Promote Your Online Course with Affiliate Marketing

Online learning is booming. With more affordable options available and the ease of accessibility, e-learning is no longer limited to higher education courses or corporate training sessions.

Technology has presented an opportunity for almost anyone to teach or be taught through online learning. Whether it be a career, fitness, culinary, art, fashion, or even learning how to talk to animals — there’s something for everyone.

And there are several e-learning platforms available to creators looking to create their own courses. But once you create a course, how do you promote it?

In this article, we’ll cover how to use affiliate marketing to promote your online course. Learn everything you need to know about affiliate marketing, getting students to sign up and growing your business.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is growing more and more in popularity, and becoming a go-to marketing strategy for many businesses.

Affiliate marketing works by incentivizing individuals to promote your business and refer customers, and in exchange, they earn a commission for every successful referral they send your way.

Affiliates use their own referral link or promo code to promote your online course and refer potential students. This could be via websites, social media, and blogs — or even just through word-of-mouth to friends and family.

For online courses, affiliates typically earn a commission when their referral enrolls and pays for a course.

Is Affiliate Marketing Effective for Online Courses?

Affiliate marketing is effective for almost all online courses. It’s a starting point for those who are just beginning their marketing efforts. And for more established courses, this offers a new channel to add to the current marketing efforts.

More specifically, these are some of the key benefits of using affiliate marketing for online courses.

Builds Brand Awareness

You can spend months preparing your online course and making worthwhile content, but if no one knows it even exists, you’ll likely not get many students to enroll.

Finding audiences and making yourself known are one of the biggest challenges for online courses. It often requires intense market research, which of course costs time, money, and resources.

Affiliate marketing can help with this.

Affiliates provide you with built-in audiences that they can immediately start promoting to. Whether it be an influencer’s thousands of followers or simply a Facebook post to an affiliate’s inner circle, this is a great way to increase exposure.

On top of that, this gives you the opportunity to reach completely new audiences — including those who may not have known about your course, or even been interested, in the first place.

For example, if you use Adwords you’ll likely be promoting to audiences already searching for online courses or related topics. But with affiliate promotions, there’s a chance you can catch the attention of someone as they scroll through their social media feeds, and interest them in something they didn’t previously know about.

Reach Targeted Audiences

Along with making your brand known, affiliates can promote to targeted audiences. This is especially true if you partner with affiliates in your niche.

For example, if your online course focuses on investing money, consider partnering with affiliates that share similar audiences like business experts or finance bloggers.

Unique and Effective Promotions

As we said before, e-learning is increasingly growing in popularity. With so many courses available, how do you stand out?

Affiliate promotions can reach far beyond the limits of text in Google Ads. With unique content like blog posts, reviews & testimonials, videos, infographics, and word-of-mouth recommendations, you can better promote your course.

Affiliates give customers a sneak preview of what to expect, as well as a sense of the overall course experience. They can share why they took your course, what they enjoyed, and how they benefited.

This is especially powerful if your course is more expensive or time-consuming. Customers will want to be sure of what they are signing up for, and affiliate promotions can help reassure them that your course is worthwhile.

Save on Marketing Expenses

Affiliate marketing is a cost-effective strategy.

Why?

Because you only pay affiliate commissions when someone actually becomes a customer.

The costs of PPC channels like Google & Facebook might be too expensive for those sites just starting out, especially with so many online courses bidding against you for the same keywords.

With affiliate marketing, you only pay for ads that convert. Budgets won’t be wasted on impressions or views that don’t bring in paying customers. It’s a low-risk investment and provides a clear ROI compared to other marketing channels.

Reward Your Fans

This is also a way to reward those who have taken your course and recommended it to others. Rewarding customers is a great way to build brand loyalty, making it more likely for them to enroll in future courses.

Online school MasterTheHandpan is a great example of combining customer loyalty and affiliate promotions.

We started considering affiliation when we realized our students were recommending our courses organically. We wanted to find a way to thank them, and it was also a way to encourage them to recommend us more consistently and on an “official” basis, by giving them the right tools.

