Educational and thought leadership marketing campaigns can help you attract loyal customers.
Today, we’re explaining how those campaigns work.
We’re using the two terms interchangeably. Educational and thought leadership campaigns are similar. Neither of them are sales-focused. You’re not talking about your company or your brand, services or products. The biggest difference between the two is that educational campaigns really speak for themselves – their purpose is to educate. Thought leadership campaigns are more innovative. You’re sharing new ideas and new ways of doing things. Maybe you have some new research to introduce or you’re sharing some results from a survey you’ve conducted.
Both of these marketing campaigns are educational, and what you really need to know is that unlike other marketing campaigns, they are not sales focused.
The Purpose of Educational Marketing Campaigns
The whole point of these campaigns is to share information with prospects and clients to earn their trust. You know your clients and the questions they ask. An educational marketing campaign is your opportunity to tailor your content in a way that answers those questions.
It allows you to earn trust.
This type of campaign typically takes longer to show results. That’s because you’re not selling – you’re educating. It’s going to take a little bit longer to establish a relationship. But, these people you reach will remember you. They’ll come back to you, and eventually, they’ll want to do business with you.
Tracking and Measuring Educational Campaigns
To run this type of campaign effectively, you need to have the tools in place to track and measure results.
Three things are essential:
- You need an email marketing platform like MailChimp. This will help you build the emails you’ll be sending. You can see who received them, who opened them, and what happened next.
- You need a CRM like LeadSimple. This allows you to continue following up after your initial email.
- You need a platform for a landing page. This will provide additional information to your visitors and allow you to track your conversion rate.
Establishing a Nurture Campaign from Educational Marketing Content
The process of nurturing these leads doesn’t have to be complex.
You’ll send out the first email and the prospect will click on your link, and it will send them to a landing page. You need to have a form on there. It can be a simple form letting you know that this potential client is interested in learning more.
They’ll fill out the form, and you’ll gather their information in your CRM and your email marketing platform.
What will you do with that?
You’ll put them into a nurture campaign. Don’t jump into a hard sale just because they filled out your form. Remember – this is not a sales pitch. Send them educational content once a week or every other week. After five or six emails, if they haven’t unsubscribed, you’re making progress. You can start to introduce some sales language and spin your content a bit. Mention the content you sent them a few weeks ago and explain how you can help them solve their property management problems.
These platforms are essential. They’ll help you track your success from start to finish and tell you who converted from your educational marketing campaign.
It may take months to generate results. That’s okay, because the clients you win will be very loyal to you. They’ll be your best clients because the relationship is built on trust and not on sales. These are the people we like to call your super fans. You educated them and made them more successful. They’ll want to talk about you and tell other people what you did for them.
If you have any questions about educational or thought leadership campaigns, please contact us at Fourandhalf. We have all the tools you’ll need to run a campaign that educates people and brings them into your property management business.
