How to Name Your Course: A Step-by-Step Guide

There it is: an idea for an online course that will help you build a six-figure passive income stream - what will you name it?

While a wise man once said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, a course by any other name will not always sell as well. Whether it’s a course, book, or info product, one of the keys to your success is coming up with a name that turns heads, catches the eye, and converts window shoppers into buyers.

Writing a catchy title also happens to be one of the most challenging tasks for every content creator and marketer. Your course title can mean the difference between someone not giving a second glance at your content and someone eagerly diving in to see what you have to say.

The following are some guidelines, tips, and formulas that will help you brainstorm a variety of titles for your new product or course. You’ll then need to pick the one that speaks directly to your target reader or customer and gets them to keep on reading or listening.

Why Choosing The Right Course Name Matters

Imagine scrolling through an online course catalog. Dozens of course names flash before your eyes, but only a few grab your attention. Why? Because a compelling course name is a beacon in a sea of mediocrity.

For business owners, especially those in service-based and coaching businesses looking to scale, the stakes are sky-high. Here’s why nailing the perfect course name is non-negotiable:

  • A good course name catches the eye: Before they dive into the course description or watch a promo video, potential students see the course name. Make them pause, spark their curiosity, and entice them to learn more.
  • Your course title sets the stage for your brand: Think of your course name as the first handshake with potential clients and students. A firm, confident, and memorable handshake sets the stage for what’s to come.
  • The title demonstrates value: Can someone grasp the essence of your course just from its name? Deliver a snapshot of the transformation or skills they'll gain, right in those few words.
  • A strategic title can rank on Google: SEO isn’t just for blogs and websites. An astute course name peppered with the right keywords can skyrocket your course's visibility.
  • A good name is memorable: Amid the whirlwind of daily life, a standout course name lingers, nudging potential students to circle back and enroll.
  • Your course title makes a promise (and your course delivers): The course name is your promise. Make sure it’s one you can keep, so students feel they've hit the jackpot and not a dead end.
  • The course name can separate you from the pack: The online course arena is bustling. A magnetic course name can be your secret weapon to outshine competitors.

The right course name is more than just words; it's your course's identity, its first impression, and its promise all rolled into one. Business owners and coaches, here's your challenge: craft a name that’s not just good but unforgettably magnetic!

Steps to Choosing the Right Name for Your Online Course

As I said above, coming up with a catchy, attention-grabbing, show-stopping title can be one of the hardest parts of creating your course. 

But that’s only if you don’t have a reliable process to follow. Crafting the ideal name for your online course is a blend of strategy, creativity, and a touch of intuition. While it might seem challenging at first, breaking down the process into manageable steps will make it both fun and fruitful. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you land on that perfect name:

  • Define your course topic: Before you even begin thinking about a name, you need to be crystal clear on your course content. What are you teaching? To whom? Why should they care? Nail down your topic, so the course name becomes a natural extension of the content.
  • Zoom in on the problem and value: Ask yourself, “What problem does my course solve for its students?” and “What value or transformation are they going to experience?” By identifying the core benefits, you can incorporate them into the name, making it both enticing and informative.
  • Brainstorm ideas (and be creative here!): Grab a notepad or a digital tool and let your ideas flow. Think of adjectives, verbs, and nouns related to your course content. Mix and match them. Play with alliterations, rhymes, or metaphors. Don’t hold back; this is the time for creative abundance!
  • Pick your favorites, then test them out: From your brainstormed list, select the ones that resonate most. Say them out loud, write them in a sentence, and even ask friends or colleagues for feedback. It's essential to get a feel for how they land in real-world scenarios.
  • Reflect on brand and audience fit: Ensure the name you're leaning towards aligns with your brand's voice and appeals to your target audience. Is it professional? Playful? Empowering? Choose a name that mirrors the tone you want your course to convey.
  • Ensure it’s unique: Once you have a shortlist, do a quick online search. You want to ensure your course name stands out and doesn’t get lost in the mix with similarly titled courses or other online content.
  • Sleep on it before going live: Before making a final decision, give yourself a little time. A name might sound perfect now, but after a couple of days, you might feel differently. Allow your favorites to marinate a bit, and then decide with a refreshed perspective.

Remember, naming your course is a creative process intertwined with strategic thinking. Embrace the journey, trust your intuition, and you'll land on a name that not only attracts but also truly represents the essence of your course.

Guidelines for Choosing the Right Name for Your Online Course

There’s no stopping you now! The step-by-step process above will get you far, but bear the following in mind as you brainstorm titles for your course. 

These guidelines will help you stand out from the competition, de monstrate the value of your course, and make more sales. 

