Here’s a dirty little digital marketing secret: teaching is not how to get people to buy your product.
Plenty of digital marketing gurus say, “You have to teach like crazy. You have to run webinars and challenges. You have to teach potential customers so they get a win. Then, and only then, they’ll want to buy more.”
How many of us have heard that?
And believed it?
And built entire businesses around this model?
Here’s how that works out in real life, as you’ve probably seen for yourself.
Little Wins Do Not Translate to Sales
When you give people a “little win” one of two things usually happens:
- They take that free little win and think, “Okay, that’s it, this is all I need” and they don’t buy your offer.
- They take that free little win and then assume they can figure out the rest for themselves and they don’t buy your offer.
Either way, they don’t buy.
In both cases, you may be giving away some of your best material for a lower price, hoping the customer will buy your higher ticket item.
You’ve also lost their peak excitement by the time they get their little win. The win may have energized them a bit, but it didn’t energize them for your offer, per se. It energized them to keep going or to feel like they checked something off their to-do list and can keep on keeping on for a bit.
In the first scenario, the customer may truly believe they have everything they need. They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know how great your main offer is and may not understand the value of it. Why do they need more if they’re in an ok place?
In the second scenario, they get just enough to keep going. Maybe they’ll hit another speed bump down the road, but at that point your offer is a thing of the past.
Teaching Doesn’t Get Anyone Excited
Why is it that these little wins don’t translate to sales?
Because teaching doesn’t get people clamoring to learn more.
Remember back to being in school, sitting at those little desks. Was “excited” how you felt every day? When they taught you something you were dying for more?
What in about college, where you actually chose what you wanted to learn about? Were you dying for more then?
Okay, what about courses you have purchased? Do you find yourself dying to get to the next module?
No.
Because teaching doesn’t make people want to purchase. Learning doesn’t lead to buying.
Breakthroughs Lead to Buying
What does lead to buying are breakthroughs.
Completely changing how people think about things, cracking their minds open in the best possible way, that’s what builds trust in your expertise. That’s what gets people wanting to hear more from you.
And that’s what gets them to purchase.
Teaching is for within your course or your program—where you can guide them along and encourage and support them to keep up with that learning.
Learning makes people go, “Huh, interesting. Good to know.”
Breakthroughs make people go, “Oh, WOW!” They make people look at the world differently, they give people hope where they might have previously struggled, and they get people clamoring to hear more from you.
And then, when you combine those breakthroughs with getting the timing and the structure and the messaging right—and you automate it—that’s when your business gets a breakthrough.
Your Turn!
What tactics are you using to get people to buy your product and is teaching one of them? Share in the comments below!