A Newsletter on Marketing (and Life) #007

Read this to do create better educational marketing.

Author

Jordan Ogren
August 04, 2023

Another week, another tardy newsletter.

I won’t promise I’ll improve. I’m doing my damn best.

With work, consulting, podcasting, volunteering, and maintaining somewhat of a social life, I find my time disappears quickly.

Enough complaining from me. How are you?

Have a good week? Hit that reply and let me know something you’re working on. I’d love to check it out.

Let’s get into this week’s content:

Podcast Takeaways

(Time to read: 1:32 minutes)

Selling vs. education.

Unlike science vs. religion, they rarely exist together.

Salesy content is easier to sniff out than a few kids smoking reefer in the high school locker room. Educational content, on the other hand, comes from a place of caring and helps the audience make progress.

That’s a big difference.

Mark helps illustrates how to create better educational content, why being a generalist is advantageous, and how to be more authentic in marketing.

If you want to create marketing that isn’t boring and resonates with customers, listen to the conversation.

Takeaway #1: Marketing should create interest in solutions, not just promote products.

There's one P I hate more than others in the 4Ps of Marketing: promotion.

It's a greasy word. And direct promotion of your product rarely works. This is why you need to promote solutions or the jobs that your company solves for,

"The goal of marketing is to create interest in something that you didn't know that you needed." Great marketing creates behavior change in ways you didn't expect before interacting with it.

Mark emphasized that effective marketing educates people on how a product can benefit them, even if they don't realize they have that need.

Now what?

  • Understand and market the jobs (solutions) your company helps solve

  • Avoid direct promotion of your product–instead, educate and help them make progress

  • Workshop unique ideas to provide someone a non-obvious insight that changes their behavior

Takeaway #2: Relationships and trust drive marketing success.

Trust is the currency we marketers deal in. Without it, you can't do much.

And trust underlies relationships which drive much B2B and B2C buying.

"People buy from people at the end of the day, they don't really buy from companies."

I advocate for personal brands within companies to lead with content creation. Mark also shared how thought leadership content that provides value helps build relationships and trust with individual experts behind a brand.

What now?

  • Focus on helping and serving through marketing to build trust

  • Create a personal brand strategy for your team to build relationships online

  • Develop a rich content piece that leverages thought leadership with adequate distribution

Takeaway #3: Focus on educating, not selling, in your marketing channels.

This is marketing 101, especially in digital channels.

Help your customers make progress on what they care about. Strive to out-educate your competition. Give it all away!

"Treat most of your marketing channels as educational distribution channels, and not promotional channels." He argued that earning trust requires teaching first and pushing products second.

No instant pitches, no blatant promotion product posts, and no hard selling at after-hour parties.

Serve, educate, and care for your audience.

Let the rest fall where it may.

What now?

  • Begin creating more educational content and less promotional content on social

  • Develop a metric to measure the progress you are helping your audience make and measure against vanity metrics

Three quotes. Three books.

"Most of us want to take pride in our writing, when what is called for is humility.”

– Julia Cameron (Author of The Artist’s Way)

"You can want something and be 100% committed to that thing without needing it.”

– Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

"All true peace in this life comes through humble suffering rather than avoiding hardship. He who best understands how to suffer will possess the most peace.”

– Thomas Ā Kempis

Links to the three books quoted above:

Personal Note from Jo

(Time to read: 1:19 minutes)

“I can’t keep living like this.”

David and I were surprised at this individual’s statement and then when he asked for prayer.

We took Calvin’s hands and prayed for wisdom and guidance.

But let me take you to the start.

Every Tuesday, a group from our church hosts a dinner for those outside the homeless shelter.

It was our off week, yet I wanted to stop by and see a few familiar faces.

I was chatting with David, one of our volunteers, when I heard an individual cussing someone out. This is somewhat normal, so I didn’t do anything besides note who it was.

A few minutes later, this individual walked over and said, “I can’t keep living like this.”

He shared that he was struggling with alcoholism and how his family wanted him to pull it together.

“I shouldn’t be here. My family has it made. We got 300 acres in a few states.”

But he couldn’t break the habits that were keeping him here.

So we prayed for him.

As I spend more and more time with people experiencing homelessness, I realize it’s not about money.

It’s about mindsets, coping mechanisms, and the positive models we have in our life.

You’d struggle to find someone experiencing homelessness, not battling with mental illness.

All that to say, it’s more complicated than you think.

“Give them homes. Give them jobs.”

Only when they face and fix the underlying issues will the quick fixes help. And sadly, some have been traumatized so severely that it will take a lifetime to rehabilitate.

The same is true for you and me.

We want better. We want to live a life with more happiness and peace.

What do you need to face to move toward those better days?

– Jo (every second counts)

P.S. Here is what I’m working on: