Want To Be Successful With Content Marketing? Teach, Don't Sell

Today’s consumers block out online marketing and sales content, but they respond to content marketing’s “Teach, Don’t Sell” approach. I'll share three ways to do it.

The idea of teaching instead of selling seems to turn marketing on its head, and yet it’s at the core of content marketing. “Teach, don’t sell” is exactly what makes content marketing different from advertising.

But isn’t the whole point of marketing to sell? If you’re not selling, are you even marketing?

Even when you’re creating educational content, you are still marketing. You’re just marketing the content, not your products and services. You’re still selling those products and services, but the selling is just way in the background. Way, way in the background.

On the front end, you’re offering terrific, free content. The point of your marketing – your content marketing – is to build an audience that consumes and shares that content.

But why do that at all?

Here’s the part you might not like hearing. You teach instead of sell, because frankly, nobody really cares about your marketing.

Sorry to tell you that, but it’s true. Nobody wants your marketing. We’re all up to our ears in advertising and marketing. We see 3,000 to 20,000 ads and brand messages per day.

That’s why it’s so essential to teach, rather than sell, with your marketing efforts. It’s also at the crux of how content marketing can be so effective, like this tutorial video from Lowe's Home Improvement.

The point of content marketing is NOT to swamp people with ads or pitches; it's to give useful, relevant information.  

Unfortunately, according to the 2016 State of Small Business Report, 45% of small businesses are using their content marketing and accompanying social media to promote specific products or services, and 38% use them to share information about promotions, sales or discounts. 

It's OK to use your logo on content, but don’t mention how to buy anything. Ideally, don’t even mention what products or services you offer. The best content marketing is sales agnostic, yet it can still get the sale.

Here’s how: As you know, the average consumer is fed up with advertising. They don’t want to see or hear any more of it. To do that, they have developed “banner blindness”, a phenomenon where online viewers consciously or subconsciously ignore anything that looks like an advertisement.

Here’s the good news: You can get past those marketing blockers if you offer people great, useful, engaging information and refrain from your sales pitch.

As soon as you lapse into selling, or even mention your products and services, their suspicions will rise. They’ll remember they probably shouldn’t trust you at all. You’re “probably just selling something.”

And they’re right.

So how can you avoid triggering their “THEY’RE SELLING!” radar? Here are three ways, along with an example for each approach.

Use these well and you just might win your audience’s trust. With that hard-won trust, some day - when they need what you sell - they’ll think of you first. They’ll trust you with their dollars. That is the backwards, upside-down way content marketing actually sells.

1) Don’t include a call to action that asks them to buy.

Applying teach-versus-sell is actually pretty simple. Just don’t ask people to buy anything. Don’t ask them to call you. Don’t ask them to sign up for a catalog or a mailing list. Don’t ask them to request a demo.

You may put your logo and your website link somewhere on the content, but ideally you won’t even mention what you do. Why not? Because you are in education mode now. You are attracting and building an audience, not trying to make a sale. Put on a scholar’s cap if you have to, but put your business cards away.

You may include a call to action that prompts them to see another piece of content. If you are in the habit of regularly publishing useful content, you may ask them to sign up for an email newsletter, check out your YouTube channel, or to follow you on social media.

Here’s a super-simple example of this. It’s a rack card I picked up in a bank lobby with "12 Steps to Self Care."  The card, which was created by a mental health professional, elegantly attracted the right audience.

If you were the sort of person to want a self-care list like this, you’d be the sort of person this counselor would want to have as a client.

She doesn’t say one word on the cover about calling her for an appointment, just 12 steps.  There is some professional information on the other side, but it’s a soft sell – she only mentions the services she offers.

Any small business, even a tiny start-up, could do this.  I just checked Vistaprint, and you could get 250 rack cards printed and mailed to you for less than $75.

Of course, businesses have been sharing promotional items like this forever. Who hasn’t gotten a promotional calendar or a fridge magnet? But how useful are those, really?

Create information your ideal customers or clients really, really want. Then let them call you.

2) Tell them what they want to know, not what you want to tell them.

You want to talk about features- how fast your product is or how light it is.

Your customers like features, but what they really want is benefits. Benefits would be how they can get home half an hour earlier because your product is so fast, or how they can zip up a mountain with your gear because it is so light.

That’s the sort of thing that gets their attention. How do you get the sale? To do that, you must show them exactly how to achieve those benefits.

Now here’s the challenge: They don’t want a whiff of sales pitch.  The sales pitch means they can’t trust you. If you’re selling to them, they know darn well that’s influencing everything you say.

One of the best formats for giving people the information they want to know versus what you might want to tell them is the comparison table. This often makes marketers uncomfortable. They’d rather not even acknowledge that the competition exists, but their prospects know better. What prospects really want to know is how your product compares to others like it. That’s what the product comparison table does.

Here’s one from a university:

Here’s another one from Roku:

3) Be generous.

People may react negatively to marketing, but they respond positively to generosity. Nothing builds trust like consistent, generous, honest and useful content.

Chris Brogan and Seth Godin  are two masters of generosity who have throngs of devoted fans. The two occasionally sell things, but it’s rare. On the off chance that they are selling something, count on it being world-class.

A simple example of generosity can be found in email newsletters. There’s an old technique from Internet marketers to “give more than you take.” Basically, it means sending out more educational emails than promotional emails. Some say the best ratio is four “gives” to every “take.” Others suggest an even higher ratio.

This approach is common in social media, too. The best practice is to post other people’s content significantly more than you post your own. Only 5 to 10% of the content you share should be self-promotional; the rest should be compelling information and resources. This is generous, yes, but it also makes you look more authoritative and trustworthy.

If you’ve been selling all your life, it can be hard to stop. There’s a strong urge to at least mention what you offer even when you’re publishing educational content, but the biggest benefit of content marketing is to get past your audience’s marketing blockers - to show you are trustworthy and worth their attention. Every time you try to sell to them, you compromise that trust. You’re actually eroding and diluting your own work.

So don't sell.

Teach.