While you may associate education with school, educational marketing is a much broader topic than simply marketing to educators or students. Every piece of information you see is, in a way, educational. Whether you’re learning the proper way to care for a pothos plant or discovering that toothpaste can clean old CDs, any viral video you’ve seen in the past year could be considered educational. 

Of course, for educational marketing, we’ll focus on content specially crafted to impart information to viewers, such as tutorial videos, disproving common myths, supply line explorations, and more.  

Using the above premise, educational marketing seeks to inform and educate potential customers through various forms of content. There are several reasons to adopt this marketing strategy, which we will get into today!

From increasing brand awareness and trust to crafting a personal relationship with customers, let’s explore the benefits of educational marketing and how Planted Marketing can help you transform your marketing plan using educational content. 

Importance of Educational Content

According to one study, up to 74% of customers consider their interactions with a company they’ve seen content from as a personal relationship. To better foster this connection, companies can continue to promote unique, educational content. Creating viral trendy videos will increase brand awareness, but it doesn’t increase trust in your brand. 

Sharing less than reputable posts may harm your business as it can gain a reputation for misinformation or, at the very least, a more superficial account interaction scheme. In addition, this damages the sales funnel by keeping customers from actionably interacting with your company, whether out of pure entertainment interest or distrust. 

On the other hand, according to the study above, 70% of customers found themselves more open to discovering companies through a blog post or article, making informational content much more important for growing your customer base and brand reputation. 

Educational content sets you apart from other businesses in your niche. Instead of simply promoting your content, you’re working to generate customer trust and provide a valuable service through your social media accounts. The more customers associate you with trustworthy information, the more likely they will continue following your company on social media. 

Not only does this keep them within the sales funnel and make it more likely they’ll make a purchase, but it also helps generate loyal followers, which is a vital part of bringing in new clients and developing word-of-mouth advertising. 

Sales as Second Priority

While you may put sales first mentally, sales should be a secondary priority when building educational content. Adding advertisements for your products in informational videos undermines the reliability of your video and is likely to lose your followers. Instead, provide valuable services that will bring your followers back to your page, like informative videos, articles, and helpful blog posts. 

By slowly encouraging your customers to return to your page, you generate trust and get them to explore your services and products organically. This organic traffic is more sustainable than other forms of advertising and can help gain repeat customers, as they’re likely to return to your page for more articles or learn more from your company. 

While it seems counterintuitive to have sales as a secondary priority in marketing, building your brand as an authority in your niche benefits your entire sales program, it increases trust in your business, spreads awareness of your brand, and makes customers more likely to trust your company and your products. 

By fostering honest engagement, you can drive up interaction numbers on social media and your website and build meaningful connections with customers that, in turn, transform into future sales and brand advocates. 

Types of Educational Content

While any post can technically become educational content, some critical educational posts exist. For social media, these posts can look like the following:

• Informative videos: A common form of educational content, short videos about something related to your business can drive engagement and provide information to customers. Exploring a factory, showing off a new product or life hack, and more can all count as educational content. 
• Text posts and infographics: These posts provide direct information and can link to external, reliable sources to help bolster brand trust and reliability. Check your sources and balance the number of infographics to entertainment-related posts, as infographic posts can become repetitive over time. 
• User-generated content (UGC) and guides: Sharing user-generated content and guides is a great way to drive up customer engagement and provide educational content you didn’t have to create. Not only is this a way to increase customer loyalty, but it also shows trust in your community that can grow to even more sales. Using hashtags and other methods of tracking down UGC is a great way to find free posts and engagement opportunities for your page. 
• Guest Features: Guest videos are a great way to provide new information and pair with authoritative pages to boost your brand’s stance as a thought leader. Make sure to research before inviting another page to make a post for your company, and thoroughly vet your sources, as nothing tanks your reputation like hosting false information on your page. 

While some of the same post types apply to website content generation, there are a few unique niches that blog posts fill that you can’t quite fit into short-form social media content. Some examples of website educational content include:

• Articles and blogs: The bread and butter of content generation, articles, and blogs are a great way to provide information to customers while still advertising your services. Try and keep your pitch short and to the point, and focus more on serving a need than jamming text with advertisements for your products. 
• Listicles and DIY: Similar to articles, listicles of things to do in an area or other companies can drive engagement. DIY posts are a great way to showcase skills and draw in new customers curious about your latest projects. 
• Guest bloggers and podcasts: Just like influencer and UGC posts for social media, having guest bloggers and podcast guests join your company can increase brand awareness and reputation, so long as you accurately vet your articles and ensure your research is solid. 
• How-to videos: Walkthroughs and how-to videos can drastically increase traffic to your site and snag interested customers and bored browsers interested in learning something new. Try and share videos related to your business, though you can always share things related to your products, or that would be easier with your company’s services.

If you’re interested in boosting your marketing plan, here at Planted Marketing, we use educational marketing as one of the primary prongs of our services. By bolstering your brand’s reputation through informational posts, we can increase customer engagement and loyalty and bring new life to your small- or mid-sized business. So if you’re interested in learning more, contact us today. 

Planted Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in content marketing and organic solutions for woman-owned brands. Our wide variety of services allows for customized plans that work best for your brand and each stage of growth. Want to learn more? Send us a message at info@planedmarketing.com. Talk soon!