The Course Mentors Podcast

Beyond Basic: Creating Unforgettable Course Experiences

• The Course Mentors • Season 1 • Episode 10

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We're back after the holidays and are so excited to get back into another year of creating amazing courses!

Is your course feeling more like a content dump than a transformational experience? In this game-changing episode, we reveal why most courses fail to engage students (and how to make sure yours doesn't)!


We're diving deep into the three biggest experience killers that turn eager students into ghost town residents. From the dreaded "silent treatment" to the soul-crushing "assembly line" approach, we're exposing the mistakes that make students ghost your course faster than a bad date.


In This Episode:

  • Why your amazing content isn't enough (and what actually is)
  • How to turn your course from a content library into an unforgettable experience
  • The simple celebrations that keep students coming back for more
  • Why community matters more than you think (and how to build it)
  • Real examples of course experiences that students can't stop talking about


Ways to improve your course experience (in 5 minutes or less):

  • Achievement badges
  • Success trackers
  • Personal Touches
  • Birthday celebrations
  • Win acknowledgments
  • Personal feedback
  • Milestone cards
  • Surprise Elements
  • Bonus downloads
  • Expert interviews
  • Resource drops
  • Special challenges

Whether you're just starting out or looking to upgrade your existing course, this episode is packed with actionable ways to make your course the one students rave about. 

🎧 Ready to create a course experience that students actually finish (and love)? Hit play and let's level up! ✨

Want to create your own 6-figure+ course? Apply to join Online Course School https://thecoursementors.com/application

Got questions or want more free content? Follow us at https://www.instagram.com/thecoursementors/

Catch us every Wednesday for your weekly dose of course creation wisdom. Got questions or loving the show? Let us know on IG @thecoursementors. For more on our courses and mentorship, check out Online Course School's website https://thecoursementors.com/application.


#CourseCreator #StudentExperience #OnlineCourse #DigitalProduct


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Course Mentors podcast. I'm Odette and I'm Amy. Today we are talking about something that turns a good course into an unforgettable one the experience beyond just your content.

Speaker 2:

Let's be honest honest, there is nothing worse than logging into a course so excited you've just invested a ton of money and you're ready to do the work and then you log in and you see a ton of homework yeah boring, unfun, unfun, forgettable and really boring.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, today, what we're going to do is we're going to share all of our experience everything that we've ever learned about crap experiences so that you can skip all of that and get straight to the good stuff amazing, let's get into it. The first thing that I want to do, though, is I want to talk about the three biggest experience killers that are ruining the online courses. These are things that we've experienced ourselves, when we've been so excited to look into a course, and then we've landed somewhere and been like what's this? Yeah, and things that we know that people also are dealing with out there as well, and we want to help you get to the cause, the root, the problem of what these experienced killers are and how to improve them how to never see them in your course, because you've designed it so well from the start.

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's do it. The first one is the silent treatment.

Speaker 1:

So the problem is no acknowledgement On the sales page. You've purchased this course. It looks like it's going to be such a personal experience. They say how passionate they are about helping you and getting into your problems, whatever that may be, and then you log into the platform. No, hello, hi, welcome from the teacher, maybe something really automated from the system, and then a tumbleweed just kind of rolling on through the course platform.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of the digital equivalent of and I say this all the time but walking into a classroom like you've taken a Chinese course. You walk in and there's a video playing on the screen and no one in the room, no teacher to greet you, nothing human about the experience at all, and all you're left with is some videos to watch snooze snooze absolutely, especially because of all the promises people make on their sales page and then don't deliver on the other side.

Speaker 1:

It makes me crazy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's terrible so big problem number one silent treatment. Problem number two the ghost town. This is when there's no engagement from anybody else in the course. So the first one is that you're ghosting them. The second one is that the other students just aren't there either. There's no community engagement, there's no community at all. It's just you again in that lonely little classroom watching some videos on a computer screen, or by your lonesome yeah, we've talked about before.

Speaker 1:

It takes a little while to get the community you know up and running and vibrant. But don't amp up this big community experience if it just isn't there. You need to be putting effort, you need to be really building and putting time into your community to make sure it's running so it's not a ghost town the third and final experience killer that makes a course go from unforgettable to just kind of blah is having a assembly line kind of video style.

Speaker 2:

And what we mean by this is you get an email that says hello student, you have purchased the course. Then you get into the course and there's a bunch of videos and that's it. That's all. You get Just a couple of videos, that's it. You're moving on. The assembly line comes from the fact that nothing is personalized, nothing is unique to you. There's no call outs that say, if you're struggling with this, start with module B. Or hey, amy, thank you so much for buying my course. Here's a little bit about me and what I did to build this course Nothing, no personalization, no connection. You're just a number in a line.

Speaker 1:

Watching video one, video two, video three no tasks to go and implement it into your own life. Nothing personal, nothing fun about it.

