Educate And You Won’t Have To Sell

TweetIf I had to sum up the most significant benefit you will get from using a Content Marketing strategy it is this:

“Educate Your Target Market and You Won’t Have To Sell Them“

Truer words have never been spoken.  Here is how it works.

Step 1:  You choose a target market.

Step 2:  You listen to that market and determine problems they are having.

Step 3:  You create a consistent stream of VALUABLE content that addresses those problems.

Step 4:  You broadcast that content from a blog into social media, email, off-line events, video, etc.

Step 5:  Your tiny business becomes a trusted authority in your industry.

Step 6:  You begin to secure raving, loyal fans of your company that spread the word virally.

Step 7:  Your raving fans start doing paid business with you.

Step 8:  The referrals start rolling in.

We all know the power of referrals.  There is no easier sale than a referral sale.

I write about this type of strategy often and many people look at me an roll their eyes.  Sure, they say.   It’s that easy.

It’s not easy.  It’s hard work.

Educating your market is not easy.  It takes creativity, dedication and long hours creating good stuff.

Step 3 is where the “rubber meets the road” so to speak.  The effort must be put forth to create a CONSISTENT stream of content.  The effort must be put forth to create VALUABLE content for your market.  If one of these two components is missing, the strategy will fail.

Many business owners will buy into the theory behind Content Marketing but they will promptly look to cut corners.

They will do one of these things:

• They will create a few pieces of outstanding content and then stop and the CONSISTENCY is not there.
• They will hire someone to create consistent content for them and the VALUE will suffer.
• They will create a consistent stream of subpar content themselves.
• They will pay high dollar for a few pieces of outstanding content, with no consistency.

You must have both.  The education that you provide to your market must be both consistent and valuable.  It is a grind at first because you won’t see an immediate pay off to your efforts.  Know that most people quit.

Those that don’t quit will find that they will virtually eliminate cold calling, prospecting and long (often fruitless) sales cycles.

Try it for six months.  The pay off for your tiny business will be enormous.  You will invest almost nothing but time in your Content Marketing strategy and it will generate a healthy return on your investment.

Tagged as: content marketing