Marketing Strategy for Launching Online CE Courses

In the most recent article, we looked at how to build a great continuing education (CE) course, but how do you get people to discover your course once it is created? 

We are going to answer that question today as we dive into ways to market your CE course online to help drive more attention and signups to the course. 

Launching a CE course for professionals requires a multi-channel marketing strategy that builds trust and drives course sales in the long term. 

It’s important to note that if you are building your own courses, you will be going up against some big CE providers with large marketing budgets and have been promoting their courses for quite some time. 

Because of this, we will look at actionable tips you can take today to build credibility to help drive more people to your course and help you optimize returns on your marketing efforts. 

Identify Your Target Audience & Value Proposition

The first step in any marketing strategy is to identify your target audience and value proposition. This is important because identifying your target audience and value proposition ensures your efforts are focused, effective, and profitable for you. 

Knowing who your ideal audience is helps you tailor your message, content, and delivery format to their unique needs. At the same time, a clear value proposition explains how your course will solve a specific problem, fills a knowledge gap, and helps them meet their licensing requirements. 

In your case, your target audience will likely be licensed professionals in law (attorneys for CLE), medicine (physicians and healthcare providers for CME), and accounting/finance (CPAs for CPE). These are busy professionals motivated by:

• License Requirements: To maintain their licenses or certifications, they require accredited courses. Convenience and guaranteed credit eligibility are top priorities.
• Career Development: Beyond mandatory credits, many seek to update skills and knowledge (e.g. new laws, medical practices, tax regulations) to advance their careers.
• Time & Cost Efficiency: They prefer on-demand or live online courses that fit their schedule, with clear value for the cost.

You also want to make your value proposition clear in your course description and online marketing materials. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you build your value proposition: 

• Offer Flexible, Multi-Format Learning: Provide live webinars and on-demand modules to support learning on any schedule.
• Highlight Accreditation and Compliance: Emphasize that courses meet all required standards, ensuring that CE credits are accurately counted.
• Focus on Convenience and Credibility: Promote ease of access, instant certificates, and expert instructors.
• Address Pain Points Directly: Tailor messaging to professionals seeking reliable, efficient, and practical CE solutions.

Identifying your target audience and value proposition ensures your CE course speaks directly to the right professionals with a clear benefit. 

This focus boosts engagement, drives enrollment, and increases course impact, laying a strong foundation for effective marketing and long-term success in continuing education.

Build Credibility and Trust with Professionals

Now that you know who your target audience is and the value proposition of your courses, it’s time to start thinking about your marketing content. 

But, before you start thinking about creative messaging and colors, it’s important to think about how you can build credibility and trust with your audience. 

The best marketing ads in the world may look great, but even with great targeting you won’t be able to drive traffic to your CE courses if you don’t highlight your credibility and build trust with your readers. 

Here are some ways you can build credibility and trust with your audience. 

1. Accreditations & Approvals

Highlight that your platform is an accredited provider for CLE, CME, and CPE. We talked about accreditation in a previous email, and it’s important to highlight that information in all of your marketing material. 

For example, list approvals by state bar associations, ACCME (for CME), and NASBA or state accountancy boards for CPE. 

Accreditation serves as a quality mark, ensuring that your courses meet industry standards. It also gives you a competitive edge, as accredited training is more attractive to professionals and gains recognition as a trusted provider of high-quality training.

2. Expert Faculty & Content Quality

Feature your course instructors prominently, as this will demonstrate the authority of each teacher and allow you to build credibility based on the teacher's reputation. 

For example: Emphasize that courses are “taught by experienced attorneys/doctors/CPAs” – similar to CPA Practice Advisor’s use of industry experts in their courses and other CE content.

3. Testimonials and Case Studies

Testimonials are a great way to demonstrate the value of your course, as they come from real users. Testimonials and case studies can help build credibility for your course and demonstrate to potential students that it will be an excellent choice for their needs. 

A great example of this is from Becker, which includes a star rating and reviews for each CE course. This information indicates that real users appreciate the course, which can encourage other learners to enroll.

4. Transparent Course Info

Professional learners don’t have time to waste on irrelevant CE courses, so you can include course details to help potential learners know what to expect from the course before they sign up. 

Surgent CPE does a great job of adding an in-depth course details page to each course to help professionals know exactly what they will learn and what level the courses cover. 