Speaker 2:

Okay, those are all the things that are basically the worst case scenario, and either you have them now or you just want to avoid having them in the future. Let's get into some things that can really elevate your course experience and turn something medium into something incredible.

Speaker 1:

It's really easy too. It's not huge changes. You'll be really surprised. Let's start with a little bit of a truth bomb. People forget what you taught them, but they never forget how you made them feel. You've probably heard that before, and it was so. It rings so true.

Speaker 2:

I want to start with an experience hierarchy. So I'm going to start off with what a basic course is. I'm going to call this level one. This is a level one course, it's very basic and then I'm going to talk about a level two course and a level three. So level one, a basic base course. What you should be starting with is a login page, module, videos, pdf downloads and some sort of basic way for people to get in and have support with you. Those are the absolute basics of an online course. You can't really call it a course unless there's a login page. There should be some sort of video tutorials. There should be some sort of supporting materials that go along with those videos to help people implement and learn and use, yeah, like an activity they can go away and do.

Speaker 2:

And then there should be some sort of support. Maybe that's a basic forum as part of your community, or maybe it's a community platform, or maybe it's a way to contact you via email, or maybe it's a live session every single week. Either way, there should be some sort of small touch point. That is the very foundations of an online course.

Speaker 1:

You can't have an online course without those things.

Speaker 2:

Once you have those few things and you've done them really well, then you can move on to level two. Level two is an elevated experience from the ground. It's like getting up in two a better experience.

Speaker 1:

For us, this would be our bare minimum for anyone taking our course. We don't even look at level one, we start with level two so in level two we're talking about things like a personalized welcome.

Speaker 2:

So once you've got the foundation sorted, then you should add in a personalized welcome to welcome people into the program. And this shouldn't be personalized. We don't mean just by saying hey dad, welcome to the course. That's not enough. Hey, debt, welcome to the course.

Speaker 2:

Here's an intake form that you can do. Tell me more about you, what kind of things do you want to do? What do you want to achieve? And let me draw out a five second mini plan to welcome you into the course. Let me give you a personalized email to welcome you in. Let me say hey, I've seen your form and I've read through why you want to do this program and I'm so excited to have you here. I can't wait to help you with x, y and z, something a touch point there that stops people and allows them to interact with you and to be welcomed into the program in a really really warming, careful, considered way, beautiful the next thing that you can do that really illustrates how much you care and are following along and are cheering them on throughout your course is progress celebrations, when they email you to say, hey, I did this Awesome, that's amazing.

Speaker 1:

Email them back and tell them how brilliant they are. Or you can have a look at the back end of the system, see how much awesome work they've created. Maybe they're a third of the way through, halfway through the course. Send them an email hey, look at you go, you're halfway through the course and I'm really proud of you.

Speaker 2:

What a tiny, tiny task realistically is then doing is creating such an elevated experience for the other person who is doing that hard work. They're at week 6 out of 12 and you are putting in the community hey, Debra, you have done an incredible job because you've got it to week 6. Immediately, Debra feels so valued, so seen, so noticed, and that is truly elevating the experience for her for what was realistically a five minute task for you, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

No one could ever say that you don't care and you're really backing up those claims you're making on your sales page saying I really give a shit about my students, I really am invested in transformation and you are. You just need to show that proactively the last one here is community rituals.

Speaker 2:

So making sure that there are things that go on in your community that are habitual and ritual things that you are doing over and over and over and over again. You are consistently showing up to do a Monday win or a weekend win or a Monday motivation, something that something that's really familiar for people.

Speaker 1:

That creates this repetitive, consistent. This is the awesome experience I'm having and I get to start to look forward to these things that I'm expecting, that sort of thing that makes it unique to your course and your experience.

Speaker 2:

The thing that takes it from a level two to the top top tier of a level three is going above and beyond truly, because if you really want to is going above and beyond truly, because if you really want to have an above and beyond experience, you're going to want to commit to delivering something that is above and beyond. And for a lot of people, that is going to take a little bit of creativity and a little bit of testing to find out what it is that truly surprises and delights your students. But going above and beyond is going to help to set you one cut above everybody else, especially if you're an industry that's a little bit saturated. Going above and beyond, don't be afraid to go above and beyond for people, because that turns into referrals and referrals turn into sales and that turns into more referrals and more sales absolutely.

Speaker 1:

It's totally mutually beneficial. You're really providing a great experience and you're creating great karma for yourself. They'll go out of their way to mention your course in their day-to-day life, refer people, tell people this is what you've got to be doing.

Speaker 2:

This unforgettable level of experience is usually tied down to things like milestone rewards, so sending rewards out, either physical or not physical where do people hit rewards? I've seen people have really great success with sending out things like Amazon gift cards when people finish their course, which is kind of crazy because it's really just factored into the price of your online course anyway. You just know that $20 you're going to be giving back or whatever. That is a really amazing way to reward people for finishing your course. I've also seen people send out merch when they finish a t-shirt with their logo on it that then people can wear because they finished that program. Further, obviously advertising your course but makes people feel really special for finishing. These are really kind of like unforgettable level things that you can do to really really spotlight and reward people's progress but also further your own business absolutely, it's good business practice so I've seen people do really great things like welcome boxes.

