What’s knowledge marketing? How does it work? Why is it so effective?
Here’s an analogy.
Imagine you’re an experienced chef. You take a freshly-baked apple pie from a country oven and set it on a second floor windowsill, where its aroma wafts away on the breeze and attracts the attention of folks walking by.
The pie, of course, is your product. Its aroma is the essence of your knowledge, distributed via a ubiquitous medium—air, or the Internet—that’s easily accessible to all. The pie has a price that customers must pay. But its aroma is free.
Pretty soon, people are lining up for a sniff. When they find out how good your apple pie smells, and especially that the aroma is free, they make plans to come back the next day for another whiff.
As the days go by, and people in the community smell that wonderful aroma again and again, they begin to respect your culinary skills. They grow to admire your hand-picked ingredients. After more time passes, they trust your abilities and make a nice mental note about your unselfish motives.
After all, what kind of person would let others smell such a sweet aroma and ask for nothing in return? You, that’s who.
Remember, the aroma represents your knowledge, being disseminated to all, via the Internet, for free.
Here’s how: You write about pie-making every week and post the new articles on your website and your blog. You put up an informative Webinar about the origins of apple pie. You make a Podcast of a seminar you hosted, bringing together bakers from the top restaurants in Europe. You post a helpful video showing how to roll out a perfect pie crust.
People discover your website and come back to it regularly to see what else you’ve put on there. They like it there, because it’s inviting.
They have spirited discussions, not about your brand or your product, but about the issues that matter most to them, with other people on your website.
Other people who are looking for information about pies, and pie-making, and apples, and baking, discover the knowledge you’re releasing every week.
They become aware of your name and begin to search for it each time they’re looking for information. They begin to associate your name with value. If your name is attached to the knowledge, they give it more credibility. Why? You care. You’re an unselfish expert. You’re a knowledgeable source of useful stuff.
They see your business as an authority. Momentum builds.
Soon they begin to tell their friends and associates about how good your pie smells. They even tell complete strangers!
People write positive things about your pie and put links to your pie website on their blogs. Even better, they rave about the aroma of your pie in the comments they leave on your competitor’s pie-making blog. (Apparently, his pie has no aroma! It just sits there waiting, locked away under glass, with a big price tag on it.)
That’s not all. People Twitter ecstatically about your pie. They take scrumptious-looking pictures of it and put them on Flickr. They tell their Facebook friends. They start a group on LinkedIn, for people who love apple pie, and it ignites a vigorous discussion. Someone recommends yours, under the heading “The Most Delicious Apple Pie You’ve Never Tasted”.
Then you really strike gold. A guy straps on stilts so he’ll be tall enough to get up there closer to your pie, where he can get a better sniff of it. He attracts attention, and someone else makes a video, and your pie ends up on YouTube.
A week later, six million people know about your pie. A lot of them would like to try a piece.
And no one has even tasted it yet.
People tell you that they wouldn’t mind paying for pie this good. In exchange for an apple pie recipe, they happily provide you with their email address. They just invited you into their world.
You send them an email with a link in it to a free eBook about a whole new kind of apple. It demonstrates to your prospects that you really know your stuff. Impressed, they subscribe to your e-newsletter, and to your blog via RSS, so they won’t miss anything you’re doing.
Eventually, some of them give you their names and contact information and ask you to call. They have a few more questions. They’d like to know more about your pie before they buy it. Your sales team calls and sets up a meeting.
A salesperson goes to see them. He comes back and says the meeting was very interesting.
You ask him what ‘interesting’ means.
He tells you that he didn’t just sell them a piece of your pie, or even a whole pie. He did better than that. He also sold them one of your ovens. Top of the line. And three years of cooking lessons. And a franchise. And a chef’s outfit.
One more thing. He gave them a funny chef’s hat, for free. The one with a picture on it of a dancing pig with an apple in its mouth. The pig is wearing a T-shirt with your logo on it.
That night, you turn on your TV. They show a celebrity in the stands at a baseball game. As the camera zooms in, you realize that she’s wearing your hat. The announcer mentions your logo.
Ten minutes later, you see the celebrity again, talking with President of the United States, who is at the game to throw out the first pitch.
The celebrity takes off her hat, the one with the dancing pig, the one with your logo on it, and puts it on the President’s head. He smiles that smile he has. Ten seconds later, it’s on YouTube.
Next morning, you ramp up production, hire more salespeople, and put another freshly-baked pie on the windowsill, where its aroma wafts away gently on the breeze, freely distributed, to attract the attention of people walking by.
People want to know stuff. You put it out there. They pull it in. After a while, some of them grow to respect, admire and trust you enough to buy what you sell.
That’s knowledge marketing.
Related articles from BrainRider:
- B2B Marketing Content: 3 categories of high-yield marketing content that target different stages in the B2B decision process
- B2B Marketing: How To Understand What Your Customer Wants To Know
- B2B Marketing Content: 15 types of high yield marketing content
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