Guide to successfully market your workshop or course

Share your expertise. Build your audience. Grow your business.

Building a business on Maven starts with a simple idea: the best marketing is great teaching. When you share your unique, credible, and impactful points of view publicly, you attract people who are naturally interested in learning from you, and Maven's products are designed to turn that interest into a thriving business at every step.

Think of it as an ecosystem. Your free and low-cost content - Lightning Lessons, Resources, and public posts - bring new people into your world. From there, live experiences and 1:1 outreach build trust and deepen the relationship. By the time someone enrolls in a paid Course, Workshop, or Service, they've already encountered your expertise multiple times and are ready to commit.

In practice, this moves people through three stages:

Awareness: Your content, Lightning Lessons, and free Resources act as a "lightning rod," attracting people naturally interested in learning from you.
Consideration: You build trust through 1:1 calls, follow-up outreach, and live experiences like Lightning Lessons that give prospective students a taste of what you teach.
Purchase: By the time someone reaches this stage, they've encountered you multiple times and already believe in your expertise. Your job is simply to make it easy to say yes to a Course, Workshop, or Service.

Your success formula:

Spend 6+ weeks building awareness and driving enrollments.
Aim for 100 landing page views per week at a 1–2% conversion rate.
Regularly share your unique insights via value-adding content.

Your product flywheel

Maven's products — Lightning Lessons, Resources, Services, Workshops, and Courses — aren't standalone offerings. They work together as a flywheel, where each product creates leads and trust for the next.

Lightning Lessons are your top-of-funnel engine. Free or low-cost, they introduce your expertise to new audiences, grow your subscriber list, and warm up leads before you invite them to commit to something bigger.

Resources extend your reach passively. A well-crafted framework, template, or guide can circulate beyond your immediate network, bringing new people into your orbit and reinforcing your credibility with existing followers.

Services (like 1:1 coaching or consulting calls) let you go deep with high-intent leads. The insights you gather from these conversations sharpen your understanding of what your audience need. They can either become the backbone of your Workshop or Course curriculum or your Course or Workshop can funnel folks into 1:1 consulting for more learning.

Workshops are your proof-of-concept product. They validate demand, generate testimonials, provide products at different price and time commitment points and can give students a taste of what a full Course experience with you looks like.

Courses are your flagship asset. These are the highest-value, highest-priced product in your portfolio. Students who've already encountered you through a Lightning Lesson, Resource, or Workshop are your warmest possible audience when you launch.

The flywheel compounds over time. Each product you build feeds the next, and each student you serve becomes a potential referral source into the flywheel at any entry point.

Your 6-week marketing roadmap

As you bring your Workshop or Course to market, use high-volume and high-touch marketing moments to move people through your funnel. To get sales, you need high-quality traffic.

Each week:

Implement 1–3 marketing actions to drive 100 landing page visits. Courses and Workshops that get over 100 landing page views per week are 50% more likely to result in a full first cohort.
Check your conversion rates and keep iterating until you see a 1–2% conversion rate.

Phase 1: Build Awareness (Weeks 1–2)

Goal: Get your expertise in front of new audiences and acquire leads

Choose your lead capture product: a Lightning Lesson, a free Resource, or both. Schedule or publish it.
Post 3x a week to LinkedIn, driving to your lead capture vehicle. Tee up your network to comment and engage.
Message your closest network directly to let them know you're building on Maven.
Add your Maven expert profile or paid product to your LinkedIn header.
Send a broadcast email to your Maven waitlist, inviting them to your Lightning Lesson or linking to your free Resource.
Edit and activate your cohort launch campaign in Maven.
Share your Lightning Lesson or Resource in communities where your target students spend time.

