Creating personas for your course
To create a course that fulfills a need for your audience, start by talking with them.
Note
Creating a course first and then trying to find buyers is hardly an effective strategy. A better approach is to start with people — do research to find out what problems and pain points they have for which you are equipped to solve, then create a course around that.
This way, when you kickstart your marketing efforts you will have demand for your course because it's solving a problem for your audience. Your course will also have a personal touch since it's a problem you have experience solving.
A good way to start is by creating a customer persona (also called buyer or user persona). A customer persona is a document that shows who your ideal buyer is — their pain points, day-to-day life, and other key traits.
Depending on how large your target audience is, you’ll have to create one or more personas for each segment (i.e. people with similar traits).
By creating a customer persona, you’ll have insights into the lives of your target audience. This will help you decide what to focus your course content on and what marketing strategies will be most effective in reaching your target audience.
Here’s what you can do now:
Make a list of 5 - 10 people who fit your target audience. You can start with people in your personal network eg. friends, family.
Interview each of them. Have a conversation where you ask questions about their day-to-day life as it relates to the course you have in mind. For example, if you plan on creating a writing course, ask questions on their current writing habits, then dig deeper.
Compile all your findings into a customer persona document. A good tool for this last step is Xtensio. You can create a free account and start with this template.
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