#238: Best of 2025: 7 Online Marketing Lessons from Our Top Episodes

Welcome back to the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you excited about whatever you’re putting out there in a bigger way. Online course, workshop live cohort, whatever is looking different for you. And speaking of looking different today, we’re going to change it up a little bit. I wanted to take a look back, but also look ahead in terms of this last episode for the year.

And I’ve got seven big lessons from our most listened to episodes of the year, and I’m going to walk through why each lesson matters. And one practical action you could do with the start of next year to make it the best year yet. So quick housekeeping. If you love this episode, please subscribe. Leave a review. Share the episode with a friend who’s building a course, a workshop group, coaching or creator business.

All the show notes and resources I mentioned are in course Creation Boutique. And by the way, we’ve also put together a free one page checklist for this episode. So more on that in the end. All right. Let’s talk through the seven lessons that we learned over the last year, straight from the episodes that taught us the most. Now, lesson one.

Video First Double down. This is no surprise. Video has been first for the last few years. The single clear trend we saw in the last year was video first content. So episodes like the New Social Media Strategy for Course Creators Episode 205 and several how to episodes confirmed audiences are reachable and lock in faster when you lead with video.

Video creates connection and it builds trust faster than text alone and short form clips are the marketing engine that feeds long form content. Now Platforms. Social media platforms. Reward engagement. YouTube short reels and even LinkedIn video are giving creators like you organic reach. If the content is snackable, we want it to be curiosity driven. This means you can get great growth without a lot of ad spend.

And in episode two or five we pushed a video first experiment a single long form training plus a repurposing plan created a reliable stream of weekly clips that kept the momentum alive between launches. Now, here’s your action for the next few months. Pick one episode, one video, one podcast each month to record as a long form Bingeable piece.

Let’s say 20 minutes. Now, when I say Bingeable piece, I want you to think low cognitive load. What is digestible? What’s something they can get like that? They don’t have to think too much. And it speaks to a pain point. It speaks to something your audience need solved right now. Now, so you’re going to have that 20 minute clip or that 20 minute piece and you’re going to extract six clips per episode around 30 to 90 seconds.

Here’s your template clip. One is a hook. Clip two is a micro lesson. Clip. Three can be a story clip for a call to action. Clip five, you’re taking on an objection and then clip six Can be a case study, a testimonial, some kind of social proof. Then I want you to schedule these across YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, LinkedIn, whatever your platform of choice.

I’m not telling you to do all three. Choose one and really double down on it. And then I want you to let me know how it goes. I want you to send me a note, which leads me to lesson number two. Email is still the highest leverage ad free channel. And I was actually talking to an expert the other day and they were asking me if I thought email was dead.

I do not think email is dead. I still think email marketing is one of the most effective ways, especially when you’re first starting out and you’re really building your business and you’re building momentum. I feel like email is still a really great way to get traction and to scale. So in our episode 197, How to Build a Profitable Email List without Paid Ads.

Reminds us that email is still the best relationship channel. Liz Growth with that adds is possible and profitable when you map out content, conversion and ads can scale traffic, but your list is where trust conversion and repeat sales live. Organic list building tends to be higher margin and more sustainable. So in that episode, I talked about creating clear lead magnets that are tied to your outcomes, your courses, your workshops, not vague advice.

Don’t try to be everything for everyone. Use guest episodes and webinar swaps to source warm leads, Borrow from other people’s audiences, and move subscribers to take action with a short evergreen email funnel. Welcome. Show them the value, social proof and then your call to action for your action for the next few months. I want you to think about launching a mini email challenge over five days.

Each day you have a short email with a micro assignment, use one of your top episodes, top blogs, top videos as the prompt and promote it via clips and invites. All right, let me know how it goes. Lesson 3ai can help hugely, but set clear boundaries in episode 194. I, as your course best friend, did really well because of course creators want to know, well, what’s a hand to I and what to keep more?

Human air is powerful for speed, for ideas, but it isn’t a replacement for coaching, editing, for voice and empathy. Now, using AI intentionally frees up time for high value human work, deep work, interviewing, empathy, nuance. So as a reminder, what to automate versus what to keep human. Do you want to automate transcripts first draft show notes, title ideas, repurposing prompts, emails Keep human interview questions that require intuition, final copy edits, live coaching moments.

