As a business analyst, I have always strived to create value.
In the entrepreneur world, I am inundated with information about sales. Different ways of convincing prospective clients to buy. The best layout for landing pages, the best words to use. The idea that it is your duty to do everything you can to convince your prospective clients to buy your product.
Sales do not resonate with me personally at all.
Even content marketing is focused on what content and what keywords to use to help funnel your clients towards your products.
My business partner Nyssa introduced me to another term: Educational marketing.
This term completely resonates with me. For me, it makes sales secondary. You are not creating content to sell a product, you are creating content to educate your audience, you are creating content to give them the value that they can use. This type of content is lasting, it is the type of content you can be proud of.
With this mindset, if you are selling product A and for a part of your audience product B is a better fit then your educational marketing content will guide those people in your audience to buy product B. You might think it is counter-intuitive to tell your audience to go to a competitor but think of the amount of trust you are creating when you tell prospective clients this information.
If you think this means you lose a client, then you have a scarcity mindset. You are thinking in terms of a sale rather than the long term of your business, When there is a product fit with that client, he will be first in line to buy from you. Have the mindset of creating something of value and then helping people connect with what is valuable for them. Once you start doing that, then others will do it as well and will lead people towards the value you create.
And oh, by the way, this type of content will build trust in you and your expertise and so will naturally lead to working with prospective clients.