Creating a Certification Course: Tips for Success and Mistakes to Avoid
Offering a course certificate is a great way to give your audience members more value through your educational opportunities. Through your courses you’re teaching skills they can use. Creating a certification course allows you to take it one step further. It demonstrates the achievement of students for completing the course and offers a wide range of benefits for you.
The following are 10 tips for making sure your course certificate is a success, along with 10 mistakes to avoid.
10 Tips for Success with Creating a Certification Course
1. Start with an Existing Program
Beginning from scratch is challenging, so choose an existing course and add or update content. Pick one that’s been successful, so you know it’s a good fit for your audience.
2. Put Yourself in Your Participants’ Shoes
When brainstorming ideas for certificates, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What type of qualification will help them? Focus on what they will be able to DO once the course is complete. Define learning outcomes.
3. Evaluate Skills
At the end of the course, provide an examination where you can evaluate whether they’ve mastered the material.
4. Brush up on Your Target Market
Before you start working on your course, conduct research on your target market. See what’s trending. Have there been any changes? Update your ideal customer profile so you can create the most appropriate course for them.
5. Set an Entry Requirement
You may want to set an entry requirement. Give potential participants a quiz to assess their level and make sure they’re at the right starting point to be successful in the program.
6. Use an Online Learning Platform
Your course doesn’t need to be all online but there should be an online component. The best practice is to combine learning IRL with online tools. I recommend you set up a membership site for your certification course. I use Wishlist for all of my membership sites and they receive my “Green Seal of Approval.”
7. Give Your Course a Clear Name
Choose a name for your course that makes the topic obvious. The name should also make it clear that this is a certificate program.
8. Make Your Course Long Enough, But Not Too Long
Your course should be long enough to delve deeply into the topic and teach something students can apply during and after your course. However, don’t make it too long. A few weeks is a good length. If you require more content, break it up into multiple courses.
9. Set Financial Goals and Price Accordingly
Decide how much you want to earn through your course certificate. Estimate the number of participants and set prices accordingly.
10. Keep in Touch
Create a plan for keeping in touch with students after the course to check on each person’s success. Make further help and support available to former students.
10 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Certification Course
You’ll learn from your own experience as you develop a certificate program, but here are some common mistakes to avoid.
1. Not Knowing Your Audience Well Enough. You need to know your audience well in order to tackle the problems and issues they face and to offer viable solutions.
2. Not Knowing the Market. Do you know what types of course certificate your competitors are offering? What other options does your audience have? Do some research and use this information to refine your approach.
3. Too Much Information. Don’t try to pack everything into your course. Choose one goal for the learner and focus the course around that. You can create additional courses for further topics.
4. Unfocused Content. Don’t give your participants everything at once. Break up the course into bite-sized modules that flow logically from the beginning to the end.
5. Lack of Support. While designing your certificate course, give your participants opportunities to contact you for support. Some of them will struggle, and you need to be there for them.
6. Offering Your Course for Free. You should charge a reasonable price for your course certificate or it might appear as though it lacks value. When people pay for a course, they have made an investment in themselves, so they tend to be more committed. They’ll work harder to master the material.
7. Using Existing Content As-Is. Choosing a program you already offer is a handy shortcut, but repurpose or update content so it’s fresh.
8. Focusing on the Material, Not the Students. Focus on your students and their progress, not solely on the material for the course. The material is there to help the students accomplish their tasks.
9. Too Easy or Too Difficult. Strike a good balance so it’s not too easy or too difficult. Your certificate program should be challenging but not insurmountable.
10. Lack of Monitoring Progress. Check your success rate and make changes where needed. A majority of your students should pass the final exam.
As you can see, creating a certification course can be extremely helpful to your overall business, and success will be yours when you follow what I’m sharing with you here.
I’m bestselling Wall Street Journal and USA Today author, marketing strategist, and entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and I would love to connect further with you to help you to achieve your goals. If you are interested in learning how to optimize the syndication of your content, please take a look at my popular Syndication Optimization training course and consider coming aboard to increase your visibility, credibility, and profitability.
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