How to Develop Educational Content That Inspires Your Audience to Buy

Educational content brings people to your business when they are looking to solve a problem. It’s therefore a great way for your target audience to initially get to know, like and trust you.

Done well, educational content allows you to showcase your knowledge and expertise in a way that demonstrates to your target audience you know what you’re talking about better than anyone else in your space. It provides a compelling reason why they should work with you, which in turn makes your eventual sales pitch much easier.

Many people think of educational content as being step-by-step tutorials. But while tutorials are certainly one way to attract your target audience, because they’re so easy to create there are any number of online tutorials available for just about any subject these days. That’s why it’s hard to stand out from the crowd with tutorials.

In addition, while people will appreciate the information in a tutorial, it won’t inspire them to buy.

Sharing your perspective about your target audience’s problems and how they can best solve them will grab their attention and get your audience thinking about how working with you could benefit them.

So instead of a tutorial, why not create content that diagnoses your target audience’s symptoms to identify their problem and explain how to fix it? By showing people you understand exactly what they’re experiencing, they’ll feel confident that you know what their problem is and that you can indeed fix it for them.

Plus, you’ll make them feel like you know them better than your competition does, which will up your credibility, and your likeability, immensely.

The Diagnostic Approach to Developing Educational Content

Here are a couple of diagnostic approaches for developing educational content.

Approach #1:

“If you’re experiencing A, then here’s why that could be the case and what you can do about it.”

Here’s an example of how I might use this approach when speaking to entrepreneurs and small business owners struggling to create engaging content:

If you’re posting a ton of content but not attracting any leads, then it’s possible your content is not relevant to your target audience. Here are three steps you can take to immediately solve this problem.

Approach #2:

“If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, then it’s likely your problem is this.”

After making this statement, you would list several symptoms and then define the problem. By listing multiple examples, you’ll make your content relevant to more people, because you’re telling them they only need to have one of these symptoms for your content to be applicable to them.

Here’s an example of how I might use this approach with my target audience:

If you’re posting a ton of content and any of the following apply, it could be a sign of a much deeper problem.

• Low engagement, where the majority of your posts have few, or maybe even zero, likes, comments and shares.

• Low conversion rates, where you may be getting decent traffic, but no one is buying.

• Stagnant audience growth, where your number of followers is not growing and perhaps even dropping.

These symptoms are usually signs of a much deeper problem – posting content that’s not relevant to your target audience. It may be great content, but if it doesn’t resonate with them then it won’t attract and retain the type of followers you need to sustain or grow your business.

Now I can introduce my solution to the problem and how it will resolve their symptoms.

Implementing the Diagnostic Approach For Your Business

When developing educational content in this format, a helpful exercise is to think about all the problems your offer solves for people and make a detailed list.

Comparing this list to the questions your target audience is asking will provide inspiration for how to answer your audience’s questions from your unique perspective.

It may also give you additional insight into questions your audience should be asking but isn’t.

The Bottom Line

Educational content is an important part of your overall content plan. Not only will it attract potential buyers into your content ecosystem, when done right it will also presell your credibility and authority and get people excited about working with you. Then when you do present your offer, minimal selling, if any, will be required.

When developing educational content, taking a diagnostic approach enables you to showcase your knowledge and experience in a way that gets your audience thinking about how working with you could benefit them and inspires them to buy.