How to Educate Your Target Audience
Education is typically one of your business’s marketing content pillars, but what does that mean for you and how do you make educational content?
Everyone and their mom is talking about AI (Chat GPT or other AI softwares) right now and while that is an easy fix to answering the question above… we want to talk human to human. Let’s dive in.
If you don’t know what a marketing strategy is or what it includes… you need to hop on a call (link to office hours) with us right now. This is the second strategy a business should have in place to ensure you’re showing up on the right platforms, sharing the best content, and implementing your brand in a way that reaches and converts potential audiences into customers.
Now that we have that out of the way, we’ll continue to the topic at hand: the education pillar in your marketing strategy.
Education Encourages Return Customers
As a small business, you know how hard it can be to engage repeat customers, which is why you use social media to gain exposure and nurture audiences to turn into customers.
Educational content is part of the marketing strategy, and if you’re not using it, here is a list of reasons why you should start:
Builds credibility and showcases your expertise
Allows you to address the pain points of your audience
Supports the buyer’s journey
Supports your SEO
Encourages engagement
Supports conversions for sales
Let’s break these down so you understand how to start implementing your own educational content.
Credibility & Expertise
How often have you been scrolling and come across a product you KNOW you want? Often! But, then you go and check their website or their social media profile… and there’s nothing that shows you more about the product, the company, or their expertise.
Usually, we let it go and keep scrolling. Now, imagine the content supports that buying decision (with a follow or email sign-up!) and you decide to check out. Showcasing your product specs, materials or ingredients, your craft process, and reviews are so important for nurturing that first order and encouraging them to continue to come back for more!
Addressing Pain Points
So often, we see small business owners create a product out of NEED. Something has happened and this product or these products are helping enhance their lifestyle, and they want to share that with the world (aka their current and potential audience).
That’s where pain points come in. Part of your education can include addressing the stress, health, mental load, or other pain points that your audience experiences.
A great example is a product specifically tailored to mothers in their 30s. An educational piece can talk directly to what they’re feeling and experiencing. This helps them feel SEEN.
And, that’s what great marketing strategies do at the end of the day, they make people feel SEEN, which encourages them to return time and time again.
Supports the Buyer’s Journey
How many of us are researching companies before we purchase nowadays? That’s right. We do it for a significant amount of time. Especially if we find the company online.
That means educational content is part of someone’s decision-making process.
Supports SEO
The more you talk about your product, the more opportunities there are for your company, whether it be social media or your website, to come up when people search for specific keywords.
The only recommendation we have for this is to make sure you’re using keywords that apply to your product. SEO creates awareness. We can definitely break down this topic at a later date, as it does heavily apply to your website!
Encourages Engagement
The fun part about making educational content is you can open up the floor (aka your comment section) to conversations.
Framing your content to be open-ended or poll-like can increase those intentions to engage. The biggest part of true engagement is to STOP the scroll. Once you can stop the scroll, then you need copy to support the conversion you’re looking for: comment, visit profile, follow, etc.
Supports Sales Conversions
While we mentioned this in the breakdowns above, we want to emphasize this as much as possible.
Educational content isn’t another mediocre task in your marketing strategy. This type of content WILL support your sales and lead to RETURN customers. The more education you provide them, the more they’ll buy into your brand and become the ideal customer you’ve been looking for!
Are you ready to create your marketing strategy?
