Creating a course isn't the hardest part. It's what comes next: telling people about it and getting them to enroll. When the Ruzuku team surveyed course creators about their biggest challenges, marketing came up more than any other topic. Here's what we learned — and a practical framework for making marketing feel less like selling and more like helping.
Why Marketing Feels Hard (It's the Story You're Telling Yourself)
When course creators say "marketing is hard," they usually mean one of two things: they don't know what to do, or they feel uncomfortable doing it. The second problem is the bigger one.
Most experts didn't get into their field because they love selling. They got into it because they love the work — teaching, coaching, creating. Marketing feels like a distraction from the real thing. But here's the reframe that changes everything:
"The solution is not to push yourself harder. It's to look at it differently. Change the story you're telling yourself about marketing."
Marketing isn't convincing strangers to buy something they don't want. It's connecting with people who already have a problem you can solve, and letting them know a solution exists. When you frame it that way, marketing becomes an act of service, not salesmanship.
The Guerrilla Research Method
Before you can market effectively, you need to understand your audience deeply enough that your marketing practically writes itself. Here's a method that works even if you have zero audience and zero budget:
Step 1: Find where they already hang out. Reddit communities, Facebook groups, LinkedIn discussions, Amazon book reviews in your topic area, podcast comment sections. You're not posting or promoting — you're listening.
Step 2: Collect their exact language. When someone posts "I've been trying to learn watercolor for months and I still can't get the colors to blend without turning muddy," that's marketing copy. Write it down. You want a list of 20-30 phrases that describe your audience's struggles in their words, not yours.
Step 3: Have 5 real conversations. This is the step that separates course creators who launch from those who don't. Use your personal network — friends, family, colleagues, LinkedIn connections — to find people who have the problem you want to solve. Send them a message like this:
"Hey [name], I'm working on a course about [topic] and I'd love to understand the challenges better. Would you be open to a 15-minute phone call where I ask you a few questions? I'm not selling anything — just researching."
Most people say yes to this. It's flattering to be asked for your perspective, and 15 minutes feels easy to commit to. The key is to actually listen — don't pitch your course during the call.
How to run these student interviews →
Active Listening: The Skill That Makes Marketing Easy
The difference between effective marketing and ineffective marketing is usually the difference between using your audience's language and using your own. Experts tend to use jargon, abstractions, and technical terms. Students use plain language, specific frustrations, and emotional descriptions.
Practice this: In your next conversation with a potential student, resist the urge to teach or solve. Instead, ask follow-up questions: "Tell me more about that." "What did you try?" "How did that feel?" The more they talk, the more marketing material you collect.
When you eventually write your course description or sales page, use their phrases — not cleaned-up versions of them. "I can't get the colors to blend without turning muddy" is more compelling than "Learn advanced color mixing techniques."
Why Human Connection Is Your Competitive Advantage in 2026
Marketing has gotten harder in some ways. Organic reach has declined on most platforms. AI-generated content has flooded every channel. Audiences are more skeptical of polished marketing than ever.
But it's also gotten simpler. The creators who are succeeding aren't the ones with the slickest funnels or the highest ad budgets. They're the ones who show up as real people: sharing real experiences, having real conversations, and building trust one interaction at a time.
This is where course creators have an inherent advantage over corporate competitors. You're a real person with a real story. Your students can email you and get a response. That matters more now than it did five years ago, because it's rarer.
When You Know Your Audience, Marketing Writes Itself
The path isn't complicated. Understand your audience's problems. Learn their language. Create something that solves a real struggle. Then tell them about it in the words they already use.
The hard part isn't tactics — it's the willingness to listen first and create second. Humble yourself, start every conversation with a beginner's mind, and let your audience teach you what they need. Everything else follows from that.