How to sell a course on Instagram — 6 steps
- 1. Design your Instagram profile
- 2. Create a landing page for your course on Instagram
- 3. Create a content plan
- 4. Add value to your course
- 5. Seed launch your course on Instagram
- 6. Keep promoting your course on Instagram
- Use hashtags
- Interact with users
- Collaborate
- Launch an advertisement
- The bottom line
Below we describe 6 steps to start selling your course on Instagram. We covered all the main points: the course presentation on social media, sales start, and promotion. Let's look at all these in detail.
Your page on Instagram is what creates the first impression of your course. And if the impression is good, then users subscribe and buy. This is how to improve the impression and sell more:
- Write a good bio to make clear what the course is about and how to buy it. Be short, but also be sure to mention the topic, the unique features, and the advantages of the course. Add a call to action — send users to follow the link in your bio to read more information and buy.
- Add a link to your Instagram bio. It should lead to your course landing page.
- Use Highlights to put information about your course in plain sight. For example, create highlights with reviews, the course program, and payment options.
- Design your Instagram profile so that it has a style. Choose colors and filters and use only them on your page.
Here is a profile example where all four recommendations are followed:
If you create a new account specifically for selling a course, link to it in your personal Instagram account. This is a good way to get your first followers in the new account.
Create a landing page to sell your course on Instagram. The page will make the presentation of your course explicit and the purchase simple. And if users can understand what you offer and can easily buy it, then they are likely to buy.
Creating an Instagram landing page for your course is better in the Taplink website builder. This is because the page will be:
- A universal solution for users. You can place all the information about the course, as well as a purchase or book button on your page. Thus, users can find answers to all their questions and buy your course in one place.
- Perfectly adapted for viewing from phones. And, as a rule, users open Instagram from their phones. Taplink website builder provides mobile-first web design and thus its landing pages are always displayed correctly on phones. In addition, the pages load instantly, so even the most impatient users don't get nervous and leave.
Here is an example of a landing page for selling courses on Instagram:
Follow the link to view the full page.
Don't worry, creating a landing page to sell your course on Instagram is not rocket science. Use templates to create your page in a matter of minutes. On Taplink, by the way, there are a whole lot of them. After you sign up, you get access to more than 60 templates including special ones for courses:
- Social media marketer course (the page you can see above is made using it).
- Web developer course.
- Fitness course.
Just 3 steps to quickly create an Instagram landing page for your course:
- Sign up.
- Choose a landing page template. You need to add your info in it. You can read how to do it here, but we're sure you can do it without instructions.
- Get your page link.
After that, share the landing page link on Instagram. Then users can find answers, make a decision, and finally buy your course.
- Bio. First of all, add the link to your Instagram bio.
- Stories. Post the link in stories regularly, and save one of them to Highlights.
- Posts. When you post about your course, make sure your post says to follow the link in your bio, which is easy to find.
- Ads. Link to your course landing page when you run ads on Instagram.
- Direct Messages. Add the clickable link in Instagram auto-replies.
By the way, you can add your landing page link to all your accounts on social media and sell your course there too. Here we explain how to share the link on TikTok, Twitter, and other social networks.
You should regularly add content to the Instagram page which you use to sell your course. Then you stay in sight of prospects, and thus, you can get new students.
The content plan ensures that you always have something to post on Instagram. In addition, you have time to prepare high-quality photos, videos, and texts. We have described in detail how to create a social media content calendar. Below we state the main points:
- Add more short videos. They are in demand now. Post to Instagram Stories daily. Most of the posts should be reels.
- Know your posting schedule. You can know the right time and frequency only by experimenting and analyzing. Start with two Instagram posts a day. Try posting more often to increase reach. But if you see that the second post is gaining much fewer views and likes, then perhaps one post per day is enough.
- Keep to the course topic. Then, you will get more likes under your photos and videos, new followers, students, and a lower unfollowing rate.
- Promote your course. When you create a content plan, add posts, reels, and stories that explain why your course is good and how to buy it. And don't forget to add posts about the flash sales that you run.
When your content plan is about to end, add more posts, reels, and stories to it for the future. You should always have a plan for a week or a month ahead.