Looking for an affiliate platform to manage your program? Tapfiliate offers a 👉 free 14-day trial 

How to Start an Affiliate Program for Your Online Course

If you’re ready to launch an affiliate program for your online course, here are the steps you need to get started.

1. Select an Affiliate Marketing Software

Start with a top affiliate marketing software.

Affiliate marketing software will provide you with all the tools you need to start your affiliate program. This includes providing referral links, tracking clicks and conversions, and awarding commissions.

Tapfiliate offers several integration options for e-learning platforms like Teachable and Campwire. Additionally, there are options available if you use subscription sites or payment gateways.

For most sites, this is pretty seamless and you can get started in just minutes. Check out Tapfiliate’s intergrations here. Plus, we offer annual subscriptions and monthly subscriptions so you can be flexible.

Want to start an affiliate program? Try all the features: 👉  get a 14-day free trial here

2. Customize Your Program

Your affiliate program will be an extension of your online course.

Customize your program by:

• Setting up a custom subdomain
• Creating a branded sign-up page
• Adding your logo to your affiliate program’s dashboard
• Personalizing affiliate emails to fit your brand’s verbiage

3. Set Your Commissions

For online courses, affiliate marketers will typically earn a commission when a referral enrolls in a course.

If you offer a free course or trial period, you have the option to only pay affiliates a commission when the referral pays for the course. With Tapfiliate’s Customers functionality, you are able to track this journey so that when the referred customer makes a payment, the conversion will be attributed to the affiliate.

Commission amounts can be a flat rate or a % of the course cost.

For example, your course costs $49.99 per student and you offer affiliates a 15% commission. Affiliates would earn around $7 for every referral that enrolls in your course.

4. Promote Your Affiliate Marketing Program

Then, you’ll want to make your affiliate program readily available.

Incorporate your affiliate program into your existing site and marketing materials. This includes:

• Adding a footer link on your site’s course page
• Promoting on social media profiles, bios, and posts
• Including affiliate offers in your email signature
• Enabling Tapfiliate’s Affiliate Recruitment feature to invite your existing customers

5. Find and Partner with Affiliates

Once you’re set up, it’s time to find affiliates for your program.

You can make your program available to anyone who’d like to promote it. Or, you can make it invite-only, such as only allowing people who have taken your course or people who have hand-selected yourself.

Some sites choose to be invite-only, so they have more control over how their courses are being promoted, who is promoting you, and where it is being promoted. Other sites choose to open their affiliate program to everyone for more widespread promotions and the opportunity to reach untapped audiences.

Who Can Be Affiliates for Your Online Course?

Students

Promotions from former students are very effective. It is a stamp-of-approval and personal recommendation from someone who has already taken the course. And with 92% of consumers believing recommendations from friends and family more than advertising, this can be very persuasive.

Student promotions can include reviews, testimonials, or even video content that recaps what they learned and why it was of value.

Directly invite your new and existing students with Tapfiliate’s Affiliate Recruitment feature.

This will automatically send your students a referral link that they can use to promote your site to others. When they refer a new student they are immediately added to your affiliate program and will be invited to log in to view their performance and find more of your program’s resources.

Industry Experts

Experts in topics related to your course can provide a strong endorsement.

For example, a photography course could reach out to well-known photographers to become their affiliates. Or a course on interviewing for tech jobs could partner with employees at top-tier companies like Google and Apple.

Explain how your course can benefit their audience and your commission offer. You may also want to consider offering something extra such as the opportunity for co-marketing their own business as part of your course material.

Experts can promote through their own channels, such as a “resource” section on their website or blog, or with a social media post recommending your course.

Course Instructors

Consider partnering with non-competition sites that complement your business.

For example, a nutrition course could partner with a fitness course. Affiliate promotions could be included as part of the course material or as a personal recommendation from the instructor themselves.

Not only will this help you reach new audiences, but you will also likely be able to collaborate together and create new content for your site that would benefit everyone in the partnership.

Social Media Groups

Use social media to find online communities that are filled with people interested in topics closely related to your course.

These could be groups that are explicitly interested in your niche. For example, if you teach a cooking course, you can find groups that are dedicated solely to the foodie life.

You can also find groups that overlap with your niche. For example, if you teach a language course, look into expat groups in countries where that language is spoken.

Popular social media sites for this include Facebook, LinkedIn, MeetUp, and Reddit.

11 of the Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Promote Your Online Course

Promoting an online course with affiliate marketing requires time and effort. There are a wide range of ways you can optimize your results – these tips should help you along the way.

Develop a Strong Affiliate Onboarding Process

First impressions count, and if your affiliate onboarding process is thorough and thought out it can mean the difference between someone enthusiastically starting to promote you as soon as they are onboarded, or someone vaguely committing to promote you in the future.

Here’s what to consider:

• Personalized face to face call to start the relationship off to a good start
• Communication channels (email list, skype, phone) and how often you keep in touch
• Marketing materials
• Training materials
• Online community for your affiliates

Provide Training and Support for Your Affiliates

If someone started working as an employee for your company, you’d provide them with training and support so they had a good understanding of your company and how it all works. The same consideration should be given to affiliates who are promoting your online course to their audience. You want them to understand the product and how to market it at a bare minimum. Let’s dive into what you should be thinking about when it comes to affiliate training.

Here’s what you should cover:

Product Knowledge:

It’s important that affiliates understand your course and can explain it clearly to their audience.

• Show an in-depth overview of your online course, including objectives, curriculum, unique selling propositions (USPs), and the target audience to help affiliates understand what they are promoting.
• Explain the key benefits and features of your course – what makes you different from your competitors.
• Share success stories and testimonials from past students to provide your affiliates with persuasive selling points.

Marketing and Promotion Training:

Marketing training is an essential part of training your affiliates. Some may be new to the game or have no formal qualifications and are learning as they go. Providing them with the tools they need to grow will set you apart from your competitors.

• Provide clear brand guidelines, including how your brand should be represented, tone of voice, and any do’s and don’ts in promoting your course.
• Teach effective promotional strategies tailored to your target audience, including content marketing, email marketing, social media strategies, and PPC advertising.
• Offer guidance on creating compelling content, such as blog posts, social media posts, email marketing, and videos that align with your course’s messaging.

Affiliate Tools and Resources:

All affiliates need to promote you is a text link or a coupon code, but providing them with marketing materials, dashboard training and tech will help them to drive more sales.

• Supply affiliates with a variety of promotional materials, such as banners, email templates, social media posts, and graphics.
• Offer training on how to use the affiliate dashboard, track sales and commissions, and access promotional materials and reports.
• Provide guidance on technical aspects, including affiliate links tracking, coupon codes, and any software tools they might need.

Performance Optimization:

To promote you effectively, affiliates will need to be able to understand what they can do when performance needs to be optimized.

• Teach affiliates how to analyze their performance data to understand what’s working and where there’s room for improvement.
• Provide insights on conversion rate optimization to help affiliates optimize their marketing efforts for higher conversions.

Compliance and Ethical Marketing:

This is often overlooked by affiliates, but it is critical for you as a brand so you can avoid legal issues.

• Ensure affiliates are aware of any legal requirements or compliance issues related to advertising, such as disclosure requirements.
• Emphasize the importance of ethical marketing practices, including honesty, transparency, and respect for potential customers’ privacy.

Communication and Support:

Finally communication and support are what will keep your affiliate program running smoothly. Without it affiliates are left to their own devices, and this could be negative for your business.

• Keep in touch with affiliates regularly about any updates to your course, promotional strategies, or affiliate program policies.
• Host regular Q&A sessions or webinars to address affiliates’ questions and share best practices.
• Offer dedicated support for affiliates, ensuring they have a go-to person for queries or issues.

Create a Community for Your Affiliates

There’s nothing better than a community of engaged affiliates who are all helping one another all in one place. You can set up your community on Facebook, slack, or discord so that affiliates can easily ask questions.

You can use it to make updates and announcements about your course to keep your community engaged – if you have a community manager who can help to create discussions, answer questions and keep the community active that will help create a positive atmosphere. You could even get affiliates to share their success stories, strategies and best practices to create an environment of learning to benefit everyone.

