EPISODE 09

Will giving away too much content hurt your sales?

Content is a powerful way to build trust, but how much should you hold back, and, do you ever wonder if you’re just adding to the noise?

The answers here are not black and white.

Tune in to hear my perspective, plus tips on how to make your educational content stand out.

show transcript

Hey, everyone. Let’s talk about something that concerns a lot of business owners. How much should we give away for free in our content? The fear here is, if I give too much, will people buy my products and services? And there’s a hesitation as well.

You may be wondering, how do I stand out if everyone is giving the same tips and information? And isn’t that just adding to the noise? And yet we know that providing helpful content and insightful advice makes such a difference because it builds so much trust. And trust is needed for people to feel safe to buy. So should you hold back or give it all away?

The answer isn’t black and white. Now I am a keen observer and curious learner, so I’ve been looking at this conversation and the practices that have evolved here over the past seven and a half years that I’ve been a business owner and since I began my career in the late nineties. The advice here ranges from give it all away to give nothing away to give people some of the answers to their problems, the high level principles, hints, and broad strokes, but don’t tell them exactly how to solve their problem or achieve their goal. Now for years we saw tons of webinars that would just give you a little bit. These bait and switch webinars.

They reel you in with the promise of value, with the promise of how to do something, and then they spend the first thirty minutes telling you all about themselves and describing your problems, goals, and situation in minute detail before they even address the topic of the webinar. They give you a few broad strokes, a little bit of service level value before launching into a long winded sales pitch. And then you feel like, yeah, I’ve just lost an hour of my life here. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Am I right?

So that tactic got overdone and oversaturated. And at this point, some people are still doing it, but I think the public is over it. It’s manipulative, and it’s not a good look. And ultimately, not effective because you got someone interested, and then you just pissed them off and made them really frustrated, so you damage the relationship. As a side note here, I absolutely think that there is an ethical way to deliver a webinar, workshop, or master class that includes a mention of your offer while delivering real value.

And it’s just about being brief and letting people know upfront when you describe the agenda that your presentation will include a mention of your offer at the end and how you can take the next step. You know, I think people don’t mind being sold to if it’s done in a transparent and ethical way. But back to this question of sharing the how. If you overshare, so to speak, is that a good idea? Well, let me ask you.

Have you ever hired a personal trainer or bought a fitness class? Have you ever worked with a nutritionist or paid to attend a cooking class? And why would you spend money on any of that stuff when you can just Google it? You can look up any recipe that you wanna cook. You can go to YouTube and get fitness classes and listen to advice from personal trainers.

You can Google or ask ChatGPT any question at all around nutrition. No. Years ago, I was struggling with a particular health issue, and I started googling it. I went way down the rabbit hole and actually started to get confused and and really upset because there was a lot of conflicting advice. I started watching this coach on YouTube who had dozens of videos on this particular topic.

He was giving away a ton of information. And with each video that I watched, I trusted him more and more. And eventually, I hired him to help me. His free content convinced me. So once we started working together, he then created a personalized plan for me, helped me to implement it, provided accountability, and answered any questions that I had along the way.

And all of that brought tremendous relief and results. You see, we live in an age of overwhelming information. Information is cheap. Right? We we want and need information, but we also want and need support.

We need help applying and implementing the information, sorting through the information. Not everyone wants to do, by the way, the labor of sorting through it all, evaluating it, and discerning it. When someone buys from you, they’re not just buying information. And let me say that one more time. When someone buys from you, they’re not just buying information, they’re buying an outcome, a transformation.

They’re buying an experience with you, a sparring partner, maybe the comfort of not doing it alone, the reassurance that they’re making the right choices, and they’re buying the hands on personalized implementation support. You are personalizing the information and strategies to their unique needs and situation. Now let’s imagine you want to design a house. So you buy the very best book out there on residential architectural design, a thousand page book of expert information and advice. You think you can implement that without support?

You know, it’s what’s easy for you is actually mind blowing to someone else. We forget that. Knowledge is one thing. Knowing how to apply it is another. One thing that kinda cracks me up when I’m scrolling social media is seeing other business and marketing coaches shouting at us to stop sharing tips and educational information.

