Marketing strategies should evolve with the changing times to remain relevant. Customers are now more aware of the products and services they consume and the 2019 State of the Connected Customer report shines light into one of the most significant changes happening in customer behavior. The report found that for 84 percent customers, the experience provided by a company is as crucial as the product or service they offer. Also, largely due to the shift brought in by the pandemic, 2.14 billion people in the world purchase online now. This means that 27 percent of people in the world are digital buyers. This has forced organizations to add value to customers at every touch point. As a result of all this, educational marketing is rising in significance in the corporate realm. Despite how it sounds, this isn’t limited to only the educational sector and any organization can use it.
Educational Marketing in a Nutshell
It can be defined as the process of providing customers information that is related to a product/service, topic, or industry. Using this tactic, organizations can educate prospects regarding the benefits they will get by using their products or services. If done rightly, educational marketing can have a significant impact on the purchasing decision of a customer. A recent survey highlights its importance even more. It found that consumers are 131 percent more likely to purchase from a company right after they engage with early-stage educational content. Rather than many other marketing strategies that push consumers towards purchasing your product, educational marketing allows you to guide them down your sales funnel.
Educational marketing can help organizations in a myriad of ways. This including helping them increase their customer base, positioning the company as a thought leader, building trust with the customers, generating organic traffic etc. On top of that, educational marketing is not as costly as many other marketing strategies. Let’s analyze some of the most effective educational marketing strategies that can help an organization to grow.
Building a Customer Persona
This is a semi-fictional depiction that represents the ideal buyer of an organization. Creating a customer persona has multiple advantages including allowing organizations to create content that is useful to them and offering them the best customer experience. Organizations can use group demographics and buyer intent data to understand more about this target audience. Other than that, using social media to identify what that target audience is most concerned about can help organizations to know them better. Keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner will also help organizations to learn more about their audience. Getting direct feedback from your customers is another effective method to ensure the same. All of this will help organizations to create a common ground which will connect them and their products with their target audience. This, in turn will help them to churn-out better education-based marketing content. A research even found that 78 percent individuals identify their relationship with a company through custom content.
Opting for the Right Content Delivery Options
Based on their target audience, an organization should choose the best format for content delivery. Some of the most popular types of content delivery include blog posts, case studies, articles, online courses, testimonials, webinars, videos and podcasts to name a few. Apart from these, there are myriad of other digital marketing formats to deliver informational content to customers. An organization can even use a combination of some of these formats if they have a clear understanding of its marketing objectives. One of the best real-life examples of choosing the right format of content delivery options to connect with their target audience is that of Indium Corporation, a US-based electronics company. After the launch of their blog ‘One Engineer to Another’, the company saw a 600 percent rise in their leads. The company’s blog offers content both in article and video formats. These will not only discuss about plethora of engineering topics, but it will also feature the products the company offers.
Effective Communication with the Audience
Many traditional marketing strategies are losing momentum in the present day world. This calls for modern marketing solutions that will help organizations to reach out to their audience much more effectively. Social media marketing is quickly becoming the go-to strategy for companies as it allows them to communicate with their audience and offer them relevant information. Tech giant Apple with its ‘Today at Apple (at Home)’ initiative is putting a unique twist on how companies can communicate with their audience effectively. Through these well put-together series of videos, Apple is able to educate the audience through tips and tricks in regards to how they can get creative at home. For example, through their ‘How to make your videos more cinematic with IPhone’, Apple is able to showcase their product on top of offering resources for their customers to study.
73 percent people says that customer experience is a deciding factor while making a purchase and providing great educational content can help organizations to ensure better customer experience. Looking from an educational standpoint, many educational marketing strategies have helped customers to better understand a product or service. More than 90 percent marketers are stating that video has aided them to improve the customer’s understanding of a product or service. 70 plus percent also states that webinars have become a great source to get leads. Because of all these aforementioned reasons, educational marketing is a great way for organizations to elevate their business.
