Why you should give away all of your secrets...

I can't remember the quote verbatim, but one of the most profound ideas that I have heard from Gary Vaynerchuck in one of his videos, is that you should be doing everything in your power as a content marketer to educate your potential customers to the point where they DO NOT NEED to purchase your product or service.

Now I know this concept sounds very counter intuitive, but hear me out. It actually makes complete sense from a tactical perspective.

Let's think about the opposite of this, the status quo if you will. If you are like most marketers these days, usually you create a bunch of content that says how awesome your product is, how valuable your service is, why you do it better than your competitors, etc...

Let's be realistic about the outcomes that occur when people consume that content. Be it a video, blog post, downloadable offer, or some form of audio...

1 of 2 things are going to happen...

1. A small amount of people are going to go "sounds great I will buy".
2. The vast majority of people that consume it will ignore it, take no action, not need your product / service, or just not be convinced enough to make a purchase.

That's just the reality of marketing... And that is OK.

If you take the approach as a marketer of "How can I educate this person enough so they can accomplish their goals and overcome their challenges on their OWN, WITHOUT purchasing our product or service." You dramatically change the potential outcomes of someone consuming your content. In this case, one of the following outcomes will occur...

1. Yes, the majority of folks will still fall off, like the #2 outcome above, thats just the nature of marketing. That is again, totally okay, don't waste mental energy dwelling on this.
2. But some folks will actually take your advice, and deploy the methods/strategies that you taught them, and achieve that goal, or overcome that challenge. Keep in mind they are doing this without paying you a cent. When you help someone achieve that goal, or overcome that challenge without asking for anything in return, you inject value and instill a ton of TRUST in them, AND they see you as a trusted advisor / expert on the subject matter. The value you EXTRACT from that individual, is that you are creating a promoter of your thought leadership and content. Which is a POWERFUL asset to have. Just like a promoter of your product/service, a promoter of your content, really helps you in the Attract phase of the Inbound Methodology. That person likely has people in their network with similar goals and challenges. If you were the one that helps them through a struggle they are that much more likely to recommend/promote your content and advice to others. These folks will either do the same thing, or become the following outcome...
3. The other outcome will be that someone will ATTEMPT to achieve their goal, or overcome their challenge using the tools and knowledge you armed them with, and get to a point where it just becomes too hard to do it on their own. They will eventually come to the conclusion that they don't have the bandwidth, or expertise to execute on the path you laid out, and make the decision to hire someone or buy something to achieve that goal or overcome that challenge. And who better to hire and/or buy from than the trusted resource that has already proven to be an expert in the space where they are seeing the pain.

People don't buy from people they like. People buy from people they trust. Don't get it twisted.

Your marketing is ALREADY not getting everyone to buy from you. So there is no reason you should not try to at least leverage the power of some of those folks to help you attract more and to build your trusted advisor status.

Here is the other thing to consider. IF YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS, YOUR COMPETITOR EVENTUALLY WILL, and at that point you have already lost. You've got a great opportunity now to do it better than them.

Here's hoping this helps you change your mindset a bit about content creation. Be transparent, educate, inspire, help people, be honest, try to make your content have a net positive impact on your potential customer community. Don't hold back the good stuff because you want to make money.