Speaker 2:

I've seen people do VIP moments. I've seen people do amazing surprise gifts and milestone rewards just for doing things like finishing their course or being really great community participants yeah, we had an art teacher.

Speaker 1:

She made these beautiful personalized cards, hand wrote in them and for everyone in her course she'd send a welcome to the course. It had her own artwork on the card and she'd send that out whenever somebody signed up.

Speaker 2:

And it was so sweet how motivational, because the artwork on the card was what you achieved through doing her course. So it was kind of like this full circle moment where you would be so motivated to do the course because you had a very tangible outcome in your head before you even started.

Speaker 1:

It was clever, it was gorgeous, it was just the most beautiful personal touch. I think it's really important to remember. It's not the big things that create that loyalty and the unforgettable experience. It's the little things that really show you care and really back up everything you've said about what it is that you do for people. This is the fun stuff. You can get really creative, really personal with this, depending on what you do. But, amy, rapid fire at me. What are some things people can do to elevate their course experience?

Speaker 2:

no pressure yeah, off the top of your head go. I think a really beautiful thing to do at the very beginning of the process is to do a personalized welcome video. It's a five minute task. Hey, sarah, welcome to the program. I'm so excited to have you here. Get them to do a pre-enrollment questionnaire and then touch on some of the things that they've given you. I can't wait to help you with xyz, and it's a really great thing to do. Another one that I think is really good to do is give someone a quick win as soon as they land in the course and then reward them for it straight away. So get them to do a quick win activity and then get to. You know to be kind of like a race, especially if a group course be like in the first 24 hours. How many people can go and do this quick win activity, whatever it is that's unique to you.

Speaker 1:

People love that, because every single person's like I need accountability.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, people that take courses, they want accountability and then you can immediately go into the community and be like sarah just did her quick win activity it's this and immediately just reward that behavior straight away. And then people have that double factor of accountability and oh, I got a little dopamine hit, can't wait to keep going. So I think that's a really good one to do a surprise bonus. I think this is a really fun thing to do as well. Around the midway point of the course, when things are kind of starting to get really hard and people are slogging along, set up an automation inside your course platform that releases a surprise bonus module. So they get to the week 6 and 12. Let's say, in week 12, suddenly a surprise bonus modules just appeared. What that's so exciting?

Speaker 1:

because they weren't expecting it what else have you got in you?

Speaker 2:

I think a progress tracker. This is a really, really good one to do. Dad and I do this inside of online core school, so we get everyone to do progress trackers and we get them to fill out as they're going through the work. We watch these progress trackers and we have like automation set up so we know when people have selected certain things. We go into their checkpoints and we'll be like hey, we saw that you just reached module four. We're so excited. Here's what to expect. This is the kind of things that we think will be really relevant for you, because we know their business inside and out 100%. Do you want some more?

Speaker 1:

yes, please no. These are great.

Speaker 2:

I love it birthday celebration notifications gorgeous. So have people mandatorily have to put their birthday in and then celebrate them on their birthday? Love that Achievement badges.

Speaker 1:

Gorge. A lot of platforms do that now. Achievement badges.

Speaker 2:

I love using those because sometimes it can feel a bit like oh, is this my kitty? No people love them, no people love them.

Speaker 1:

maybe this is infantilizing. No people loved it.

Speaker 2:

Printables that people can check off, put on their fridge and check off, your course, as they're moving through it. So it's like every day they can go in, you know, every week, every month, whatever it is and go in and like color in a box. Oh, people love a checkbox To progress track themselves. Yeah, it's a good document Visually Gorgeous, got more, but I think that's about it, should I?

Speaker 1:

put them in the show notes. Yeah, let's put them in the show notes. Okay, they're in the show notes. You don't have to quickly go back and write everything down. We'll put those in the show notes. I think we'll leave it there. Those were good ideas, and I think you, the listener, can come up with some amazing personalized ones as well, but still ours. They work absolutely, guys.

Speaker 2:

I hope that that helped. That's about it from us. I hope that what we talked about at the start of this podcast was, you know, those experience killers having a ghost town, having no engagement, having a dead community. Hopefully, a lot of the stuff in this episode will have given you kind of some ideas and ways to hit back at those kind of experience killers and make sure that you are not creating a community or not creating an online course where people are heading into a dead zone. They're coming into a course that's vibrant and full of milestone celebrations and full of activities and engagement from you.

Speaker 1:

It's super simple to do but really elevates the experience, so it is absolutely unforgettable. Turns your course from a snooze fest to a rock star concert.

Speaker 2:

That's about it from us. So, guys, see you next week. Bye.

Speaker 1:

Sorry about that. Bye.