Need more leads, sales or new clients? Do some teaching!
It seems counter intuitive when you really look at. But by sharing your information with potential clients or current customers, you increase your conversion rates and sales.
Education is a great way for small businesses to market online. It is hard to sell people anything but it is easy to ‘give’ away stuff in the form of special reports, training videos or seminars.
Why Teaching Works For Small Business Online Marketing
A universal law of marketing and selling goes like this, “people buy whenever they are ready to buy NOT when you are ready to sell to them!” This means you must be prepared to sell to them when they are ready.
This is why teaching is such a powerful marketing strategy. By educating prospective customers or clients eventually they may buy from you depending on what stage of the process they are in.
So what are these four buying stages?
Stage one — Clueless. This is the first stage that all people go through before they buy a product or service. Not to make fun of anyone, but the clueless buyer is someone who is unaware that they have a problem at all.
They are oblivious to the circumstances that they are in. Therefore they are not looking for any type of product or service to help them solve this problem. As far as they know they don’t have any troubles what so ever.
Stage two — In this next stage the “Aware” buyer. This person knows they have a situation but they are apathetic or feel that the problem doesn’t require action, for whatever reason.
Your job in this case, since the person is aware that they have a problem is to “explain the pain”. What I mean by “explain the pain” is that you give offer information about how difficult or painful circumstances can become if the problem is not fixed, immediately.
Stage three — Our next stage is the “Concerned” buyer. The concerned buyer knows they have a problem, is serious about wanting to fix it and is actively searching for a solution.
The educational material you provide at this time it’s more specific. This material must detail how your product or services are better, cheaper, faster or better suited to help this person than your competitors.
Stage four — The final stage the Desperate or Decisive buyer. This is the point where your buyer actually becomes a paying customer.
It’s at this stage that your in-depth product or service features, fact sheets, technical manuals or specifications are the most important. Remember, people basically by on emotional impulse.
Now that you know the four buying stages you can use your website to host these educational materials and create an effective online marketing system for your small business.