Education is your Best Marketing Tool
Last week my family and I were on holiday in Napier, New Zealand and on one of the days we visited the Arataki Honey Visitor Centre in Havelock North. The centre was fun for the kids and we all learned something more about bees and honey, as well as the damage caused by the varroa mite to the beekeeping industry. However, what was most interesting to me was the reinforcement of a view that education is your best marketing tool.
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing defines marketing as ‘getting your market to know, like and trust you’.
Know: Did I know Arataki Honey before our visit? No not really. Do I now? Yes.
Like: Do I like the Arataki Honey brand more as a result of the visit? Yes – kids had a good time, we all learned something, and we got to taste honey.
Trust: Do I trust Arataki Honey more as a result of the visit? Yes – through their centre they engaged me in their world and demonstrated their credibility in all things bees and honey.
Note: Arataki Honey could have chosen to use their visitor centre investment for more traditional marketing approaches. They could have done what most other businesses do and advertise the features of their product, in this case honey – 100% natural, a naturally sweet alternative to sugar, zero fat, great taste, etc. Would this have been as effective? In my opinion no.
So what does this mean for your business?
Let’s move away from the full frontal marketing assault, where we interrupt our market (and those not in our market), present our product or service, and list out the features. Instead let’s not interrupt our market, make available valuable educational facilities or content that in someway relate to our products or services, and engage with our community that gets value from this education.
For example, if you run an environmentally friendly residential waste disposal business, you could do a mail drop presenting your service, and listing bin sizes, prices, pickup days and your environmental policy. But, perhaps a better approach would be to do a mail drop in your area inviting a people to a free seminar covering topics such as how to create a home compost, items that can be recycled, and how to minimise the cost of home waste disposal. Through these free seminars people in your area would get to know you, like you, (and through your useful information) trust you. When they need a waste disposal service it is likely that you would be the organisation they look to.
Until now I have purposefully stayed away from mentioning the internet in this post. However, a quick note on it now to finish off. The internet provides a fantastic platform to educate your market. You can provide educational content, whitepapers, ebooks, and posts on your blog or website. You can put educational content into podcasts or videos. You can engage in forums and answer peoples questions in your area of expertise. In addition to adding educational value to your community (leading to know, like and trust), you also build valuable content that:
- If useful people will link to – a key factor in increasing your search rankings in search engines
- Is loaded with relevant keywords for your product or service – another key factor in increasing your search rankings in search engines.
So team, let’s not just market, let’s educate.
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I agree. Education is something which can never be ended because you born as a student and you die as a student.