First of all, many of them are kinda hypocrites because I do see them sharing educational information as one of their content types. Second, they’re they’re obviously trying to say something controversial to get attention without explaining the nuance. So the nuance is this. Beyond testimonials and case studies, educational insightful content is what builds trust. But on its own, it’s a little plain, kind of like a piece of toast without butter or jam or hagelslag, perhaps, for my Dutchies out there.

So here are four ways that you can add a little flavor to your educational content. Alright? Number one, sprinkle in your point of view, your take, your opinion. Be a thought leader and not just an educator. Number two, sprinkle in a story, your own story or a client story that relates to what you’re educating about.

Number three, sprinkle in the why. So not just how to address a problem, but why it happens or why it matters. And give people a window into your mind and heart so they can see how you think and feel about the problem. Number four, stir in some specificity. Try making your educational content hyper specific to one ideal client type or persona.

So for example, instead of seven ways to get healthy, how about seven ways for women to build endurance later in life? All of this will help you and your content stand out in the sea of noise. And remember, if even if the content of what you’re saying is similar to others out there, you are a unique human with a unique personality, voice, and way of saying things. When someone hears it from you, maybe it’s the first time they’ve ever heard it, or maybe it’s the first time it really resonates. Think of all the songwriters around the world who right now are sitting down with their guitar to write a love song, or the painters preparing to paint a still life, what would you tell them?

Don’t bother because it’s all been done before? Nah. So back to the central question of how much content to give away. There’s very little danger you are going to give too much away, but there are a few exceptions. Let’s say that you are a cat sitter and you’re providing tons of cat education and advice in your Instagram and blog.

That educational content is not the primary thing that you’re selling. The primary service that you’re selling is cat sitting. So give away as much information as you want. It will help your audience and build trust. Now let’s say that you’re an author of a book that teaches people how to take better care of their cat, and the book is the primary thing that you’re selling to make money in your business.

You could give away the first chapter as a sort of free lead magnet, but you wouldn’t want to give away seven out of 10 chapters if the book is your primary revenue source. Right? Same thing with an online course. You would want to hold some of that content back, the most critical pieces of information that are at the heart of the offer. That makes sense.

Right? Now let’s say that you’re running a three month group coaching program, and it provides a mix of content, coaching, and community. You wouldn’t want to give away 100% of the content, but certainly you can share some of it and some of the key principles. Only the people in the program will get the full package, including access to you and the other participants and all the content in one nice organized place. So ask yourself, what is the primary thing that I’m selling?

Is it content, or is it coaching, consulting, or some kind of service? That’s the tricky thing about content. Content can be part of your marketing strategy. It can also be the product you’re selling or both. Keep in mind, most people do not see 100% of the content you’re posting online.

So even if you did post everything, in theory, most people would not see it all. And, again, people still need support to apply and implement that information to their unique life, business, problem, or situation. Last month, I ran my confident and clear week long workshop where I gave away my goal setting and marketing strategy framework, along with a ton of marketing ideas that fit into the framework and trainings to guide people on how to put it all together. And guess what? People still needed my guidance to refine their individual plans.

So within the private community, people posted their plans and questions, and I provided detailed feedback. Like many of you, the service that I’m providing addresses a complex problem. Are you solving a complex problem in your business? Then you know there’s no way a few pieces of in-depth passive content will go all the way to solving it. In that week long workshop that I hosted, I did provide more content and more in-depth content.

But the big picture, you know, in the big picture, it’s like I provided a five minute trailer to the ninety minute movie. It’s highlighting some of the best bits of what I do and provide, but it’s certainly not the whole movie. And and a percentage of people people who see the trailer will get inspired to buy a ticket to see the entire movie, I e, my my full one on one coaching program, and some people won’t. And that’s okay too. Some of the content you provide for free in your social media posts and long form content, And then some of your content you provide for free, but only in exchange for someone’s email address.

So this is called gated content, and often that’s more in-depth content. And then finally, some of the content you provide at a low cost to serve as a kind of sample to give people an easy way to experience what it would be like to work with you before making a larger investment. So what content you decide to give away for free versus charge for, that is ultimately, of course, up to you as the CEO of your business. But what I wanna encourage you to do is give generously. Share more than you’re comfortable with.

You’ll find it attracts more people to buy, not less.

EXPLORE

Start Here
About
Work with Me
Client Love
Get in Touch
Free Resources

LET’S CONNECT