Verified Market Research reveals that the online course provider market size is valued at $1.65 billion and is projected to reach about $2.56 billion by 2031. This indicates that more and more people are turning to online learning platforms to improve their career or personal development skills.
Want to earn money? Become an online course creator then.
But that’s just the first step, of course. For your profits to materialize, you need to ensure your online course meets people’s expectations.
That’s where thorough market research comes in. Market research is the process of gathering information to better understand a target market.
This post will show you how to conduct market research for online courses and how to design them based on your findings.
Why Conduct Market Research as an Online Course Creator?
Market research helps you craft winning online courses. It does this by helping you:
Build valuable online course content
With proper market research, you can build a more strategic foundation for your course, instead of making guesses about what will be valuable to your audience.
For instance, through research methods like surveys, polls, or competitor analysis, you can identify pain points common to your target learners. Then, you can include these pain points into your course curriculum and provide real value to your audience.
Achieve a higher completion rate with your online courses
Market research also helps you build online courses that engage learners throughout. It can help you determine what online course formats and gamification elements to use to sustain your learners’ attention, for example.
As a result, you can achieve higher completion rates with your online course content.
Get higher ROI with your online courses
You can also use market research to set an optimal price for your course based on competitor pricing and consumer behavior. You only need to compare what learners are willing to pay with current course prices.
Then, strategically set a course price that works for them without undervaluing your work.
The right price based on research can help you generate more sales, which again, in turn, can help improve your overall return on investment from your online courses.
Just to give you an idea, for a short four- to six-week course, the recommended price range is $197 to $497.
Steps to Conduct Market Research and Design Your Online Course
Now let’s discuss how you should conduct market research for online courses and design winning ones based on what you find:
1. Check what’s in demand
Your first action plan for conducting your online course market research is to determine what topics are currently in demand.
Start with keyword research to understand what potential learners are looking for online. These keywords are particularly useful for crafting your course title and description. Tools like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, or Google Keyword Planner can provide you with enough details about what topics are popular.
Say I want to create a graphic design course. I just input that keyword on Google Keyword Planner and this is what I get:
Zero in on courses with a high search volume and medium to low competition. Use these to run a simple Google search. The aim is to find a list of major competitors with their corresponding course content topics.
For instance, when I search “graphic design courses online” on Google, this is what I get:
You can also search for your niche topics on popular online course platforms to see what other online course creators are selling. Check sites like Udemy, Skillshare, or Coursera. Here’s what happens when I search for graphic design courses on Udemy:
Apart from leveraging Google and online course platforms to check what’s in demand, collect direct feedback from your existing audience. You can take advantage of your email list and send surveys there.
A well-designed survey should help you identify, among others:
- Top challenges users face in a particular area.
- Consumer preferences for learning (video, text, interactive quizzes)
- Top topics or high-demand skills potential customers would want you to teach about.
You can also publish polls on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. Another option is to post social content on a variety of topics to see what your audience engages with the most. That could give you a clue about what people want to learn about.
Make a list of all your potential course topics based on what you find.
2. Look at your expertise level and competitors’
Once you determine what’s in demand, objectively assess your expertise in the field you’re targeting.
Your level of expertise will determine the depth or complexity of courses you can teach. So, if you’re highly skilled, you might be able to teach advanced concepts. If that’s not the case, then you may want to go for a beginners’ course.
But before you make your final decision, you’ll also need to measure your level of expertise against your key competitors’. That’s how you’ll know if the course you’re looking to create can provide actual value to your audience.
Beyond top course platforms, go to social channels like LinkedIn or X to observe competitor profiles. You can even run a Google search on them.
Look at their backgrounds to see where you have a competitive advantage, and make the necessary adjustments.
Assume you originally planned to teach an advanced email marketing course to cater to marketing professionals. You find, however, that you’re competing with online course creators who have more advanced marketing credentials. In this scenario, you’ll need to restrategize. That means changing your online course topic or targeting a different learner demographic (e.g., beginners or intermediate learners).
Now based on what you find at this stage, cross out the online course topic ideas you think won’t work from your initial list.
By this time, you should also have a general idea of your target audience.
3. Create a learner persona
The thing is, it’s not enough for you to have a general understanding of your target market. You shouldn’t just know your target audience is composed of “beginner learners of email marketing.” You should know them on an even deeper level if you want to truly create a course that resonates with them.
That’s why you also need to create a learner persona. This shall serve as your guide when crafting your online course.
The learner persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal student. It includes key characteristics like:
- Age, gender, education level
- Career goals and professional experience
- Pain points and challenges
- Learning preferences
You can again leverage surveys and polls as your data collection methods.
Then just collate all that information to create something like our example above.
4. Put it all together
At this point in time, all you need to do is put everything together. Get your narrowed down list of research observations and your learner persona. Then craft your winning online course content by reconciling all this data.
Let me illustrate.
Assume that after looking at what’s in demand and your expertise level, you decide you’ll stand out with an online course topic on email marketing that caters to a primary market of beginner marketers. Now look at your learner persona. Ask yourself what specific features you can incorporate into that online course to make it resonate with that specific market segment.
For instance, if your learner persona shows that your ideal audience gets bored easily, then you can decide to include interactive and fun quizzes about email marketing as a feature of your online course. Or you might decide to use a leaderboard to gamify your content.
The goal is to use all your data to make informed decisions. By the end of this stage, you should have finalized your online course content that’s likely to be effective.
5. Test
Don’t launch your online course into the market immediately. To ensure it yields the best results, test it first. You can use a good online course builder to create a “beta” version of your content and grant access to a small group of users— those who match your learner persona. These could be colleagues, friends, or some of your close social media connections.
Ask your “test group” to look through the course and provide feedback on details like:
- Content clarity
- Engagement and pacing
- Quality of material
- Course relevance
- Practicality, etc.
Also, ask if there’s any missing information or additional resources that the course could have included. A simple customer survey at the end of the course can help you gather this feedback.
Use the feedback to tweak your content and fine-tune the course experience.
Pro tip: Even after launching your course to the broader market, continue to collect customer feedback. This will help you further improve the course material and even ensure the quality of the future courses you’ll be creating.
Conclusion
Conducting market research for online courses you create is crucial. Ultimately, it can help you create courses that are more likely to resonate with your target consumers.
Here’s a round-up of the steps to conduct market research for online courses:
- Use keyword analysis, competitor research, and surveys to find what people are searching for.
- Objectively measure your knowledge and compare it with competitors in your niche.
- Tailor the course to your unique learner persona and leverage your strengths to stand out.
- Test your course with a small audience and gather feedback to help fine-tune it
Now it’s time to kick off your online course creation journey and reap excellent results.
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