Does Your Marketing Educate?

Educators have been doing what marketers are recently paying more attention to:

• Using content to awaken awareness
• Educating prospects on what they need

There are lots more that business owners can learn from educators. Especially in this age where content marketing rules.

In this post and on the LinkedIn publishing platform, I showed that both educators and business owners perform activities that require very similar skills.
In fact, today’s business owners are doing a lot more training and tutorials to help potential clients understand the big picture so prospects make more informed decisions and get better results.
No, I am not referring giving more product demonstrations or product training. This happens much further along the client’s journey towards enlisting your services.
I am referring to working alongside the prospects:

1. Helping them define the gap between what they want to achieve and where they are now,so they know what they need.
2. Bridging the gap with tutorials and tips, so they know how to achieve their goals.
3. Asking searching questions to help them dig deep and think through fundamental issues, so they realize why they do what they do and have the inspiration to persevere.
4. Listening to understand what else they need, so you can enhance and improve on the solution you provide.

Those who are spamming and merely pushing out links are under surveillance and likely to be left behind by smart prospects.
But if you are using content (blog posts, videos, presentation slides, webinars or hangouts) to teach and add value to your prospects then you are in a much better position to help them along their quests. These will be a more satisfied group of clients and they will likely be happy to invest in more of your services and education.
If you are a teacher, trainer, coach or mentor and you want to help more people, do know that you already have some important marketing skills for promoting your services.
Although some instructors and lecturers would not want to be involved in sales or marketing and are content to stay as salaried employees, I think they can enjoy a lot more freedom if they launch out and start their own teaching or coaching business.
Online marketing is constantly evolving and those who genuinely want to offer solutions to their prospects are not the pushy, “salsy” people you’ve probably met. The following infograph shows how genuine marketers reach out to their prospects; the same way educates reach out to their students.
Marketers As Educators
I really think educators are in a good position to start their own teaching business and ‘market’ their own services.
If you are an educator and would like to make use of new technology and new media to find and retain your students then this free eguide will show you how you can get started. If you don’t believe you are cut out for business or marketing do have a read here or have a look at the infograph below before you close this door.
This following graphic is based on an earlier post I wrote here.

Here’s An Infograph That Summaries These Points

You can download the infograph here for reference anytime or you can embed this on your website for reference. Feel free to share it if you find it helpful.