  • Choose a keyword and target it with the course name If you use a keyword, you're more likely to be found in a search result online or in a place like Amazon.com or other places people search. It also tells people immediately what your product or course is about. Try to include your keyword near the beginning of your title, if possible.
  • Make it short and memorable If people can't remember your title, they can't tell others about it or come back to it later. And the longer the title, the harder it will be to remember.
  • Call out the key benefits Don’t just say what your product/course/book does or is about. Focus on the key benefit and include it in the title. Seeing the results they’ll get can be the biggest factor in someone deciding whether to explore further or move on to other content.
  • Write something that rolls off the tongue Write a title that’s easy to say out loud. Test it. And that doesn’t mean using all of the available alliterations. Say your title more than once and see if you slip up or start to stumble. (Think about ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’ and you’ll know what I mean.)
  • Choose a title that looks good on a cover This is especially true if you have a standard, branded template that has a limited amount of room for a title. Again, long, wordy titles end up filling up a lot of space. And they defeat the purpose of being eye-catching. If you don’t have room for a graphic on an ecover or if your title takes up 3 lines of text on a page, then the title is too long.
  • Focus the course name on your audience If you go too broad, nobody will know your content is for them. So if you can specify your audience in the title, do it. Just be careful not to go so narrow that you’ll only have 10 people who want to read or purchase your content.
  • Be specific, but not wordy A one-word title that captures people's interest may work if you're already known or you do intense marketing, but most titles need at least an inkling of what people will get inside. Let people know what you’re promising in as few words as possible. For example, The 4-Hour Work Week, How to Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days, The Top Secrets of Bestselling Authors, etc.

Tips for Generating Online Course Name Ideas

Staring at a blank screen and waiting for it to magically change?

Been there, done that. Here are some tips to save your eyes the trouble (and hopefully prevent a headache):

  • Start with the problem your course solves When in doubt, think about your customers and the problem your course solves for them. What’s the end state people will achieve? What big result can they expect? How will they feel when they finish it?
  • Write it 10 different ways, no matter how “good” it sounds One of the best ways to overcome writer's block is to write - no matter how good your titles are. If you find yourself hitting a wall and getting stumped, write 10 different titles down to get the juices flowing. You may find one of them is “the one”!
  • Check out the competition A little spying on the competition never hurt anyone. Don’t outright copy what you see, but take inspiration from courses your competitors are creating or even book titles (thank you amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com)
  • Let AI write one for you Try out a title generator tool to get the creative juices going, such as the Blog Topic Generator from HubSpot,  The Headline Wizard from Tim Gross, or the Wix Title Generator tool
  • And there are always AI chat tools to play with, like ChatGPT. Tell it your course audience and topic and other guidelines. Then ask it for 10 ideas, then 10 more in a different style and length, then 10 simpler ones,... and so on until you get ideas that you can tweak to your satisfaction.

When you have a list of possible titles, you can pick one main one for your course and use the others as blog posts to drive traffic.

A Guide to Naming Your Course

How to Name Your Course: A Step-by-Step Guide

Want a pdf copy of this guide, so you'll have it on hand every time you need to name your next course?

Formulas & Examples for Writing Course Names

The Power of 3

People are naturally drawn to things that come in 3's. Somehow the rhythm helps people remember. Think ‘3 key points', just like the maximum recommended for slides. If you can break down your title into 3, it will flow naturally, cover the essentials succinctly, and be remembered more easily.

Formulas:

  • X, Y, and Z
  • X and Y and Z
  • X, Y, Z

Examples:

  • Lions and Tigers and Bears
  • Eat, Pray, Love
  • Smarter, Faster, Better
  • Friends, Romans, Countrymen
  • Blood, Sweat, and Tears
  • The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
  • Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

Tip: Just pick 3 key elements of your course or product and see how you can combine them. You can start by writing down one big list.

This and That

You can also use just 2 words, if it makes more sense for your content.

Formula:

  • X and Y

Examples:

  • Pomp and Circumstance
  • Pride and Prejudice
  • Sense and Sensibility
  • Bait and Switch

Tip: Write down a big list of key words from your course, like you did for the Power of 3. Test out different combinations.

The Essence of It

A time-proven title formula, you'll see this everywhere. The idea is to boil down your course into the essence you're offering on a specific topic. For example, if your topic is ‘business mindset' and your core path to that is breaking mindset into 5 key behaviors that lead to change, then your title might be ‘The 5 Characteristics of a Winning Business Mindset.’

Formula:

  • The X of Y

Examples:

  • The Pursuit of Happiness
  • The Power of Positive Thinking
  • The Psychology of Success
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Tip: This is a great one to get some interesting adjectives in there. Try to have fun with them!

Do This to Get That

Boil down your whole content piece into the one main thing you're teaching and the one big benefit.

Formula:

  • [Verb] + [Main Benefit]

Examples:

  • Think and Grow Rich
  • Laugh and Be Happy
  • Drink and Be Merry
  • Stop and Smell the Roses

Tip: Focus on the verb and think about how it will be received by your audience since that’s what is going to draw people in first. Then think of the benefit in terms of the one big thing that people yearn for in relation to your topic.