Prospects are more likely to become clients if the course price is reasonable for them. Instead of lowering the price, you can increase the value of the course that you sell on Instagram. Here are some ways to do this:
- Provide 24/7 support during the studying, as well as afterward.
- Personally communicate with each student (no assistants or bots).
- Give an opportunity to find like-minded people, business partners, and friends. Create a group chat in Instagram DM or in a messaging app so that students can communicate.
- Provide extracurricular activities. For example, this can be offline leisure and events on the course topic.
- Prove your expertise. Show your certificates if you have them.
- Be charismatic and unique. Many users are willing to pay more for the energy and mood that you give.
Be sure to explain the value of your course in your Instagram profile. Tell users what they get in addition to the skills.
Before you sell your course using Instagram, you need to seed launch it. This helps improve your course and its promotion strategy. Find 15–20 people and give them your course for free in return for feedback.
- Choose people from your target audience. These may be users from the newsletter list. Another option is to ask in Instagram Stories who wants to take the course and choose those who want.
- Give priority to the people for whom the course was created. For example, if your course is for beginners, send the course to beginners, not experts. If your course is for portrait photographers, send it to those who photograph people, not food or nature.
If you haven't gained enough Instagram followers yet, you can ask your friends, family, and colleagues to take the course.
Send your course to the chosen people or conduct the lessons online. In the first case, agree on the time limit for finishing the course in advance.
Ask for feedback when users finish your course. You can ask in a private chat, send out a list of questions in Google Forms, or add a part with questions to the course materials.
Here are examples of questions to ask users:
- What they like about your course. You will know the advantages that can persuade Instagram users to buy your course. Use them in ads and promotional posts.
- What they don't like about your course. You will know the weak sides of your course, so you will know how to improve it.
- What they have learned. You will know whether your course really teaches what you created it for.
- What difficulties they faced. You will know if the course is tailored to your target audience. Maybe something should be explained in more detail or removed in a separate course for advanced students.
- What information is redundant. You will know how to make the course shorter without reducing its value.
- What they expected from the course but didn't get. You will know how to make the course more valuable for your students.
Analyze the answers and edit the course if necessary. After that, you can move on and sell your course on Instagram officially.
After the sales launch, continue promoting the profile to sell your course on Instagram. The more followers you gain, the more customers you get.
The easiest and most importantly free way to promote the course you sell on Instagram is to use hashtags under posts. We wrote a complete guide on how to use them. The posts with hashtags will appear in the Explore tab. There they are shown to users who don't know about you yet. Some of them will subscribe to you and buy your course.
Another free way to catch the eye of prospects on Instagram is to interact with users. Communicate with them on the competitors' pages. Also, look for your target audience's pages among your and the competitors' followers, authors of the posts with your topic hashtags, and communicate on these pages too.
Cooperate with Instagram influencers to promote the course you sell on Instagram. Choose popular users in your niche. You can post something together or go live. Then, the influencer's followers will know about you and some of them will subscribe.
You may have to pay for collaborations. If you and the influencer have the same number of followers, then the collaboration is beneficial to the influencer too. Perhaps, it will be free. If the influencer has more followers, you will definitely have to pay.
You can pay the influencer once or regularly for each new client. Use a promo code to track the customers who come due to the collaboration.
Advertising increases the reach rate of Instagram posts about your course. Launch ads using the in-app Boost post tool. You can only promote posts this way. But the posts can be shown both in the users' posts and Stories feeds. They will be shown exactly to your target audience.
When you want to sell courses on Instagram, you should start with designing your profile page and creating a landing page. They will help to present your course clearly and make its purchase convenient.
Then, create a content plan and adhere to it. This way you will catch the eye of your target audience, and you will be able to prepare posts that are interesting to it.
When everything's set, you can sell your course on Instagram. Do a seed launch first. You will know the weak spots of your course and be able to make it better. After improving your course, you can move on to the official sales start.
After the course sales have started, you should increase your Instagram reach. Keep posting and use hashtags, communicate with users, run ads, and collaborate with influencers.
If your course files are PDFs, you may also want to read how to sell PDFs online.