5. Trust Badges & Policies

Badges can help learners recognize that they are viewing the best CE course for their needs. These badges can be labeled with a “100% money-back guarantee” to indicate that there is no risk, or you can use a badge to showcase the course's popularity. 

For example, Surgent CPE uses badgers on their course page to show what courses are the best sellers.

What Are Some Marketing Strategies For CE Courses?

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a great marketing strategy that can help you rank higher in Google and other search engines for terms like “online CLE credits Florida” or “best CME courses for cardiology.”

There are several tactics that you will need to employ when developing your SEO strategy. Here are some of the most important tactics to keep in mind as you build an SEO strategy to support your CE course marketing: 

• Keyword Research: Before you write any content, you will want to research what your audience is searching for when they look for CE courses. You should have some of this information from when you were researching CE topics that you can use in this step. You’ll want to focus on niche and relevant keywords that are specific to your audience, and avoid broad keywords like “online continuing legal education,” as there will be significant competition for this keyword. 
• Content Marketing & Blogging: If you want to get found by your target audience ,then you need to write about topics outside of your CE courses that meet their needs. For example, if you offer CPE, you may want to write blog posts about recent tax law changes to build authority with Google and attract qualified traffic to your site who might be interested in your CE courses. 
• Technical SEO: Ensure your website, blog, and CE courses are optimized for mobile users. This means that you need to optimize your platforms for mobile site speed, responsiveness, and ease for your users to interact with on a mobile device. 
• Link Building: A great way to improve your rankings for specific keywords is to publish content on other relevant blogs that cater to topics your audience is interested in. For example, if you offer CME courses for nurses, then you can publish guest blog posts on other nursing websites that point back to your website. Backlinks are an essential part to show Google that your website, blog, and content can be trusted. 

2. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (Google Ads)

Google Ads is a paid marketing strategy that you can use to promote your CE courses to potential learners. These paid ads allow you to control who, when, and where your ads show so you can only show ads to your ideal audience. 

Unlike SEO, Google Ads costs money; however, the advantage of this strategy is that you control everything about the ad, and you can appear at the top of search results in hours instead of months. Here are some tactics to keep in mind as you build out your Google Ads campaigns: 

• Search Ads: The main option for Google Ads that you will want to use are search ads. These are the little ads that appear at the top of Google, and you should create campaigns based on the type of CE courses you offer to ensure you reach the most qualified leads possible. 
• Retargeting Ads: You can use retargeting ads to show your CE courses to people who have visited your website or blog. This is a great way to maintain awareness and keep your brand top-of-mind for people who already know and trust it. Retargeting ads tend to be a cost-effective way to market your courses, and they can help you drive traffic back to your courses for people who have already interacted with your website or read your blog posts. 

Paid ads are a great way to drive more CE course sales, but since you are paying for each click you should be careful with your budget. For example, early on, you may want to bid only on niche, lower-competition keywords to keep costs down. Make sure your landing pages align with the ads to help improve conversions. 

3. LinkedIn Advertising

Social media is a great way to help you reach professional learners across different websites and communities. You can build brand awareness with your target audience, and LinkedIn is one of the best channels to help you reach potential learners like attorneys, accountants, and healthcare professionals. 

LinkedIn is a great channel to help you sell more CE courses, and here are some of the main tactics that you can use to help you grow this initiative. 

• Sponsored Content: LinkedIn can be an expensive marketing tool (typical cost per click is $5-15), but this is because it gives you unparalleled access to user targeting by job title, industry, and even group membership. For example, you can create CLE ads that are tailored specifically to lawyers with 3 years of experience located in Florida. 

• LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms: LinkedIn offers built-in lead generation forms in paid ads to help you capture more email addresses with a single click. You can use this approach to build your email list by promoting relevant content to your audience, with the intention that those readers will sign up for your email list so you can market them in the future for your course offerings. 
• Retargeting Ads: Similar to Google Ads, you can use LinkedIn remarketing ads to qualified learners based on if they visited your website or blog. This can help you build visibility around your content and grow your thought leadership to sell more courses. 

4. Partnerships and Association Marketing

Most CE course providers only look for individual consumers to take their courses, but the truth is there is a lot of value in partnering with associations and other groups. These partnerships can promote your CE courses to members, which can lead to several sales at once!

