Marketing an online course for psychologists part 4: Do you have the authority to launch an online course?

Hello and welcome to a slightly different episode of the Business of Psychology Podcast. 

Today I'm excited to share with you a very brief clip from one of our lessons in our upcoming course all around course creation for psychologists and therapists. So yes, it's a bit meta, I have created a course about online course creation, and I'm so excited to bring it to you guys. 

So this is an affordable option if you are somebody who is wanting to reach more people and help more people through an online course, but you haven't quite got the budget to go and spend £2000 with some of the coaches that are out there at the moment. Or if you have got that budget, but you just want to do it in the company of other psychologists and therapists and people who share your kind of ethical marketing background, then I'm really excited to be bringing this course to you. And I thought what better way of giving you a sense of what we've got to offer in the course than letting you take a little sneak peek at one of our lessons. 

So just to let you know, the course is going to be offered as a regular part of the Do More Than Therapy membership. That's our monthly membership that costs £47 a month at the moment. And it was really important to me to offer this course as a core part of that membership, as a roadmap actually running through the centre of that membership, so that rather than putting a big price tag on this course, which I could have done (and there are lots of really high priced courses about online course creation out there) but I wanted to make this really accessible so it's free for all of our existing members. If you're already a Do More Than Therapy member or a Psychology Business School student, you will get access to this at no additional cost whatsoever. And I've kept it at that low price point so that as many of you as possible who have a passion for reaching more people can jump on board and do that with us. I’m really excited to bring it to you and I know that today's content around building your authority is going to get you off to the best possible start.

I also wanted to share this particular lesson because I think it's something we don't talk about enough; and that is building authority. You can't expect the public to just understand that you know what you're talking about based on your years of experience and your qualifications. It makes me so angry, but it is true that the public generally don't have a good understanding of who we are and what we do. We've got a bit of an identity problem at the moment. So because of that, it's super, super important from the minute that you conceptualise the idea that you might want to build an online course, to start building up the authority you need with the public in order to sell that course. So if there was one thing I was going to say you need to get started right now on this, it would be building your authority. So this is just a really quick snippet of that lesson. You will probably hear me referring to resources that you don't have access to a couple of times during the lesson. That's because the people taking the course will get access to a workbook and they'll also have access to all of our Do More Than Therapy master classes. So I apologise for that, but I thought the content was so good and so worth sharing that I wanted to put it out in this format. So here we go, without further ado here is a little snippet of our lesson on building authority.

Building Authority Lesson Clip

Building Authority is absolutely essential if we're going to put an online course out into the world. People have to understand why they should choose to invest time and money with you. So today we're going to look at why you need to build authority even if you have loads of experience already. We're going to look at ways of building authority within your specialism, the practical how-to of how to do that, and finally we're going to nail down your authority building plan that you're going to consistently stick to throughout the rest of this programme. 

One point I wanted to cover before we get stuck into the how of building your authority is why you need to do it. So if you need convincing on this point that people prefer working with specialists, then I really want you to go and watch my webinar on finding your focus and finding your specialism. And I'm going to link to it below this. So if you haven't seen that already, do go and watch it. 

In summary, people prefer working with specialists because they know that you're a safe pair of hands. Your specialism suggests experience with people like them, they can be confident that you want to work with them. People are terrified about reaching out to professionals. Knowing that you've dedicated your life to working with people like them gives them a boost of confidence. And finally, they know you're up to date with your CPD and the latest evidence base in this area, which is really important. So building authority in your specialist area allows people to feel safer about making an investment with you. And even if what you're offering is low cost or even free, they're risking two very precious things when they invest with you, and that is their mental well-being and their time; they have to really trust you to do that. It's also true that there are a lot of competing voices in the mental health space, many of whom are less highly regulated than us, and are likely to make more strident claims about changing people's lives forever in a 90 minute webinar. We see you Speakmans, and so did the Advertising Standards Authority. So to stand out above those kind of unethical voices, we need to have credentials that the public understands. 

These are the sorts of things that the public understand to mean credibility. All of these are gate kept by people in power, and they show that you've been endorsed by some powerful backers. Things like:

• NHS experience
• Your core qualification (not CPD by the way people don't really understand CPD, but they do understand our core qualifications on the whole)
• Your professional body, your level of membership with that body
• Publications (especially things like journals, books, even well regarded blogs that you've been published in)
• Institutional positions, university positions, professional bodies. You know, if you're on a committee or something like that, that can be understood by the public as being quite credible, or if you hold a position as a trustee in a charity. 
• And finally, media coverage. People trust the people that they see on their local and national news, TV, radio, and print media as well. Thankfully, within the Do More Than Therapy membership, we have got deep dive classes on getting a systematic review published in a journal, self publishing a book, engaging with the media and engaging with the press from experts in all of those fields. So I'm going to link below this video to all of those deep dive master classes. 

So for now, what I want you to do is pick one of those ways of building authority to add to your plan. You can't do all at once, but you should be aiming to build on at least one of these areas at a time. So pick one that you'd be excited to develop and follow up by watching the relevant masterclass after you finish this video.

The other crucial way to build authority for your online course and give people the confidence to buy from you is to literally show and tell them what you do through cornerstone content that you create. So that could be blogs, podcasts, videos. Public speaking, guesting on podcasts, and providing free advice on social media are also great ways of showing people your expertise. In our next class in this course, I'm going to be talking you through the key ingredients of good cornerstone content. You can go deep on your chosen format by selecting one of the master classes that we have in the Do More Than Therapy membership on each of those topics. So again, don't worry, for now all you need to do is decide which type of show and tell content is likely to work best for you, and put it into your authority building plan. 

So in conclusion then, you need to commit to doing one activity that builds your credentials, and one show and tell activity that shows people your expertise. These will become the most important pieces of your marketing plan. So have a think about your options and make a commitment to do one of each consistently. Ideally, if you're serious about building enough authority to sell your course, you need to be doing something to build your credentials at least once a month, and you need to be putting out weekly cornerstone content of some sort to show your expertise. There is space to note down the activities you're committing to in your workbook, so that you can hold yourself accountable. And if you aren't sure, then feel free to watch a few of our deep dive master classes and see which ones light you up and make you excited to get out there, get more visible and build your authority.

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Before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can now sign up for the Do More Than Therapy membership and get access to our new roadmap to a successful online course exclusively for psychologists and therapists. We start releasing content in February so now is a great time to get signed up. So if you want to get your online course out of your head and out into the world, helping people. Come and join us over at https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-do-more-than-therapy-membership/

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Links

Webinar: Find Your Focus: Define Your Specialism https://psychologybusinessschool.com/learning/find-your-focus-define-your-specialism/

Masterclass: Systematic Reviews in Private Practice: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/learning/systematic-reviews-in-private-practice/

Masterclass: Self-Publishing https://psychologybusinessschool.com/learning/self-publishing-masterclass/

Masterclass: Engaging with the Media https://psychologybusinessschool.com/learning/engaging-with-the-media-to-spread-your-message/

Masterclass: Press https://psychologybusinessschool.com/learning/press/