Tweet

Focus on educating your customers

Written by: Helen Dowling

Article Overview: When customers are not buying, it’s very easy to take it personally, think the whole world’s against you and get very demotivated with the whole thing. And then of course, that makes the situation even worse – because customers can sense a mile off if you’re not happy and even though you desperately want more customers, they don’t want to work with you.

Focus on educating your customers

When customers are not buying, it's very easy to take it personally, think the whole world's against you and get very demotivated with the whole thing. And then of course, that makes the situation even worse - because customers can sense a mile off if you're not happy and even though you desperately want more customers, they don't want to work with you. So, what do you do to break out of this circle? Well, an easy way (and often a better way) to think about your marketing is to focus instead on educating your customers. That means, rather than trying to convince them to buy, all you want to do instead is pass on useful tips and information to help people.

The impact of this can be dramatic. Firstly, you start to perceive yourself in a different way. The emphasis is no longer on getting people to buy - you're now an educator, a teacher in your subject. If you think of yourself in this way, you'll find that you no longer worry if people don't buy from you immediately. At least, if nothing else, you've been helpful to someone.

The second impact is that the world of marketing suddenly opens its door to you. If you focus on educating your customers, there are a multitude of ways in which you can do this, from writing articles to giving speeches and seminars. These methods will help you to reach more potential customers who will also all perceive you as being an expert in your field - can't be bad!

Thirdly, customers receive a taster from you of what you can do. If you're giving a seminar for instance, potential customers get to meet you and get to understand what you can do in a way they wouldn't otherwise experience. Compare this method for instance to cold calling, where potential customers only get a call explaining what you do and no education at all.

Focusing on educating your customers takes all the pressure off for you and is (in my humble opinion) a far nicer way to do marketing. We have had some tremendous successes from employing this method in my business and clients of ours have received great results too.

But can every business focus on education rather than selling? For instance a customer of mine told me the other day that their business was different - their customers wouldn't want any education; they either needed the service or they didn't.

My answer was rubbish - every business can use the focus of education to market their business. No matter what product or service you supply, people always want useful information and tips to help them make a decision.

After all, isn't that how we buy? Many of us go to the web these days and search for information on a particular product or service before we make a decision to purchase. And if you're the one providing this useful information for free, who are they more likely to buy from?

Education is a great way to market your business and if you want 50 free ways to promote your business containing many ways to educate your customers, just send me an email - details in the profile.

Related Articles
  A Proven Sales Process Should Educate First, and Entertain a Distant Third
  Dramatically Increase Sales Conversion Rate Using Education Based Marketing
  But You Do Need To Be Smart Enough to Buy It
  A Social Media Strategy for Business Owners
  Educate Your Customers Grow Your Revenues

Article Tags: bu, education, educator, marketing, multitude, second impact, seminars, speeches, successes, taster, worry



Related Forum Posts
Customer Service - Great customer service, referrals and positive word of mouth are effective ways to promote your business. I've found that educating my customers about the sort of referrals I want is very valuable. While this sort of promotion can be very effective, it is only one type of advertising that should be done. Of course, the amount of promotion that you need to do depends on the amount of business you need to generate. Chris
Re: Search Engine Optimization Guide for All - Yup I have to say I join them in saying that it's great. I always appreciate it when things are well presented. Good work man. Keep educating the people cause you got a student here and you just don;t know it.
Re: Quote of the Day - ?"Where focus goes energy flows." - Tony - Focus on a single task, eliminate millions of disractions
Re: Five Personality Traits of Successful Business Owners - 1. Focus 2. Ability to Adapt 3. Hard Work 4. Good planning 5. People Skills
Re: SEO... - [quote="martinscott":1hte2dvr]Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of civilizing the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" search results. [/quote:1hte2dvr] Civilizing? As in educating savages in the arts and manners of civilization?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

Sales Flubs

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.