Position Yourself As An Expert, As You Become An Expert

The email marketing best practice is to entice prospects to add themselves to your newsletter with the offer of a free gift. Usually digital content with valuable information.

This is a bit tricky for some to wrap their heads around, the free gift has to be something that the customer will actually find valuable. A lot of marketers baulk at the cost of giving something away for free, and in the case of information, baulk at giving away for free something they think they could sell.

The reality is that if the things you give away are high quality and high value, it’s like a hit of peanut butter after midnight. They’re going to be hungry for more.

The psychological lever marketers are trying to pull is ‘reciprocity’.

You did something for me, now I feel inclined to do something for you. Marketers with limited resources try to give away the least value possible out of fear of give away too much and sinking themselves. It is a race to the bottom. The less valuable the customer finds the gift, the less reciprocity it will inspire.

Reciprocity is an exchange of mutual benefit. What you put in has an effect on what comes back.

In information publishing, enlightened marketers go to the far end of the spectrum and give away their best stuff. The impression it makes is visceral. This establishes you as the Thought Leader. The person with the solution to their problem. It’s an emotional reaction - particularly if you give them an immediate result.

This has become known as ‘Educational Marketing.’

Let's say you were an accountant with a speciality in taxes. To get engaged with your online audience you write a weekly email promoting blog posts you publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You give away your best ideas and advice, things that earn you the most money, for free.

Customers will gobble it up. You’re giving away things more valuable than the other guy charges money for. Now you have an audience of raving fans. But there’s a side bonus.

Writing things forces you to crystallize thoughts and learn to effectively communicate them. It’s a way to deepen your own knowledge about the subject.

You’re marketing yourself as an expert as you are becoming an expert.

Teachers that teach new classes or subjects do not need to know the entire curriculum up front. They really only need to be a week ahead of their students at a given time. Student’s questions will force you to confront where you were unclear, and challenge you to find another way to communicate the information. Usually in a way that’s simpler.

If you get a question that you cannot answer, then you’ve just discovered your curriculum for your own self-study. An area to go a little deeper that you hadn’t considered before.

If people challenge you on your ideas, then you’ve just discovered where you can strengthen your arguments. Or admit where you were incorrect, incomplete or illogical and grow from there.

Educational marketing has a lot of payoffs. For many professionals in this increasingly connected world, it’s becoming a mainstay. If you’re business regularly puts you in the situation where you have to stop and think you’re way through a problem, you’ve just found something to write and educate your audience about.

If you’re getting the same dozen questions over and over again, then you’ve found the material to create the best FAQ booklet on your area of knowledge. Write it, polish it, and then give it away for free. It will free you up from having to answer the same questions over and over, and your audience will love it because it will answer their questions, even when they didn’t actually want to raise their hand to ask.