Would you buy an online marketing course tailored for small businesses?

[julienraby]

I've been looking for online marketing courses for small businesses but I didn't found anything relevant. It's either crappy products or expensive and time consuming.

I'm thinking about creating a set on online marketing lessons specifically for smb owners. Something along those lines:

Lesson 1: Create a simple website

Lesson 2: Simple SEO

Lesson 3: Blogging

Lesson 4: Social Medias

Lesson5: Email Marketing

Lesson 6: Advanced strategies

The price point would be at about 100$ (much lower than hubspot and other DIY ressources) and the total cost to setup everything would be at about 60$ (including domain name, hosting, etc).

So the promise is that for 160$ plus 1 hour a day for 30 days you can be up and running with a full fledge online marketing setup for your business.

Now the question: Would you buy a 100$ product that would should, in a step-by-step fashion, how to setup your online marketing?

Please be honest!

Thanks,
Julien

 

[Multi-store]

I Never Buy Anything From The Net That Isnt A Fixed Product, Ie A Pair Of Jeans.

Services, Ebooks, Etc Are Generally Over Hyped With Things Like "get These 6 Amazing Courses Valued At £2000 For Just £60!"

Rip Off. (generally Speaking)

 

[hayfj]

The planning element, and how each of the items you talk about and mention will fit in as part of an overall strategic plan?


What are the objectives they want to reach?
What are the best ways to achieving these goals and objectives?
How do you calculate how many fans, friends & followers someone needs?
What about their content strategy and what they will put on their site?

What Key performance indicators will they use to monitor their progress?
What will they do when what you tell them to do doesnt achieve the results they want?

What part of your programme explains and shares how to address the above?

What will make your sessions different from all the other millions of pages
of content already available on the web?

Of all the marketing "courses" out there, why should someone buy yours, what makes you different, and what will people get as a direct result - what's the "promise" you're making with the course?

Which tactics from your programme will you use to promote your course
and can/will you be using case studies from the various tactics you've tested and successfully implemented your course and reaped the benefits?

I'm not being negative, I'm just raising some key marketing questions for you to consider..

Hope that gets you thinking

 

[fisicx]

Now the question: Would you buy a 100$ product that would should, in a step-by-step fashion, how to setup your online marketing?

No.

It fails at step 1.

Setting up the site is the easy. I can have wordpress installed and live in under an hour.

What you are missing is the whole planning process. Most of the website design process takes place before a single line of code is written. Unfortunatlely most rush in and build a site before they have even thought about what it is they want the site to acheive.

Lesson 3 is pointless if you are selling cheap widgets via PPC. Same with lesson 4. What is lesson 6 all about?

 

[termsandconditions]

I would add three stages at the beginning of your course:

1. Market Research

2. Product Research

3. Keyword Research

..and in that order.

Best Regards

 

[S-Marketing]

I would add three stages at the beginning of your course:

1. Market Research

2. Product Research

3. Keyword Research

..and in that order.

Best Regards

Personally, I like to see marketing research and market research listed. This tends to give a good indication that the author knows their stuff, as very few people appreciate the difference.

 

[julienraby]

Hi guys,

thank you all for for your comments, it means a lot to me.

Your points are very valid, but I think you're already pretty savvy regarding online marketing.

But what about a small SMB owner with an outdated website and no online skills?.

My idea would be to create a no-********, actionable step by step process where:

- You get bluehost, install wordpress, pay a premium theme, create the usual 4 pages and some basic content.

- hop over the adwords tool, find 1 local, targeted keyword and optimize your home against it.

- Do some very basic article submission/directories/local resources sites to get a few links and start ranking.

- Determine a light content strategies and commit on creating a blog post every week or so.

- Create a simple facebook page (using free tool) with an opt-in mecanism (contest, whatever). Fuel you FB page with enternaining stuff, your own blog post, etc.

- Create a monthly newsletter with your optins (using a free mailchimp account), where you can reuse your blog post, plus unique content, deals, etc.

- etc

So for someone who is looking to get started, I think this type of stuff is clearly not advanced, but it's simple, very cheap, and efficient.

I'm just wondering if an SMB owner would care for that type of course and if he would commit to the work...

Thanks guys!
Julien

 

[fisicx]

It's still no.

Until you know what the website is going to be used for and have a plan about the sort of content, marketing, imagery and so on how do you even know wordpress is the best solution.

Even you adwords plan is fundamentally flawed. There is no point in bidding on huckster in hicksville is there is nobody looking for hucksters in hicksville. And you often need to start the research with hundreds of keywords to see which ones convert.

As to facebook, if they haven't even got a website for their business they aren't going to suddenly start posting and blogging and getting all social.

Great idea but your plan start at totally the wrong place and heads off in the wrong direction.

 

[bookpm]

Personally, I wouldn't be interested in this course as I think the content and assistance you are providing can be easily found for free elsewhere on the internet (aside from domain name and hosting). However, I would perhaps be interested if you offered this course as a free lead-in to a product or service that you offer.

I also think the sort of people you are targetting won't know what they need in terms of online marketing and likely don't even know what SEO is.

P.S. 'media' is already plural (singular is 'medium'), so you don't need the 's' at the end.