How to Implement Educational Marketing

Educational marketing is the use of marketing to promote educational content and share knowledge to build customer trust and awareness.

Educational marketing differs from traditional marketing techniques, that use sales-based copy to motivate purchases. As the increasingly savvy consumers of today are tired of inauthentic sales copy, educational marketing treats your target audience with respect through the use of facts and relevant information that help to inform purchasing behavior.

Tips for Successful Educational Marketing

The list below outlines some of the most effective techniques to use in your educational marketing campaign.

1. Use Knowledge to Provide Value

Your business has a particular asset when it comes to educational marketing - that is your in-depth knowledge of your industry and operations. You should use your knowledge to provide insights that your customers and target audience might not otherwise be aware of.

As Eleven Marketing explains, providing value to your target audience with educational marketing is one of the best ways to win trust in your business. This is because your target audience is able to receive benefits from your organization through the information it provides prior to them.

2. Stop Selling

One of the most important aspects of educational marketing is to avoid the impression that your marketing is overly sales focused. Your target audience should not feel like they are being viewed as a consumer that your business is looking to convert. Having marketing content that is too sales-focused can create a one-sided dynamic, that makes the educational content that you use seem inauthentic. Instead of sales-focused content, your educational marketing should provide value about your product or service, while giving the impression that you do not expect anything else in return.

3. Listen to the Questions Your Customers Are Asking You

If you are unsure about the content of your educational marketing, then the best place to start is with your existing customers. You should try to pay attention to the questions that your customers are asking, and deal with these questions in your marketing. This will help you to ensure that your marketing is as relevant to your existing customer base and target audience as possible.

4. Focus on Driving Action

While education for education’s sake is a very positive principle, it is not in itself enough to justify marketing spend. In order to ensure you are benefiting from your marketing campaign, you will need to focus on creating marketing content that drives action.

You should focus your educational marketing on content that drives your target audience to discover your product or services. To do this you should focus clearly on the customer conversion funnel to make it as easy as possible to use your marketing efforts to drive sales.

5. Continue Adding Value

It is not enough to add value in the first interaction with your target audience. To ensure you are able to provide the highest quality experience throughout your conversion funnel you will need to continue to add value. To ensure consistency and authenticity, don’t be tempted to add sales-focused content later in your conversion funnel, instead, continue to focus on educational based value.