YouTube is one of the best places on the internet to promote and sell your online course. The platform has over 2.6 billion users worldwide, and you can tap into this never-ending source of traffic to increase subscribers to your channel.

As a course creator, more subscribers means more leads and a boost in the passive income generated through your elearning platform. 

But in order to be successful, you must have an effective strategy. With that in mind, here are the seven steps to start a YouTube channel to complement your online courses. 

1. Use Free Content to Introduce New Leads to Your Brand

Creating valuable free content is one of the best ways to stand out when promoting your online course on YouTube. You can offer videos and tutorials as a way to introduce new leads to your brand. 

When you prove your value by uploading new content regularly, it simplifies the process of transforming your audience from free YouTube viewers to paying students.  Viewers will be so impressed with your free material that they’ll start to wonder about the value they might get with your premium course.

A great way to use this marketing tactic is to publish free mini-courses on your channel. This helps familiarize students with your teaching style and build better relationships. 

Also, it’s a great way to sell naturally. At the end of your free course, you can invite learners to check out your premium course. 

In addition to creating free content for your channel, you can also give away a premium lesson for free. This is probably the best way to prove to your audience that they will find real value in your course. Just make sure this is a lesson that can work well as a standalone video.

Publish the lesson on your channel and add the link to your homepage. If you have a newsletter, add the link there so subscribers can check out your course. 

2. Create a Channel Trailer to Attract Interest

It’s smart to include some marketing in your video content, and a great way to do this is by creating a YouTube channel trailer. 

Trailer videos are great for grabbing your audience’s interest. You can use them to help prospective students imagine different ways they could change their life or business with your course. 

By showing them what’s possible, you make it a lot more likely that they will want to sign up for your course.

You can use a tool like Animaker’s all-in-one trailer maker to produce a gripping trailer for your channel. 

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Create a trailer video that points your audience toward your online course or lead magnet. Post this as your channel’s trailer. Since it has a prominent place on your home page, it will help you get more people to check out your course or lead magnet. 

If your online course isn’t the only focus of your channel, then you can include it as an aside after your main video footage. 

Either way, make sure you include a strong call to action (CTA) at the end of your video trailer. This is essential to get your viewers to take some kind of action, such as: 

• Purchasing your online course
• Joining your email list
• Becoming part of your online community
• Subscribing to your YouTube channel
• Connecting with you on other platforms

…and so on. 

Just remember to use one CTA at a time to avoid confusing your viewers. Though different, each CTA works effectively, and you must choose the one that’s relevant to your goals. 

3. Incentivize Viewers to Purchase Your Course

As the second-largest search engine in the world, YouTube is already attracting millions of viewers who are looking for the type of information you provide. 

It’s up to you to give them a good enough reason why your online course may be the ideal solution to their problems. 

You can do this in a number of ways. Here are a few examples: 

• Create teasers: Create short videos with sneak peeks and helpful tips to incentivize viewers to purchase your online course or subscribe to a series. This type of content helps increase the buzz around your course and can generate more leads and sales. 

• Livestream R=regularly: Expert marketers will tell you that the best way to sell to anyone is through a live one-on-one conversation. The second-best way is a video call. It’s obvious why this is so true; talking to someone directly is a lot more powerful than posting on social media or sending an email through your email marketing platform. 

Talk to your audience about their problems and answer their questions. Position your course as the ideal solution to help them achieve their goals.  

• Build a community: YouTube has a feature that makes it easy for creators to build a community around their topic. You can use non-video content here, such as stories and shorts, to engage your audience and reach even more people who are interested in your course. 

Don’t forget to add a compelling call to action to your videos. And make it easy for your viewers to take the next step toward purchasing your course or subscribing to a series, which gives you even more opportunities to convert viewers into customers (more on that below). 

4. Get Subscribers to Your YouTube Channel

It’s tempting to want to include a link that goes directly to your online course sales page. But when dealing with your YouTube audience, it’s a lot easier to start small and offer them a lead magnet instead. 

Although your end goal is to sell your course, make it your immediate goal to collect your viewers’ email addresses from your YouTube channel. This will allow you to stay connected to them so you can navigate them toward the ultimate goal of purchasing your online course. 

Many businesses rely on email as a cost-effective way to acquire new customers and leads. With an average return on investment of $36 for each dollar spent it’s not hard to see why. 

To start collecting emails, include a link to your lead magnet wherever you can. For instance, you can add a link to 

• Your video description
• End screen
• Annotations 
• Cards, etc. 

Once you have your lead magnet and updated links pointing to your opt-in page, you’ll be able to start collecting your viewers’ email addresses. After you complete the process, it’s worth using an email verification tool to verify email addresses and keep your email list clean.

From there, you can start building and nurturing your relationship with customers via email and warm them up to purchasing your course.

