How Ekaterina Howard helped
Elena’s Language Services
validate ideas for new courses, promote them, and improve sales copy messaging
“We have achieved a lot in 2018.
I would not have been able to pull it off without Ekaterina’s help”
Elena’s Language Services: courses for ambitious En>Ru translators in the US
After a successful trial run of her course for English to Russian translators, Elena Werner was ready to start promoting her online course more widely to attract new participants.
She was also planning to expand her program, and needed additional information to determine which potential new courses held the most promise.
“Course creation and classes themselves take a lot of energy, time, and preparation.
Ekaterina helped me stay focused and on course. Working with Ekaterina helped me refine my goals.”
Overview of challenges & results
Challenges
The old website did not provide information about the courses, instead focusing on her translation and interpretation services
A busy professional schedule did not leave a lot of time for promotional activities or social media marketing
Solution
Update website copy to reflect Elena’s course offerings
Create a course and signup landing pages, as well as email launch copy to attract and convert Elena’s ideal course participants
Implement a marketing campaign to attract new course participants
Conduct customer research to identify the needs, pain points and motivations of current students
Validate potential course ideas during interviews with course participants
Results for 2018 courses
70% of warm leads converted
Average open rate: 42.3%, average click rates: 21.2%
Landing page conversion rate: 4%
Praise for the website and invitation to teach a college-level course
Paid webinars as part of lead generation in 2019
New website copy and promotion of 2018 courses: challenges
Elena’s translation and interpreting career was well established. However, it was clear that in order to build a successful course offering, online marketing and outreach were a must.
“I am not a marketing person; I can’t promote myself. I was born in the Soviet Union, where self-promotion was considered to be a bad thing, actually.
Ekaterina added what I was missing in my work. She knows what she is doing.”
New website copy and promotion of 2018 courses: outreach
Since Elena did not plan to use paid ads, and her social media accounts were largely inactive, we decided to promote her course two ways:
Via a network of regional professional associations that publish newsletters advertising new professional development activities
By publishing information about her upcoming courses in relevant social media groups
“Ekaterina took on the marketing, organizational and promotional activities, summarizing, analyzing as well as the communications, writing emails that I never have time for.”
New website copy and promotion of 2018 courses: customer research
In addition to attracting new course participants and updating her website copy, Elena wanted to make sure that she spent her limited available time developing programs that would ultimately be in demand – and address the needs of her ideal audience.
This is why customer research was the cornerstone of our 2018 strategy for promoting her courses.
Using research, testimonials and customer reviews to inform sales copy
Ekaterina formed hypotheses of what kind of messaging would be the most appealing for Elena’s target market. These became the foundation of the first iteration of the website copy and promotional materials.
After the first course run was underway, Ekaterina created surveys to learn more about the motivations and expectations of course participants, and conducted follow-up customer interviews with some of them.
These were used as a foundation for the next course run’s sales page and — depending on the scheduling — were used to update closing sales emails of an ongoing launch.
For example, one of the words that was mentioned in every customer interview was “confidence”, as the goal of taking the course — an important takeaway that was then reflected in the sales messaging.
Following up with buyers post-course
The last question in the course participant end-of-course survey was whether or not participants were open to receiving further communications from Elena.
This was important for 2 reasons: scheduling customer research calls and offering additional programs.
100% of respondents to the survey after the last 2 course runs replied that they want to stay in touch with Elena and would like to receive additional information about new courses.
60% of the 2018 course run participants were interested in continuing to study with Elena, half of them converting immediately after the end of the course.
Using end-of-course surveys to gather testimonials, evaluate the courses and upsell the next offering
For each of the course runs, Ekaterina ran 3 surveys (buyers after the purchase, non-buyers after the end of the enrollment period, and buyers 2 weeks before the end of the course).
In addition, Ekaterina reviewed recordings or attended live Q&A sessions, Office Hours and admission test reviews to gather additional information about the customers.
“Ekaterina was keeping track of things. Because of all the different things happening in my life and overwork and overload, that was very important for me.”
Results of 2018 launches
Conversion rate for the 2 course runs in 2018 (warm leads and list subscribers): 70%
Average email launch open rates for subscribers in 2018: 42.3%, average click rates: 21.2% (according to MailChimp, average open and click rates for Education and Training industry are 16.6% and 1.8% respectively)
Landing page conversion rate: 4% (2.6% in Higher Education according to Unbounce)
All of the traffic was generated via social media posts, referrals, and organic search.