Name your course

WORKBOOK EXERCISE
Name your course

Naming your course might seem like a very minor thing, but it's actually incredibly important. The right course name will attract your target audience—the wrong one will just confuse your audience, or worse, repel them! Luckily, it's easy to name your course using our tried and true system. Besides, naming your course will make it that much more "real," and easier to commit to. And don't worry—you can always change it later!

Before naming your course, you need to do 2 things:

  1. Identify your target audience. For example: People who just adopted an adult rescue dog and are having trouble with their dog's leash behavior. They're stressed about taking their dog on walks and want to make themselves and their dogs happier.
  2. Craft a transformation. For example: After taking my course, people who dread taking their rescue dogs on a walk will have dogs that walk on a leash without pulling, lunging, barking, or stopping. They'll feel proud of their dog's behavior and excited about taking their dog on walks. They'll be the person with the well-behaved dog.

For more detail on choosing a target audience and crafting a transformation, work through Choose Your Topic. When you're ready, all you need to do is combine them to name your course.

One other thing to keep in mind: Teachable course names are structured like this, with a header and a subheader. It's a good idea to keep the title shorter, probably fewer than 40 characters. The subheader can be longer, up to around 80 characters.

When you name your course, you want to be a lot more specific than you were when you named your school. (Your school is like the college where all your individual classes, or courses live. It's the brand umbrella that holds all your courses) There are 3 rules to writing a good course name:

  1. It should be benefit-driven.
  2. It should be specific.
  3. It should convey emotion.

Let's break this down. What does it mean for a course name to be benefit-driven? This is where the transformation you're offering your customers really comes into play. In one title, you need to summarize the most profound transformation your students will experience in your course.

For example, if you are teaching a course on moving to NYC for work, you'll show people how to go from confused and feeling like outsiders, to comfortable and feeling like a local. So we might title our course How to Move to New York City: A Guide to Becoming a Local in the Big Apple. The first half communicates what the course is about, while the second introduces the emotional elements of the transformation.

Now your course name is benefit-driven, but it also needs to be specific. The easiest way to do that is to add a quantifiable element to the benefit. In other words, add numbers. To come up with a good number to include in your course title, think about these questions:

  • Can you quantify the outcome of your transformation?
  • How many times better is the outcome than the initial state?
  • How long will it take a student to achieve the transformation?
  • How much time or money will students save by taking the course?
  • How many steps will it take a student to complete the transformation?

Notice how none of those questions have to do with the length of your course. Avoid including claims like "12 hours of content" or "45 lectures." Those stats have nothing to do with the actual value of your course. They could be 12 hours of nonsense! Besides, most people would prefer to learn a lot in a very small volume of content.

In the case of our example, adding a layer of specificity is critical, and it might be for you as well. People in the target audience will eventually learn everything that's included in the course about living in New York. The real value of the course is that it's a shortcut to an outcome, which you'll find is the case with many online courses.

Here's how our title looks when we add specificity: How to Move to New York City: A Guide to Becoming a Local in the Big Apple in One Week

Finally, you need to make sure your course name evokes an emotional response. I recommend you include power words in your course name. Power words can trigger emotion, excitement, or curiosity. Here are some examples of power words.

Power words to elicit curiosity:
Secret, Surprising, Inspiring, Unexpected, Shocking

Power words to evoke speed:
Hacks, Tricks, Tips, Kickstart

Power words to communicate comprehensiveness:
Complete, Ultimate, Comprehensive, Detailed, Entire, Definitive

We've already used a power word to evoke speed in our title, so let's add one about comprehensiveness, since we want this to be the only resource people need to move to NYC. Here's the result:

How to Move to New York City: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Local in the Big Apple in One Week.

Remember, you want to keep the title and subtitle as short as possible, so remember you can add more detail in your course description. Here's what the description for this course might look like: Get all the information you need to make smart decisions about your move to New York City. From navigating a subway like a true New Yorker, to negotiating with landlords, and detailed plan to get it all done.

Your turn. Can you use the three guidelines for naming your course to come up with an irresistible title and subtitle?

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