Wondering how often to talk about your products and services? The short answer is: more than you are! But how? Read on to learn more.

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How Often to Talk About Your Products & Services (& How)

The reason this comes up so much is because as online language teachers, we feel like we’re doing it all the time already.

We feel like we are constantly talking about how people can work with us. And for a lot of us when we are more so natural teachers than natural marketers, this can be difficult.

So I completely understand why this question has come up again and again.

It’s because the marketing side feels newer and more different and so it feels like, “Am I talking about this too much? Are people bored of hearing about what I have to offer and how I can help?”

And the answer is no, because if people are bored of that, they’ll stop reading and paying attention. (This is good by the way! As much as your content should attract the right people, it should also indicate that you’re not the right option to the ‘wrong’ people.)

The truth is that the majority of people are not going to see or hear every mention that you give of your products or your services and therefore the short answer to this question of “how many times should I tell people about what I do?” is “all the time”.

That’s it, that’s the answer.

But we’ll go further and we’ll dig into where to do this and how.

CTAs in Content

A CTA is a Call to Action.

This is essentially when you have a blog or a podcast or a video and you then have something else that can further help people. You would include a CTA to guide people to what you have available for them next.

For example, if I have a blog post about something to do with music, I’ll include a CTA to either my free Music Study Pack or my course, Music Maestro.

I know that if someone is reading that blog post about music then Music Maestro would be a really useful next step for them. So I’m going to mention Music Maestro in my content.

You might already have a lot of content that can be kind of ‘retrofitted’ with some calls to action.

If you were writing about the topic of your online course long before you actually made the online course, then chances are it’s worth taking a little moment to just sit down, revisit those blog articles, podcasts, videos, whatever pieces of content they are, and then to include CTAs to your new course.

I also recommend to create a CTA library. Here, you’ll have five to ten variations of the same CTA with different text that you can then copy and paste when you need.

This way it keeps your CTAs fresh and less likely to be the same one piece of copy each time.

Default Copy

Following on from that it’s your default copy.

Think podcast or video descriptions that you can set to auto-fill with a default for each new upload.

Consider your email P.S message that you can store in your template.

And also think about your social media bio & links.

For example, if you use a YouTube channel as part of your promotion and your marketing, then you’ll know that you can have a regular default piece of text that goes into every description box for new videos that you upload. So you don’t have to type this out or copy and paste this every single time.

As for your email P.S., you can create a template in your email marketing system, where you send emails from. For me that would be ConvertKit* (affiliate link).
Here you can create a template including your P.S that regularly says, “Want to work with me more? Here’s how.”

And so with every single email that you send, it’s not dominating the text and the message, but it’s there if people want to click through and learn more.

If you’re using social media and you use something like Linktree or you’ve created your own version on your website a different page to welcome people from social media, ensure it’s mentioned there as well.

Website Pop-Ups

I use the term pop-ups to include a few different types. Think pop-ups, but also welcome mats, sticky bars, and callouts. I use Convertbox* (affiliate link) for this, which is really useful.

Choose which options work best for you and have your products, your services, even your free downloads and opt-ins mentioned in these as well.

For example, if I have that blog article about music and I’ve already I added the relevant CTA in the content, I can also have an exit pop-up that just reminds people about the free gift or Music Maestro before they leave.

Consider how you can add in an extra layer to the content that you already have on your website and not just your content but your general website too.

Will your pop-ups on your homepage or about page be different? How?

Once you start to take action on these first three steps you’ll begin to notice that it is becoming more of a natural thought process.

So as you are creating new content and writing new emails you’re thinking about when it would make sense to include a mention of your products and your services.

Going through the process with these first three ideas will really help you to get used to it and to feel more confident in it without needing to just suddenly expose yourself and be like, “Hello, I have a thing! You should come and buy this thing!”

That’s why we’re going to start with those first three.

Collaborations

Once you get comfortable with those, you’ll want to think about collaborations.

Collaborations are great because it’s a bit like a Venn diagram. If you collaborate with the right people, there will be a little bit in the middle of that Venn diagram of people that already know you and the person you’re collaborating with, but chances are there’ll also be a lot of people who didn’t know you before your collaboration.

This makes it a great place to introduce your products and services to people.

And when I say collaboration, whew! The possibilities are endless.

The beauty of collaboration is that you can choose a way that feels comfortable, that feels just like enough of a challenge outside of your comfort zone.

You could host a joint venture webinar where you would be co-hosting a webinar and then you can then both have something that you share at the end.

Perhaps, because I have Music Maestro, I could collaborate with someone who has another pop culture & language learning product.

It would make sense for us to do a class together about how to use entertainment and pop culture for language learning.

At the end, we can offer an exclusive bundle so people can get both of our courses for a special deal.

Or perhaps there’s an extra bonus, which can then act as direct promotion for your products and for your services.

There’s so many opportunities and options with collaboration!

So I’m going to let you keep that simmering in the back of your mind. But long story short, collaborate.

Related: Why (+ How) You Should Collaborate With Other Online Language Teachers

PR

And finally, number five, PR.

PR stands for ‘public relations’ and ‘traditionally’ we think of it as things like TV coverage, newspapers, and radio.

Of course, being in a newspaper or on TV or the radio can be great. But there’s also lots of other ways that I include under this umbrella of PR.

For example, podcast interviews or guest blogging or speaking at events. All of that stuff I’m including as opportunities to expand and give you a space where you can tell people more about how you work and how people can work together with you.

My favourite of these is podcast interviews. They require less time and effort than writing a guest blog article would take. And they allow to connect more personally with an audience through voice (and possibly video!).

I have an effective system for podcast outreach that I’ve created and used for over a year. It’s as automated as possible, and works really well and takes minimal effort on my part! So I definitely want to share the full story with you!

I’ll teach you this system in DIY PR, which you can access exclusively in the Online Teaching Starter Kit.

If you’re ready to organise your own PR outreach in just minutes each week (& get access to the entirety of the Online Teaching Starter Kit!), then join the program now.

See you on the inside!