“The best marketing tool you can add to your marketing mix is – education!”
We all have subscribed to an expert’s newsletter, downloaded an interesting article or shared a tip that you have read with a friend. Education is the most effective and easiest way to build your brand! You might have heard it before, but the fact that content is king remains. Content is what your audience wants and it is the perfect vehicle to utilise for educating your current and potential clients.
Clients are looking for answers to ultimately fulfil a need – they are in it for themselves. They do not care about how organised your filing system is or what time you arrived at work this morning.
Knowledge and field expertise are crucial factors when potential clients consider using your business. Choosing the right supplier or service provider does not always only boil down to costs. There is therefore great value in educating your clients to ensure they are aware of your expertise.
Education is not just putting paragraphs of blurb out there with your services and history, but rather talking about what will truly assist your client to make an informed decision. By addressing a specific need, you will ensure clients turn to you to assist them in figuring out the problem. The challenge is to educate your clients by adding the value. Educating your audience on relevant issues that are both industry specific and interesting. You should strike a balance between talking about yourself and addressing the interest and requirements your client has. Clients do not know much about your industry and by giving them information and educating them on topics helps clear any concerns they might have when dealing with you. It builds trust and puts the clients at ease.
You might be thinking that educating is a time-consuming process and that you might be spending hours on to then just share it for ‘free’? The key is to plan in advance. The answer does not lie in the length of the content but rather the frequency of relevant bite size pieces. Even if you start off slow, you will in time build up an arsenal of content that will raise awareness for your business and brand! Little by little a little becomes a lot!
Education addresses both your visibility and reputation in one go. By providing educational topics you will encourage your target audience to read, watch or listen to you and in return you will become more visible when the content goes viral and is shared with others. Your reputation is established when the information you convey is significant and hits the nerve the reader was looking for or never even considered thinking about. The internet does not know office hours and your content will work even when you are asleep.
Just keep in mind that you will not have clients running through your door by educating them. It is a process and will take time to build an audience. Relating and educating is the foundation that will ultimately result in top of mind awareness so that you become the business of choice! When you are marketing to people – you are trying to sell to them, but when you are educating people – you are helping them understand the benefit of a solution.
You can have a lot to say to your clients, but is the message you are conveying the one they want to hear? In a world of nonstop marketing strategies, what your client really wants is some insight. Clients are better informed than ever when it comes to making purchases and there is often little educational material available to assist them. People are in general tired of promotional talk. Why do you not use the opportunity to give them something worthwhile to discuss around the fire next time?
This article is a general information sheet and should not be used or relied on as professional advice. No liability can be accepted for any errors or omissions nor for any loss or damage arising from reliance upon any information herein.