The Insights Behind Course Success—Your Buyer's Journey
Vanina Schick
xVP at Maven, Qual research Expert
Learn why your course buyer decides to enroll. Or doesn't.
Your course (or workshop) is the end of a long journey for your buyer.
Miss that and you'll talk past your buyer, target people who aren't ready to buy, and price against the wrong alternatives.
This workshop uses my AI-Accelerated Qualitative research method to give you the empathy and insights you need to nail your course positioning and go-to-market.
We'll combine two inputs: years of research I did on course buyer psychology, plus what you already know about your buyer.
We'll cover:
Buyer Intent. Your buyer doesn't wake up with a sudden urge to enroll in a course. So how do they discover what you offer?
What Triggers Enrollment. Your buyer doesn't enroll to learn. They enroll because the cost of inaction has become personal, visible, and urgent. What does that mean for your specific buyer?
Who Drops Off, and Why. Most of your audience will never reach enrollment. Understand who won't and why, so you can exclude them from your target and focus your marketing on the people who will actually buy.
The result is months of buyer research compressed into hours and specific, structured insights that will transform how you understand your buyer, position and sell your course.
Workshop agenda
- 9:00AM EDT
How Problem Awareness Develops
Before buyers consider upskilling they observe and orient around their problem, and attempt to tackle it without significant investment. Selling to them here is wasted effort. What to do instead?
- 10:30AM EDT
The Buyers Search for Solutions
Your buyer evaluates alternatives: conferences, consultants, generic training. Most disappoint. Then something breaks and the need for a solution becomes personal. They are ready to hear from you.
- 11:30AM EDT
Their Decision to Trust You
Your buyer isn't asking "is this course interesting?" They're asking "Do I trust this expert knows how to solve this?" See yourself through their eyes and map what it takes to earn their confidence.
What you’ll learn
Walk out understanding what to say, where to say it, and how to make it land with your specific professional audience.
The publications, communities, and creators they listen to reveal where you need to show up.
Their preferred content formats and dominant language tell you how to fit in, not just how to be found.
How to avoid appearing as an outsider trying to sell them something.
Understand how you need to sound to build trust with your buyer.
Recognize your buyer intent level — nonexistent, fluctuating, or high but unclear.
Shape what kind of message your audience can receive and when.
Map the solutions they've already encountered, and been disappointed by.
Know the alternatives they're comparing you to.
Understand their daily context, and how you might fit-in. Or fail to.
Why professional image masks your buyers actual emotional state.
Understand what they're not saying, and how that tells you their core motivation to act.
Find real resonance, and use it to unlock more enrollments.
Learn directly from Vanina
Vanina Schick
Product Marketing Leader I Qualitative Research Expert I Course Design Consultant
Who this workshop is for
You already launched a course but it's underperforming—this workshop will be a powerful tool to audit your GTM and messaging structure.
You don't yet have a large audience—you'll get high clarity and actionable ideas for your audience building work.
You want to create a course but are busy—we will dramatically accelerate your research process, and ensure you don't build the wrong thing.
Prerequisites
You come prepared (2 hours of pre-work)
We use your skills and experience as raw material, so we need them loaded upfront.
You commit to engaged on-camera presence
Every session is interactive. Your full and sustained engagement is needed.
You're ready to work with AI
We use an AI-powered research method.
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Vanina Schick in a real-time, interactive format.
Structured Intake — Surface Everything You Know About Your Buyer
A structured pre-work guide that helps you surface your buyer knowledge, organize your raw material, and get you ready to find real insights.
Buyer Journey Map — My Validated Qual Research, Delivered as a Framework
A foundational research artifact you can use, built from years of work with real course buyers. Deconstructs the journey down into six stages, to inform stategic marketing decisions.
Buyer Psychology — Ethnographic Techniques Applied to Your Buyer
Five behavioral dimensions decoded using methods from ethnographic research. identified in my human research, applied to your specific audience for specific, actionable insights.
Months of research — in 3 hours
We use my "AI-accelerated Qual" methodology to apply my research frameworks to your specific audience in real time. The result is structured, granular and actionable insight that will transform how you understand your buyer, position and sell your course. Doing this research yourself would take months of work. You'll get it in three hours
Peer Input — Test Your Insights With Other Experts
You'll work alongside other course builders doing the same for their own buyer. Hearing how someone else's buyer behaves differently will sharpen your own analysis. We'll share how insights are actionable, and crowd-source GTM ideas.
Unlimited Q&A — Over Lunch
After the workshop wraps at 12 ET, I'll hang out for questions over virtual lunch. Bring your questions, edge cases, and half-formed ideas. No agenda, no time pressure.
My Prompt Library — Contains All My Research & Marketing Reasoning
You'll walk away with the full set of prompts used in the workshop. These are designed to be easy to use, but they are not vanilla prompts. It's an engineered reasoning sequence that delivers actionable course-specific marketing insight, grounded in validated qualitative research.
1:1 Follow On — Your Workshop Fee Becomes a Credit
My Maven workshops are course design groundwork. I offer a follow-on service that handles everything after it, including ready-to-publish Course Page content. Your workshop fee counts as a credit toward the full engagement. Learn more at vanina.io.
Maven Guarantee
Your purchase is backed by the Maven Guarantee.
Testimonials
There's no way we would have arrived at such a perfect landing page on our own. Vanina's process is concise and the output was marvelous. I use that word specifically because I felt giddy at how effective it was.
Jasmine Bina
Brand Strategist and Cultural Futurist. Keynote Speaker. CEO of Concept Bureau, Co-Founder of Exposure Therapy
Frequently asked questions
$390
USD