So for January and beyond, think about creating two templates one for your transcript and to shownotes one for episode into six clips. Test and refine them for your voice. Put a human quality control step at the act so see what you can do. And with a i I for 1 a.m. so excited to see how I really amp up in the new year.

It’s already come so far I feel like it’s going to free up time more and more to work on the stuff that really matters, the connection pieces that we love to work on. All right, Lesson four Copy and sales page fixes can convert fast. Now, this is several of our top episodes. Talked about this 195 198 199 They showed a same truth.

Small tactical copy and sales page fixes produce measurable uplift. You can fix the headline you clarify the promise, you remove friction during the checkout. Big overhauls, by the way, can be expensive. We don’t need that. Let’s do some quick evidence based metric based fixes to give you wins and cash flow to fund bigger projects. Here are some three quick fixes from those episodes.

One Tighten the page headline to the outcome, not the feature. To add a micro testimonial near the CTA and three remove any unneeded form fields in checkout. That’s a big one. Okay, here’s your action for the next few months. Pick one sales page and run a three step audit headline Proof near CTA. Check out friction, implement one testable change and measure results for the next 30 days and follow up with Gina.

All right, on to lesson number five story culture and Brandon narrative matter now 208 and 209 taught us that stories build really deep trust when you deliberately create a story culture, a shared language, and clear origin stories your audience recognizes and remembers you. Stories by far are the shortest path to emotional connection. Check out the episode I did with Bowie since Storyteller, Incredible Trainer and speaker.

He talks about the emotional connection in that trust that you get immediately with story stories, help with recall share ability and the kind of referrals that convert. And I was just having a conversation with my 12 year old with Tristen the other day and we were talking about music. He’s really into music. And I said, What do you think makes a great song?

And he said to me, I think it’s a great song. When you feel like it’s connected to you in some way and you feel like it’s connected to your life, right? Because there’s stories in there, there’s something that resonates with you. Which, by the way, I thought that was a great answer for a 12 year old. So your action for January and beyond, you can build a one page mini story kit, a three line origin story, a 62nd case study story and a 15 second hook.

Use these three stories as the backbone for your January content calendar or beyond. All right. Lesson six Workshops and hands on content Outperform Talk Content. Now for us listeners definitely rewarded episodes that felt like a workshop or gave a concrete exercise. That’s why our workshop episodes sit high in our downloads. People want to leave with something tangible. Workshops reduce friction and they convert passive listeners into action takers.

My favorite kind of people and action takers are more likely to buy. They’re more likely to convert. So here’s what I want you to think about in the coming months. Here’s your action Turn one episode, one video into a workshop. Maybe you turn into a webinar or a masterclass and you start teaching that include a worksheet, a 20 minute micro task and an optional live follow up, then promote it with your short form clips like we’ve talked about earlier.

Okay. I love this idea, by the way, and I plan to do way more workshops in the coming months. And now we’re down to lesson number seven guys. We could have done so many great lessons from this past year, but looking ahead to the new Year, I want you to make metrics part of your standard operating procedure, measure everything and act on it right.

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. As my old boss, Tony Robbins, used to say, we have downloads history, but the real step is to standardize metrics, monitoring downloads at 730, 90 days, checking on retention clicks to call to action conversion rate from podcast listener to a lead. Because like I said, if you don’t measure your guessing measurements, tell you where to double down, whether it’s gas, podcasting, podcasts, video, email funnels, anything.

Think about adding three mandatory metrics to your episode Tracker or whatever you’re doing. If it’s video, it’s blogs, downloads, retention and CTA clicks and conversion, make it a task to fill those in 30 days after pub so you can build historical data. All right. Those are the seven lessons I’ve got to look back so we can look ahead.

I want you really taking some of these lessons to heart and seeing what you can implement right away. And now we’ve made a one pager, seven actions for January your 2026 kickstart checklist that lays out all the actions I mentioned. Check it out. Now you can go to of course creation boutique dot com slash 2026 checklist. That link is also in the show notes.

You can send your checklist to your VA or someone on your team and pick one action to finish this week. Thank you so much for listening to the course creation incubator this year and all the year’s big thanks to everyone who tuned in my incredible team behind this. David and Robin couldn’t do it without you. If this episode has helped you in any way, we’d love if you would share it with one person who’s building out a course or their brand or a workshop and needs momentum until the next episode.

Go create be you and be brilliant and get it done.