Do people really know what your business sells?
We assume they do and from my experience, this is a mighty dangerous assumption.
In a world overflowing with noise, confusion, and over complication, clarity is your most powerful marketing tool. Yet most businesses make one fatal mistake, they assume people already know what they do. The truth is, they don’t. And it’s not their job to know, it’s ours to teach them.
Education is the foundation of all effective marketing. It’s how we build understanding, trust, and in most instances value. When you fail to educate, you leave room for misunderstanding, and in today’s cluttered world, that means invisibility. If customers can’t figure out what you do quickly, they move on.
A lack of education makes it easy for people to say “NO”. Don’t make it easy for them. The brands that thrive are the ones that take every opportunity to educate and not by lecturing, but by showing, explaining, and effective storytelling.
Marketing isn’t about shouting louder, it’s about teaching smarter. Every post, every client conversation is a chance to educate, to make what you do crystal clear, relatable, and relevant. When you make education a core part of your marketing, everything else gets easier.
Here are 10 strategies that form the backbone of what I teach my clients about educating:
1. Be Crystal Clear on What You Actually Do
Most people think they’re clear until they try to explain it. Use plain language, ditch the jargon. If a 12-year-old can’t explain what you do after hearing you, you’re not clear enough. If you can’t explain what you do in this simplistic a manner, you’re not crystal clear – and of course this means being able to explain what makes you different as much as what you actually do.
2. Don’t Try to Sell Everything in One Go
Simplicity sells. Focus on one idea, one offer, or one transformation at a time. Overloading people with too many options only creates hesitation, not action. And once again, this over complication makes it easy for potential customers to say “NO” simply because it’s too hard to figure out what you are selling or more specifically what’s the best option for them.
3. Explain Who You Get the Best Results For
Be brave enough to narrow your audience by getting clear on you actually get the best results for. When you clearly define who you’re built to help, those people will instantly recognise themselves in your message and ideally stop getting the wrong people wasting your time and theirs.
4. Educate Through Examples, Stories, and Case Studies
Teaching others what you actually do is often best done through storytelling. Show, more than you tell. Let real experiences do the heavy lifting. They make your message relatable and easy to understand. Make it about the customers you’ve got the best results for, the problems you’ve solved, the challenges overcome.
5. Teach Others How to Sell You
If you want to increase your “word of mouth” referrals – from both happy customers as well as via your professional network, teach them how to sell you but teaching them what you actually do, what makes you different, whom you get the best results for, how to get started and so on. When it comes to referrals, most people are lousy at giving great referrals simply because they haven’t been shown how to sell a business well.
6. Repeat Your Message Until It’s Remembered
You’ll get tired of your message long before your audience truly understands it. Keep repeating, refining, and reinforcing and remember, it’s out job to educate and teach potential clients what we do, it’s not their job to know.
7. Explain How People Can Work With You
Make the path clear and simple. Spell out what happens first, what comes next, and what outcomes they can expect. This is one of the most commonly overlooked business development explanations that makes it easy for people to say “NO” and move on.
8. Be Clear on Where to Start
Most people don’t move forward because they don’t know the first step. Give them a clear, low-risk way to engage such as a starter product, a call, a download, or a conversation. This is the beginning of their road ahead with you – don’t put obstacles in the way.
9. Industry by Industry Content Gets More Cut-Through
Generic messages don’t land anymore. Tailor your messages and content to speak directly to specific industry sectors or audience segment. The more relevant your examples, the greater the impact and once again, the more opportunity to educate a particular market or industry about what it is you can do to help them.
10. Educate, Educate, Educate
Never assume people know. Every post, email, presentation, and meeting is a chance to teach people more about what you do, what makes you unique and how they can buy you. One post doesn’t educate, it has to be an ongoing business development practice.
If you want people to buy from you, refer you, or remember you, don’t assume they know what you do, assume they don’t, then teach them.
Cheers,
Andrew
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