Some fun ideas you can incorporate into your communities:

• Q and A sessions with affiliates and marketing experts
• Affiliate challenges to encourage affiliates to team up to leverage one another’s strengths
• Affiliate spotlights
• Exclusive rewards
• Contests
• Feedback on new courses

By spending time creating a close-knit affiliate community you create an ecosystem that drives the success of your affiliates and the success of your online course.

Help Your Affiliates Optimize Their Conversion Funnels

Optimization is essential in marketing, and for an affiliate this is no different. The more optimized their funnels, the more they can earn.

Educating your affiliates on how to optimize their landing pages or blog posts (or whatever promotional method they are using for conversions) is a great step to helping revenue grow.

A step further would be to offer to create or to help them to design custom landing pages to optimize the user journey. This is a win-win for you, because your brand will also benefit from the extra sales. Plus, a little A/B testing could increase conversion rates over time.

Encourage Your Affiliates to Cross-Promote

From the get-go brands who encourage affiliates to promote across different platforms to increase reach and engagement will see better results. The focus is not only on one promotional method but multiple – people need to interact with brands several times before they are convinced to purchase

Suggesting bundling or promoting courses with complementary products like digital products to increase chances of conversion, and be available to facilitate affiliate partnerships to cross promote each other’s content. This is what will make the difference in your affiliate marketing campaigns

Use Retargeting to Maximize Results

Retargeting is a good way to stay top of mind with potential customers who have visited a site and leave without purchasing. You can use a retargeting platform and add tracking code to the affiliate website, or affiliates themselves can set up their own retargeting campaigns. The visitor is then shown relevant ads to these people who have visited the affiliate website without converting.

Network

Finding affiliates and content creators to promote your brand is half the battle when it comes to growing your affiliate program. Networking is a great way to do this. Look for events around online learning, SEO, and education and connect with people. These could be affiliates and content creators with really great audiences.

Offer Co-Branding Opportunities for High-Performing Affiliates

Co branding is a common strategy for brands who have successful affiliate marketers – it can be a great way to increase conversions. The audience gets a streamlined experience and they know they are in the right place because they can see they are in the correct plce.

If your affiliate is performing well you could offer co branded:

• Landing pages
• Banners
• Promotional materials

You could even offer to highlight top performing affiliates on your own website, in newsletters or webinars, and in your community and offer them exclusive content or early access to course materials to

Offer Bonuses for Affiliates Who Recruit Other Affiliates to Your Program

Offering affiliates bonuses for bringing new affiliates to your program can be a great way to incentivize affiliates and drive additional revenue to your online course. Learn more about how this feature works at Tapfiliate.

Did you know that Tapfiliate offers this feature? Try our 👉  14-day free trial

Use Former Students to Spread the Word

Former students in your customer base who have already taken your online course could be a great way to tap into word of mouth marketing. You could create a special referral program for your course alumni. You can encourage them to share their experiences and success on their social media channels and give them affiliate links to track the conversions.

Optimize Your Commission Structure

Ensuring your commission structure is attractive affiliates is a great way to drive revenue. You could think about tiered commission rates based on sales, or bonuses for reaching specific affiliate sales goals, or affiliate tiers (gold, silver, bronze)

These tips will help you to skyrocket your affiliate program to success whether you have one course, or several online businesses focused on education.

What’s Next?

After you’re all set up, there are a few things you can do to help your affiliates be successful.

To start, you’ll want to provide great marketing materials for affiliates to promote. This includes banners, images, text links, social media posts, and videos. It’s also helpful to provide your branding materials, any certifications, or special recognitions.

Be sure to include enrollment information, sign-up deadlines, and any special deals or sales you may have.

Start Promoting Your Online Course

This covers the basics for getting started. And then from there, it’s up to you what you would like for your affiliate program.

You can take a more hands-on approach by actively recruiting affiliates and running contests, but also choose to use automation tools to take care of certain tasks and streamline workflows.

Start your 👉 free 14-day trial of Tapfiliate today and grow your online course affiliate program