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Coming up with a course title that will pique your potential participants’ interest is a science and an art. Here are some tips for coming up with a course title that will help your community find you:
Your course title needs to convey you and your message
In order to convey yourself and your message you need to be clear on your core identity and to communicate that with the world. There are a lot of messages out there and yours can get lost in the crowd if it isn’t clear and unique to you. Your core message and your course offering needs to all add up in the minds of your potential clients so that they can get a good sense that your material comes from your own embodiment and authenticity, and that you are offering it because you want to make a difference in the lives of your participants. To do this you might find out how other people describe you and your work and reflect this in the program title. Who are you and what are you trying to convey here?
Be clear on what your clients need and the specific problem you can help them with
Do your research about what your participants need and then offer that specifically to them. Let them know the specific problem you’re going to help them to solve. Identify people who want to work on finding that solution, what are they hoping to achieve, and why they are willing to pay for it. This is your ideal client. It’s really important that we work with the people we love, so be prepared to get inside your potential clients’ heads a bit to work out what they need. Who are the people in your community who are willing to do the work? Describe the person who is willing to do the work to receive the benefit and the outcome of your course. Work at understanding their personality, values, opinions, and interest. When they wake up at 5am, tossing and turning, what is going over and over in their mind? Figure out how you can communicate about that issue in a way that lands, so that your community members instantly understand that you have a potential solution.
Give your community what they want
Take the time to really know your potential student’s problem and what they need. It’s much easier to give people what they want rather than trying to convince them that they need the thing you like to teach. Give your potential student answers to what they are struggling with right now. Help them to make the connection from their own suffering to their potential highest good by way of your offering!
Tips for fine-tuning your course/offering title
Check your course/offering title against these guidelines:
- Benefit-oriented – when folks hear it, they get a sense of the benefit of doing this program.
- Clear and self-explanatory.
- Show the benefit/outcome of the course – express this in the tagline under the course title which can be creative and poetic.
- Run the title past others to find out what information the title conveys.
- Avoid basing your title on your own process or your own buzz words as this may not make sense to anyone but you.
- Go narrow rather than being too wide – allow your community to see that you can address their specific problem.
- The easiest way to name your program is to explain exactly what it does. A good starting point for a title is to finish the sentence: “The problem I solve is …”
- Invite folks to step into your world.
- If your program title is misaligned with your brand it can undermine your credibility and cause hesitation; it can lead folks to procrastinate around committing. Align your program title with what you stand for and your brand.
- Write out a bunch of possibilities based on what your community members have told you they are looking for – sometimes your clients will clue you in to some of the words you could use for a program title because they are already in that world.
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