Phase 2: Build Trust & Consideration (Weeks 3–4)

Goal: Deepen your relationship with leads and give them reasons to commit

Post 3x a week to LinkedIn, continuing to drive to your lead capture vehicle. Tee up your network to comment and engage.
Share your Lightning Lesson or Resource in communities where your target students spend time.
Ask your close network to share your content with people who might be the right fit.
DM every person who engages with your content on LinkedIn. Offer 1:1 calls.
If running a Lightning Lesson, host it and follow up with a custom discount offer for your paid product(s): a Course, Workshop, or Service.

Phase 3: Convert (Weeks 5–6)

Goal: Segment your warmest leads and close enrollments

Post 3x a week to LinkedIn, now driving directly to your paid product. Tee up your network to comment and engage.
Segment your leads — Lightning Lesson attendees, Resource downloaders, and waitlist members — to identify high-potential fits for your Course, Workshop, or Service.
Send personalized notes offering 1:1 calls to your waitlist, dropped-off students, and segmented leads.

Conversion accelerators

1:1 outreach

📚 Guide: Accelerate course marketing efforts with your network

Engaging your network

Writing good content and creating a great Workshop or Course is only half the battle. The next step is distribution. Especially in the early days, this means getting your network to help you spread the word.

Make a contact list of 20 people likely to say "yes" to supporting you. Aim for people with high credibility whose endorsement is extremely valuable to you.
Write them a text message or email to ask for their support on your social posts. Your specific ask is for them to comment with an endorsement of your credibility.
Ask if they would share your content, Lightning Lesson, workshop, or course with people who would benefit from it.

1:1 calls

As you're building your business, the best sales tactic is getting a prospective student live on a call with you. You can use Calendly to do this efficiently.

In your 1:1, offer a meaningful beta cohort discount. Position this as a win-win: a way to get student feedback so you can deepen your understanding of the student challenge and refine your material, and an exclusive deal for them.

✍️ TEMPLATE

Subject: Want to chat about [Course Name]?

Hey __, hope you're doing well!

I wanted to let you know that enrollment for my course [Course Name] closes in 2 days. We have amazing, diverse students joining from [insert roles & companies]. It's gonna be a blast!

I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Text me at [insert number] to ask me anything, or if it's easier, you can schedule a quick 15 min chat [here].

Authentic content

🎥 Video resource: LinkedIn Growth Playbook: Hooks & Profiles

LinkedIn is the most powerful top-of-funnel channel for most of our top-earning instructors. Don't use LinkedIn to sell your paid products in posts — instead, leverage it to create massive awareness for your unique ideas and exceptional content.

Social posts should consist of:

1. A catchy hook based on real insight (not clickbait)

✍️ Hook templates:

The most common mistake I see from [insert job domain] leaders is [x].
[Insert domain] strategies that worked in 2021 don't now. [List a few]…
Most [insert content] fail. But this one worked…
Our X strategy had a blind spot... This is what we missed…
[Skill/domain] isn't working like it used to. Here's what we realized about why…

2. Who the content is for and the outcomes they will get

I built a practical, hands-on course on [this topic] as part of @Maven's X category. This course is for [Who is this for? Be specific]. [Why did you build this course for them?]

3. Social proof and credibility

✍️ Social proof templates:

These strategies helped me scale [Product] from [X] to [Y] users in just [Z] months. Now you can apply them too.
We used this playbook to grow [Company] to [milestone], and I've refined it further through working with [## insert domain] teams.

4. A CTA at the end

✍️ CTA templates:

Next cohort starts [Date]. Join here: LINK
Secure your spot: [LINK]
Limited seats available. Register here: [LINK]

Referral engines

🎥 Video resource: Always on cohorts

Cohort availability

The most successful instructors always have a cohort open for enrollment rather than limiting registration to brief windows. Students typically visit a landing page ~5 times before enrolling, and many need extended time to secure L&D budget approval. By keeping your next cohort open, even if it's months away, you create a frictionless pathway for interested students to sign up. Maven's marketplace algorithms also only surface workshops and courses with open cohorts.

