Educational content is great marketing. This is because it promotes your brand, which can lead to more sales, which can lead to success.
HubSpot agrees, saying that, “the businesses that are the best educators will be the most successful.” In fact, a 2017 study by Conductor found that educational content made people 131% more likely to make a purchase from a brand.
Some companies, like HubSpot, create webinars and courses, along with educational blog posts and social media posts.
Your company may not have the bandwidth or resources to create something elaborate like a course or webinar. And that’s OK.
There are less time-intensive methods for creating educational marketing content, such as the aforementioned blog/social media posts.
Let’s check out some of the ways educational content can jumpstart your brand.
1. Establishes authority
If you’re good at something and you want the market to know it, you must prove yourself. For instance, what if my website told you all about how great a basketball player I am? If you saw me on the court and I was bricking the ball each time I took a shot, you’d probably disagree with me.
Similarly, if you’re great at making widgets, you must prove yourself. Do you sound knowledgeable in your industry? Do you understand the value you’re bringing? Do you know how to help people solve problems in your industry?
And don’t be afraid to educate customers on your business from time-to-time. Can you show the benefits of using your widget? How does your solution help solve a problem?
2. Adds value
On this blog I’ve talked a lot about adding value to your target audience through your content. And educating people about your industry can be a big value-add for people.
One way you can begin to add value through education is by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and asking yourself, “If I were visiting this site, is there anything I’d like to learn here?”
3. Helps generate leads
Business Made Simple notes that educational materials can act as lead generators. So, if you want to build out your email lists, having educational content can help.
For instance, if you create enough quality, educational blog posts, maybe you could repurpose some of those into an educational eBook. You could then make that eBook available for free in exchange for the user’s email address.
There’s also the option for people to subscribe to your blog. Though I would make sure you have plans to regularly create content for the foreseeable future before doing this.
4. Boosts your reputation
If you want to have a solid reputation, your customers need to trust you and view you in a positive light. With that in mind, the aforementioned study from Conductor notes the following:
- Consumers are 9% more likely to trust a brand after a week of reading an educational piece of content from the brand.
- Consumers are 8% more likely to view a brand as positive after a week of reading the brand’s educational content.
5. Builds loyalty
Providing free value to people through educational content can make your brand endearing. In this way, educating folks incrementally over a period of weeks, months, or years, may eventually lead to a sale (or at least a referral).
If you don’t mind having a longer sales cycle, educating folks on your industry may prove to be a big payoff in time.
Wrapping up
For these reasons I’m trying to give away a lot of what I’ve learned about my industry that I think will be useful to my audience.