Set up your Profile (clear photo of you, title with keywords, and fill in your bio with a couple key words and call to action)
6. Use those keywords to set up at least 10-20 boards (keywords in the title and description)
7. Curate quality pins to add to those boards using those keywords you found earlier

Tip #2: Consistency In Contributing

Consistency in marketing on Pinterest is important to your traffic growth and results.  Determining what to pin? Where to pin it? How often to pin?

The best way to stay consistent on Pinterest is to look at a couple different factors:

1. How much content you currently have (blog posts, longer form social posts, videos, or podcasts)
2. What content do you plan to create moving forward (how often do you create videos or blog posts)
3. How often do you plan to pin each day? (your content mixed with curated content)

Pinterest is constantly updating their recommended best practices to their platform.  Here is a link to stay in the know when making a plan for your content!

Bonus Tip!  If you want to save time in scheduling out your content, I highly recommend checking out Tailwind!  They are partnered with Pinterest and help keep your pinning within Pinterest’s guidelines.

Tip#3: Build Your List

With online course marketing on Pinterest, it’s important to have a plan that continuously grows your email list. 

Your email list is the heart of your business!  You don’t own the traffic on social media, or any other platform.  You do, however, own your email list.

No matter what the products, services, or course you plan to market using Pinterest…having a plan to grow your email list is part of establishing your foundation.

Both organic and paid strategies can be used to grow your list.  Having a mix of both long term is a great way to build a targeted audience.  Start organic and test for your best conversions with email sign ups, then boost it with those paid Pinterest ads.

Tip #4: Have a Launch Plan

Once you have a foundation built for your profile and plan for growing your email list you can make a plan for future launches.

If you have a newer course or product you are planning to launch, remember that your first launch sets the baseline for future launches.  Be prepared to collect data throughout your process and follow up with those who did or didn’t purchase after.

Consider what your needs are with your launches.  Do you need to focus on growing your email list first to build a warm audience to launch to?

What events are occuring during your pre-launch time frame?  What events are happening during your live launch and what is your post-launch plan?

It could vary from one launch cycle to the next.  With each launch, map out your ongoing organic Pinterest plan, and how you might incorporate paid advertising (whether on Facebook, Pinterest or both).

Before diving into Pinterest ads, I recommend establishing a solid organic strategy and sales system first.  You can operate with paid ads only, but without an organic traffic strategy you will lose traffic as soon as you turn those ads off.

Tip #5: Evergreen // Ongoing Marketing Plan

Pinterest is an amazing tool to drive traffic to your email list, courses, products or services.  With a plan for the long term for your business it will continue to grow and improve your results.

The best way to approach Pinterest is with a mindset that it will work for your business over the long term.  Therefore mapping out your marketing plan for the upcoming year will make both your organic and paids Pinterest strategies work best for you.

Your marketing plan and your core offers will drive everything else in terms of the content you create, right down to your freebies.

I would recommend always having a foundational list building strategy or system in place to continue to grow your list on an evergreen basis.  It will involve a lot of testing and making adjustments to align your message/positioning with your offer to inspire your ideal customers/clients to click through.

Marketing your course, programs or products on Pinterest is a great way to diversify your marketing efforts, and build a growing source of traffic that your business will continue to utilize in the months or years to come.

If you are ready to kick start Pinterest for your business, click the link below to download your free guide to set up Pinterest for your business!