Marketing is not selling. You should not aggressively try to sell your product or service. Unfortunately, many marketers don’t understand this concept. You need to understand that marketing is not about selling, but educating your potential prospects. Help them to understand more about you and the Industry. Marketers try aggressively to sell their products, themselves and/or services, thus turning off potential prospects. Your potential prospects are going to need to make an educated decision on why they need your service or product, so educate them.
Selling is forceful, aggressive, applies pressure, mistrust and will turn your prospects away. When you educate, you give value, you are helpful, useful and contribute to their education and this will create a bond and/or trust with your prospect. Think about the last time someone tried to sell you something!! Did you feel like running away?? When you are constantly giving value and advice, you will earn trust. Remember you are the educator, the teacher, the student, in this Industry, now and always.
In order to educate, you need to become an expert and a student to the industry. Knowledge will be ongoing.
There Are 3 Ways To Educate Yourself:
· Read – Books, Blogs, Articles, Newsletters, or News articles. Anything that will increase your value.
· Listen—Audio CDs, Radio Shows like Blogtalkradio.com, podcasts, teleseminars and live calls.
· Observe—Live Seminars are best, but there are also Webinars, informational DVD’s, video podcasts and vlogs.
The 4 Top Mistakes Marketers Make Are:
· AN UNCLEAR AND/OR COMPLICATED MARKETING MESSAGE. Marketers are unclear how to help their potential prospects. The prospect is unclear to what the marketer is trying to offer or sell.
· FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND YOUR TARGET MARKET. You need to be crystal clear who your target market is and what their problems are. If you don’t know who your marketing target or who you are selling your services too, it is going to be really difficult to create relationships to people who will want to pursue you and/or purchasing your services.
· “SHOUTING OUT” your marketing message. “Buy my product!” or “Make 10,000 in 3 months!” It turns people off. By being subtle with your marketing message, you will gain intrigue, interest, and trust with your potential prospect
· WHAT YOUR TARGET MARKET WANTS TO HEAR. Your target wants to hear, and learn solutions to their problems.
There are 10 Ways to Educate Your Prospects:
· Send out a Newsletter bi-weekly or monthly. Offer a Free-EBook
· Writing Ezine articles or Ideamarketers articles (This will position you as an educator/expert.)
· Maintain your blog. (This also educates your audience and should be updated a least once a week, but twice is better, personally.
· Submitting press releases (This is especially good because a lot of people look at them, like journalists and editors and you can post them on your website. Press releases to your prospects are great because most don’t know that you write them yourself.
· Podcasts. Your prospect can download your marketing message to mp3 and they can go about their business while becoming educated and informed.
· Hosting a Radio Show, like Blogtalkradio.com.
· Hosting a Teleseminar and/or Webinar. If they want more information on the particular topic, they will seek you out. Educate on relevant topics such as the “how to” use facebook, article writing, video marketing, twitter, linkedin etc...
· Interview other Industry Experts. This will position you as an equal to the expert you are interviewing.
· Use Youtube or Video Marketing and educate your prospect (Seeing and hearing is great educationally)
· Host a live event or seminar.
Remember you are the educator, teacher, mentor, and expert. Don’t complicate your marketing message, be crystal clear. Determine your target market, find out what their problems are and give them solutions. You should be aware of your strengths and weakness, if you are great at writing, then educate with articles, try to get out of your comfort zone when you are ready and do something different. Video marketing seems to be the way to go these days. Most people learn better by seeing and hearing at same time. The more education you give your prospects, the more visible you are going to be and be pursued. You will clearly be known as an expert in the marketing industry.
“If you want to increase your value to society, you must increase your education and bring more to the marketplace.” Jim Rohn