Check out this example of how entrepreneur Elna Cain includes a link to her lead magnet (Free Business Plan) on her channel’s main header links. 

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She also includes it in her description below the published video. In fact, she makes sure to include links to her lead magnet wherever possible. 

5. Cross-Share Content Across Multiple Media Channels

The videos you create for your YouTube channel can be cross-shared across social media channels and email newsletters to promote your new online course. You can also embed them into course landing pages or even start a blog that will complement your efforts. Plus, don’t neglect to repurpose YouTube videos as YouTube Shorts or native social media videos and turn them into new podcast episodes, blogs, and social media posts, and so on.

Just remember, although the goal is to make sales, it’s not a good idea to sell on every video. This won’t help you build a good relationship with your subscribers and fans across different platforms. Focus on creating content that educates and entertains. Tutorials, reviews, and customer stories are great options too. This builds a better connection with your followers and establishes trust.

You need to first show them that you have value to offer; then, they will trust you when you offer your premium course to help them solve their problems or achieve their goals. 

So, when cross-sharing your content, make sure it’s a healthy mix of educational, personal, and promotional content. 

Here are a few tips on how you might incorporate utilized these content pillars into your marketing strategy: 

• Educational Content: Share helpful videos that educate your viewers for free. Don’t forget to include a call to action to like, subscribe, share, comment, or check out more videos on your channel. 

• Personal Stories: You can share personal stories to help build deeper relationships with your audience. Showing your authentic self helps makes it easier to build credibility and trust. Include a CTA at the end of your video for viewers to join your email list or online community. 

• Promotional Videos: These are videos that you create specifically to promote your online courses, such as teasers and trailers. At the end of each, make sure to include a strong CTA to check out your premium course. 

You can increase your promotional activities on special days. For example, you can use coupons and discount offers on special occasions, like Black Friday, Thanksgiving, etc. This will help you get even more eyeballs to your content. 

6. Include Testimonial Videos as Social Proof

Featuring testimonials in your videos can be pivotal in helping you sell your online course on your YouTube channel. According to recent stats, 72% of customers claim that positive testimonials and reviews enhance their trust in a brand. 

Look for past clients or beta students who can leave positive reviews about their experience with going through your course. 

Videographer Kevin Shen uses this tactic effectively to showcase positive testimonials from his past students.

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These types of reviews from authentic customers can work wonders in helping you build authority and trust in your brand. They also play a huge role in influencing customers’ purchasing decisions. 

Make sure your testimonials provide answers to questions from your target students.

For example: 

• What made you choose this online course over others? 
• What was the main problem you had that made you want to start this course? 
• How has the course impacted your life/business? 

Include real stories told by happy and satisfied clients to help you build trust with your YouTube audience and show potential clients that you can deliver results.

7. Use YouTube Ads as an Independent Revenue Channel 

There are many ways to monetize your YouTube channel and make money from your creative work. YouTube ads are among the most common channel monetization methods.

You can turn your YouTube channel into an independent revenue source once your traffic reaches a certain threshold. 

You can get access to YouTube’s monetization features once your channel meets the following requirements: 

• More than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months
• More than 1,000 subscribers to your channel

Once you hit those thresholds, you’ll be able to sign up for YouTube’s partner program and monetize your channel. This is an easy way to add an extra passive income stream to your business. 

And the best part? Once you become a YouTube Partner, many other earning opportunities open up. 

In addition to video ads, you also get access to YouTube Premium subscription fees, channel memberships, Super Chat, and other features that give you a direct line to your fans’ wallets. 

Bonus Tip: Leverage YouTube SEO

When creating free content to promote your course on your YouTube channel, make sure to optimize each video for SEO. 

YouTube is the second largest search engine, and it offers creators a reliable way to grow organically—but only if you leverage YouTube SEO. You must use this to your advantage to get as many people to see your content as possible. 

Some of the things you can do to optimize your content for SEO include the following: 

• Video title: Come up with a relevant title that your ideal students would naturally search. 
• Video description: Write a concise description that gives a clear overview of your video. Include any keywords your audience might search to discover related content. 
• Video tags: Add as many related tags as you can. This will further enhance the chances of each video showing up in search. 
• Thumbnail image: Great video thumbnails entice people to click through to watch your video. Make sure each video you upload has a relevant thumbnail that will make your viewers excited to click on it. 

Conclusion

I hope this guide has helped you understand how you can use your YouTube channel to complement your online course. 

Executed effectively, a YouTube strategy can help you connect with a wider audience, generate a constant flow of leads, and make more sales.

Can you think of other ways a YouTube channel can complement an online course? Share your thoughts below!

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Ron Stefanski is a website entrepreneur and marketing professor who has a passion for helping people create and market their own online business.  You can learn more from him by visiting OneHourProfessor.com

You can also connect with him on YouTube or Linkedin.