Many associations (Bar associations, Medical societies, State CPA societies) provide or recommend continuing education for members. Here are a few ideas to help you build partnerships with these associations and groups: 

• Content Partnerships: You can offer a free webinar or a co-branded course for association members to help you get in front of members in the association. This is a win-win for you and the associations because these groups are constantly on the lookout for quality content that their members are interested in.
• Sponsorships: You can use a portion of your marketing budget to sponsor different association events or conferences. For example, for a few hundred dollars you might be able to sponsor a luncheon or have a booth at a conference. You can meet with members, build a network with the association, and collect leads at these events. 
• Offer Member Discounts: You can propose a deal with groups and associations to offer members a certain discount for your CE courses. This is a great way to bolster sales and get new users to interact with your content. 

Partnering with associations and other groups can help you increase course sales, plus it will expand your network so you can build credibility by association and access to ready-made audiences. When professionals see your courses promoted by a familiar association or expert, they are more likely to buy from you.

5. Content Marketing

In a previous marketing strategy, we explored blogging as a way to help you drive qualified leads to your website. You can also use content marketing with webinars and free resources to help you build an email list and expand your marketing efforts to sell more CE courses. 

Here are a few tactics that you can use to leverage webinars and free resources in your marketing strategy: 

• Free Webinars & Workshops: You can host monthly free webinars on hot topics in your field that matter to your target audience. Webinars are a great way to highlight your expertise, attract new leads, and learners might be eligible for credits if they attend the webinar. To do this, you can use BeaconLive’s webinar capabilities to host sessions and then promote the events on LinkedIn, blog posts, and email newsletters that you send out. 
• YouTube Videos: Consider posting short clips of your webinars on YouTube to help build exposure for your course content. Even free content like mini lectures or Q&A videos can capture relevant audience members and point them back to your paid CE courses or other content on your website. 
• E-books, Guides, and Tools: Professional learners are always looking for new ways to make their jobs easier, and you can provide free e-books, guides, or tools as downloadable content. This content can be gated to require their email address and this can help you build your email list and generate more leads.

Content Marketing is a great way to support long-term visibility and trust with your audience while also generating more leads to support your CE course marketing efforts. This type of marketing is a relatively low-cost approach to marketing, but it can provide high impact when executed properly. 

Great CE Course Marketing Examples

Great CE course marketing doesn’t just drive sales—it builds trust, visibility, and long-term loyalty. 

Let’s explore standout examples from Bloomberg Tax, JJ the CPA, and Spring Health that demonstrate how strategic content, branding, and smart pricing models can turn education platforms into powerful growth engines.

Bloomberg Tax Learning

Top providers often offer rich content libraries and convenient access models. For instance, Bloomberg’s platform gave subscribers unlimited on-demand webinars and courses for a flat fee, presented by industry experts. 

This highlights the value of bundling and subscription models for recurring revenue and using expert-led content as a selling point. Successful CE platforms invest in SEO-optimized course catalogs and user-friendly LMS experiences to capture professionals searching for credits.

JJ the CPA (Accounting CPE)

JJ the CPA demonstrates the power of personal branding and content marketing. He built a following as a “YouTube superstar” with engaging, expert tax videos, then converted that audience into CPE course customers. 

His tactics include regular YouTube content, social media engagement, an email newsletter, and partnerships with established CPE companies (e.g. Western CPE). Key takeaway: Thought leadership (blogs, videos) and an authentic persona can drive trust and organic traffic, even with a modest budget.

Spring Health Continuing Ed

Spring Health uses value-added content to grow its network. It offers free CE courses as a perk to attract and engage mental health providers. 

This strategy of providing some CE content at no cost builds goodwill, trust, and a community that later converts to paid offerings. It underlines how offering high-value content upfront (free webinars, sample courses) can fill the top of the funnel with qualified leads.

Conclusion

Marketing your online CE course successfully requires a blend of strategy, trust-building, and consistent visibility. By identifying your target audience, showcasing accreditation, leveraging SEO, PPC, and partnerships, and offering valuable content, you can carve out your place in a competitive market. 

The key is to lead with value, build credibility, and meet professionals where they are. Start small, optimize continuously, and remember—success grows when your course truly helps people advance in their careers.

Ready to grow your CE course business? Discover how BeaconLive’s all-in-one platform can help you deliver, track, and market accredited courses with ease.