Complete Guides

If your course or book is a how-to or comprehensive guide, you can use the word ‘guide' or even ‘bible' in the title.

Formula:

  • The/Your [Adjective] Guide/Bible to [Doing Something or Getting a Result]

Examples:

  • The Dummies Guide to [Just about everything]
  • The Retailer's Guide to Email Marketing
  • The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start-up Funding
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Tips: Include your target audience to make it more specific than just a guide for the whole world. Use adjectives to spice it up and make the title stand out from all the other guides out there.

From Here to There

Similar to the ‘do this to get that' formula, you can also write a title that describes the transformation people will make or the journey they go on.

Formula:

  • [Starting point] to [Benefit or Better State]

Examples:

  • From Here to Eternity
  • From Pauper to Prince
  • From Failure to Success

Tips: This is a great formula for making use of customer survey data. Find out what people struggle with most and where they’d like to be. Those are your starting points vs. end result or better state.

Easy, Peasy

Anything that's made easy or simple for people is an attraction all on its own.

Formulas:

  • [Topic] Made Easy
  • [Result] in [number] Simple Steps
  • [Topic] 101
  • [Topic]: The Basics

Examples:

  • Email Marketing Made Easy
  • Boost Productivity in 5 Simple Steps
  • Website Content Creation 101
  • Guided Meditation: The Basics

Tips: Be specific about your topic. Don't just be about ‘blogging made easy', but identify who it's for. Such as ‘Mommy Blogging Made Easy'.

Reveal it All

People love to think they are finding out something that no one else knows. So try using words like ‘secret', ‘revealed', ‘exposed', ‘truth’, ‘myths’, etc.

Formulas:

  • The Secrets of [Topic]
  • [Topic] Revealed
  • The Myths about [Topic] Exposed
  • The Truth about [Topic]

Examples:

  • The Secrets of Successful Real Estate Investors
  • Easy Productivity Accelerators Revealed
  • The Top 5 Myths about Buying a New Car Exposed
  • The Unedited Truth about SEO

Tips for Catchy Course Names

Be careful not to over-hype your course title when it comes to secrets, hacks, tricks or other potentially misleading promises. If your tips are nothing particularly unique, don't promise to tell people something that no one has heard before. However, it's okay to talk about things that a large portion of your own target audience is unlikely to know about.

All of the formulas above are your starting point only. Once you’ve brainstormed your big list of title ideas and picked a few you like, take it a step further.

Use your trusty thesaurus to find where you could swap out one word for another, more interesting or powerful one. See if you can attach a timeframe for a specific result (only if you can back up that promise). Or try adding a little curiosity factor to your title by making the main title very short and intriguing, then adding a more specific promised result in a subtitle.

A Guide to Naming Your Course

How to Name Your Course: A Step-by-Step Guide

Want a pdf copy of this guide, so you'll have it on hand every time you need to name your next course?

Online Course Name Generators

Need a little extra help? AI and tools can help you create a course title that's attractive to your audience.

This tool is quick and easy to use when you're lacking inspiration. Just add your keyword and click generate! 

Online Course Name Generator

Within seconds we had 10 names based on on our keyword "Online Courses"

Online Course Name Generator 2

Business Name Generator

training course name generator

Again, simply add your keyword and click the generate button. Additional windows open advertising Go Daddy, and then you get your suggestions.

training course name generator 2

Comparing the two, at Content Sparks, we prefer the output of the Online Course Name Generator. The focus is on courses, whereas the Business Name Generator is the place you look for a brand name.

Our final tool for generating online course names is ChatGPT (the Plus version preferably)...

Chat Open AI

Name your online course with ChatGPT questions

Simply type in your question, along with any guidelines about your audience, and watch the answers appear on screen as if by magic! 

Use ChatGPT to Name Your Online Course

As you can see, some suggestions are a bit generic.  But AI is a learning tool, and if you play around with it you can train it to get better results. I've already told ChatGPT my target audience and style in the Custom Instructions, so that's why it's attempted to write titles for them. I would then follow-up with more requests to refine the suggestions or come up with more variations of specific ones.

You'll see what tools you like best once you play around with them a bit.

Remember to download the pdf of this post, along with even more online course name ideas! Because you don't ever want to lose this article! 

Click here to subscribe

Here’s a Speed Hack - Have a Course Written for You

How about skipping the whole content creation process for your course and having it written for you?

Check out all the brandable, done-for-you courses that our team of professional instructional designers and writers has created here:

CLICK HERE to see available topics for launching your next course >>

When you purchase a license to any of our content, you get the ability to edit it any way you want, put your name and brand on, and share with prospects or sell for 100% profit.

sharyn sheldon signature 2020 1 1

Tags


You may also like

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}