Education-based marketing = content marketing

With increased possibilities and new technologies, education and marketing have converged.

The swift advancement of technology has revolutionized both education and marketing. Education has been transformed by the capability to learn anything, anywhere, on any device, removing the confines of a traditional classroom. Meanwhile, marketers have realized that education serves as a potent marketing tool, often referred to as 'content marketing'.

Education-based marketing is the sharing of knowledge with the purpose of building trust. It is a strategy that establishes credibility & trust with your customers by sharing knowledge that adds value to your customers’ lives.

Why education is a powerful marketing strategy?

Let’s face it, people don’t want to be sold to, but they still want to buy. They need to get to know a brand before making the plunge. Consumers will research about your brand, read testimonials and reviews and read and view everything possible that you have online, possibly before even contacting you.

Building relationships with your audience or prospective clients and move them further down the decision funnel is key and providing them with real value. Give it away, give it away, give it away….

We live in DIY times where frankly, we have all realized that we can learn just about anything online at anytime and on any device. Personally I’ve even fixed my washing machine by watching a YouTube video! Organizations that take advantage of that desire to learn are using education-based marketing effectively.

When you help people make an informed decision, you automatically build trust. You empower them with the information they need. They might decide that it isn’t the right fit, but more often than not, they will go with who they trust the most.

Education-based Marketing: Profile of a Sign and Lighting Small Business

I’ve done some work with a small local business in the sign industry. They design, build, install and maintain signs for businesses. It is a small, but growing business. The owner is the primary salesperson, and he finds that his time is often split between managing the projects and business development, so he is looking for ways to be more efficient with his time.

When a business is under construction and they are in the process of choosing a sign that will attract customers, sometimes they know exactly what they need. Other times, they really have no idea what the options are and the owner of the sign shop ends up spending quite a bit of his very stretched time explaining the different kinds of signs available and what kind of costs and timeline are associated with each. If he does this with every meeting, he wouldn’t have any time to actually build the signs.

One of my suggestions was that he could use education-based marketing. It could be as simple as adding more description onto his website and defining what some of the terminology is and showing examples using images.

I proposed setting up a gallery of his past projects that showcase the different types of signs that are available along with the benefits, downsides and cost range for each one. He can then educate his prospective client before they even meet. The client will be more confident because they will have learned a bit more about what is available and the sign company owner is happy because he feels that his client can make a better decision about their needs.