Welcome to the second part of our article series about the 6 major steps to create an online training course. Directly following the article about the questions you need to ask yourself to launch your online training course, it’s another important topic. Now, it’s time to focus on understanding your clientele and your target audience.
The profile
In order to start this step on the right foot, you need to ask the following question: What kind of profile do the people interested in my training course have? Children? Teenagers? Young adults? Adults? Seniors?
Once you’ve got it, you need to figure out the distinctive or main features of your target profile.
For example, if your target profile is an adult, here are a few examples you need to consider:
- Are we talking about women, men or both?
- Are we talking about skilled workers, technicians, retirees or students?
- What language do they speak? English, French or something else?
If your audience is young, it may be relevant to:
- Determine the age group.
- Ask yourself about the child’s or teenager’s stage of development (this way you might understand the motivating factors and the recommended teaching methods…FYI: this will be the topic of one of our upcoming articles!).
Once you are done asking all of these questions, you realize that your courses and content target the general public and not a specific audience! What are you supposed to do?
Fear not, the general guidelines you need to follow and the questions you need to ask yourself are only slightly different, but still very important.
Here are a few tips you should use to make sure you are reaching a wide audience:
- Don’t be too specific.
- Be careful with specialised language (you may only reach a specific generation or a specific level of general knowledge).
- Select examples that are simple and speak to the majority of your target audience.
Need more details? Here are two examples to help you:
Solo
| Teacher | Mrs. Sylvestre, painter, loves pastries and children |
|---|---|
| Expertise | Baking cupcakes |
| Training | Pastry course to learn how to bake cupcakes |
| Market | General public |
| Choice | Children |
| Age group | 6 to 12 years old |
| Language | French |
Corporative
| Teacher | Mr. Forest, training consultant, specialising in new employees orientation in different factories of a same company, Quebec and Canada |
|---|---|
| Expertise | Human resources |
| Training | Training new employees to the rules and regulations of the company |
| Market | Adults, men and women |
| Choice | - |
| Age group | - |
| Language | French and English |
Don’t forget, defining your target audience will help you build all of your strategies in order to target the right people, while bringing them content that will give them the added value they were waiting for!
Be sure to read our next article, available next week.
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