Don't sell, educate!

Content comes in many forms and presented in many ways. You’ll find it in emails, blogs, brochures, speeches, eBooks, articles, social media, and videos. And of course on your website.

At its core, content marketing is a method for attracting, engaging, and getting new customers by using information as the hook. But, not just any type of information.

You are targeting prospects that meet your ideal customer profile. Accordingly, your content must provide information and value that’s relevant to these specific readers, viewers, and listeners.

None of this tells you what type of content to create and how to do it. You can’t just pitch your prospective customers. Instead, what you offer must be truly useful and educate.

Education-based marketing is a powerful strategy to adopt. Done right, it delivers information that gives your buyer knowledge they didn’t have before. Education-based marketing informs and helps people make more intelligent decisions.

But I’m not talking about boring classroom type of education. No lecturing please. Whether it’s a webinar, an eBook, or a Twitter post. For education-based marketing to work you have to cut through the fog of business rhetoric without putting your audience to sleep.

Education-based marketing sells. Relevant information educates, has value, and builds relationships. It’s a strategy that lets you genuinely demonstrate the value you add to your prospect’s world. Education-based content is a powerful way of standing apart from your competition. It gets your prospect’s attention and makes you a trusted expert. Your audience wants quality content -- not “in your face” promotional pieces. Give to get. Don’t sell, educate!

It’s your prospect’s story, not yours. A strong theme and story will help your listener or reader stay interested and retain the important facts they need to remember. As long as it relevant to the answers they are seeking to their questions. Keep your message focused on your audience from the start -- talk about their problem. Remove everything from your message that has no direct value to your customers. Paint a picture with your words and don’t forget to use some visual elements too.

Quality versus quantity. Content marketing and search engine optimization go hand-in-hand. But, that doesn’t mean creating as much content as you can without regard to its real value. You’ve got balance search engine and human needs. Interestingly enough Google’s algorithm now judges the relevancy of content. In fact, they actually posted, “Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find "high-quality" sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content.” Yet, isn’t that how your human target audience feels too. Education-based marketing is the best way to do this.

People have questions and you have the answers. Use education-based marketing to establish your company as an authority and prospects will see you as a reliable source of information. It’s one of the most effective, yet low-cost marketing strategies for you to put into action.

With education-based marketing in place you’ll attract more buyers and close more sales.

Ron Stein is President of FastPath Marketing (www.marketing-strategies-guide.com). He works with small business owners, helping them to energize their marketing and sell more of their products and services. Ron has developed his own highly successful 7-step approach to winning new customers as a result of his experience as a small business owner, corporate CEO, marketing and business development executive, salesman, and mentor at two nationally recognized business accelerators. Ron offers one-on-one and small group mentoring, conducts seminars, and consults. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or Ron@FastPathMarketing.com.