Remember: any product in your flywheel can be a referral entry point. A student who discovers you through a free Lightning Lesson or a Resource can become a Workshop enrollee, and a Workshop graduate is your warmest lead for a Course.

Keep every product open and accessible so referrals can enter your ecosystem wherever they land.

This always-open approach also leverages two critical word-of-mouth opportunities:

Current students experiencing breakthroughs during a cohort naturally want to recommend your course to colleagues. Fuel your word-of-mouth engine by ensuring an immediate enrollment option for those referrals.
Immediately after your cohort ends, there's a moment of peak enthusiasm when alumni share their achievements. Open your next cohort while your current one is in session to capture this energy.

Reviews and testimonials

Your goal in each cohort: deliver a big before/after transformation, and you'll kickstart a powerful word-of-mouth engine. Especially when you're just starting, 10 extremely satisfied students will deliver compounding results.

After your first cohort, you'll have reviews and testimonials that provide important social proof. Optimize for both response rate and quality by giving students ~10 minutes to complete the end-of-course survey in the final session. Before sharing the survey, ask students to reflect on an "aha" moment from the course. This reflection solidifies their learning and encourages deeper feedback.

Cohort content

Both while building your first cohort and after each subsequent cohort, you'll generate content you can share authentically. Consider these moments as opportunities to build in public:

Host a Lightning Lesson with demos from your course alumni.
Share student testimonials as LinkedIn posts and add to waitlist emails.
Share and engage with all students who share your course certificates.
When you secure guest speakers or add new content, share about it publicly and to your waitlist.
After each cohort ends, write public recap posts sharing your and students' learnings.

Measure your marketing impact

When you first start building your workshop or course, you might not have strong social proof and a built-out syllabus. Until you have both, your conversion may be 0.5%. As you refine your landing page and collect testimonials, aim for your conversion to increase to 1–2%.

Here's how to continuously improve your conversion rates:

Offer 1:1 calls with all dropped-off and waitlist students.
Frame the ask as customer research. Show them your landing page and ask what jumps out at them.
Segment your leads list to your ICP. Use a tool like Clay to get LinkedIn and company info and filter your waitlist to your ideal customer profile.
Send personal emails sharing that you updated the syllabus, tailored to their exact role.
Use insights from all 1:1 calls and feedback to improve your landing page.
Repeat until your conversion rate improves to 1%+.

Maven's marketplace

Your marketing works in tandem with Maven's marketplace and discovery emails.

Homepage Once your workshop or course is open for enrollment and meets listing requirements, it's eligible to be listed on Maven.com, discoverable to browsing students by category and keywords.

Emails Once listed, it's eligible for inclusion in our emails to all students. Email features are algorithmically generated and take into account:

Time to cohort start (we promote courses closer to their start date).
Earnings momentum (workshops and courses with greater traction over the last week are more highly promoted).
Relevance to the individual student (we create an interest profile for each student based on how they interact with Maven).

FAQs

What should my enrollment goal be for the first cohort?

Aim for 10 enrolled students. From there, there's compounding ROI. You'll invest a lot in syllabus design and customer discovery to build your "beta" cohort, but with the right marketing insights, your second cohort is an easier win. By your third cohort, you've created an asset that compounds in value over time.

When should I open my first cohort for enrollment? Should I build a waitlist first?

Open your cohort for enrollment as soon as you know the dates. You should build a waitlist first through your course interest survey — but don't launch a course landing page that is closed for enrollment. Your landing page is designed to sell, so share it when you're ready to accept enrollments. To maximize Maven's marketing system, always have a cohort open for enrollment.

What should I expect after I announce I'm teaching? What if I announce it and no one enrolls?

Don't expect a massive onslaught of enrollments from a single post or email. Students visit your course page ~5 times before enrolling — they require multiple touchpoints. Keep going: up to 50% of enrollments occur 1–2 weeks before your cohort start date. Always iterate on your topic and positioning until you find something that's selling well.