011 Education as a form of marketing & lead generation

In this episode, I’m sharing one of my favorite long-term marketing strategies: using education to attract and convert clients. I’m not talking about teaching others how to do what you do (like I do with brand photographers)—I mean teaching your ideal clients something valuable that naturally leads them to book your services.

I’ll walk you through real examples from my own business, like how my course Brand Your Gram and a local workshop unintentionally turned into client bookings. I’ll also share tips on how you can apply this strategy to your own business, whether you’re a photographer, web designer, or creative entrepreneur. Plus, I’ll give you my best advice for creating engaging presentations, including how to use visuals effectively, keep your audience engaged, and why practice is key to building confidence.

If you’re ready to explore how education can be part of your marketing, tune in now! And don’t forget to join the conversation in the Profitable Creatives Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theprofitablecreatives

I’ll be hosting live recordings and Q&A sessions there, so I’d love to see you inside!

Chapters:

00:40 Using education for lead generation

01:32 My own example: Brand Your 'Gram course

03:50 Teaching workshops for client acquisition

06:33 3 tips for engaging presentations

Thanks for listening!

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Website: https://profitablecreatives.com/
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Chapters

• 1:20 Using education for lead generation
• 2:12 My own example: Brand Your 'Gram course
• 4:30 Teaching workshops for client acquisition
• 7:13 3 tips for engaging presentations

Transcript

0:40

Hello, and welcome back to the profitable creatives podcast. I am your host, Emily Kim. And today we're talking about using education as a form of marketing, and I'm not talking about. The type of education, where you teach other people, what you do. For example, I teach other brand photographers how to offer brand photography as a service that is a whole entirely different business model. What I am talking about today is. Using education to get more clients using it as a lead generation source. So for example, if you are a family photographer, teaching families, how to take photos of their kids is actually a real life example in my membership, the profitable creatives club, but I've been working through this with one of my members who is teaching a class. And again, the goal is to. Eventually book clients from that. So I'll give you a couple of examples from my own business and how this has worked out for me, way back in 2020 during the panini. Um, one of my projects ended up being, creating a course to teach business owners how to take brand photos with their phone, not with the fancy camera. I was not teaching other brand photographers how to do this at the time. Inevitably, I had a couple of brand photographers buy this course, which I thought was funny, but anyway, That was the course. It was called brand your gram. This was the very first course that I ever created. And it was my full intention, a hundred percent. Like I just want to sell this course and teach people how to take brand photos at home with their phone, because that's what people need right now. So I made this whole course based on some Instagram content that I had made it performed. Well, people really liked it. That's how I got this course idea. I made this course. I sold it. Um, the initial launch I had 20 people buy it, which was honestly pretty exciting for a first time course launch. I was like, I don't know, maybe. Five people. I had 20 people ended up buying it. Of those initial 20 people that bought it. Two of them within the next six months turned into brand photography clients, meaning they. Booked me. To take their own brand photos after taking the course, because essentially what happened was they went through it. They were like, Emily, this is really great. But I have since learned, I do not want to do this myself. I would rather just hire you to do it for me. And now thinking back also, Another student who took the course. She did go on to take her own photos, but, um, not six months later, but about two years later, she ended up hiring me to take her brand photos. So that what$147 course that's how much it costs when I first launched it, or maybe it was$97. It was something like that. Has led to. In 1200. Another 1200 plus another 2000. So what does that 1400 3400. Is that right? Whatever. Several thousand dollars of business from this course. And now keep in mind, this was not my intention at all. I did not launch this course thinking, oh yeah, I'm going to book brand photography clients from this. So there was no. Strategy behind this, it just happened naturally. Another time, um, that I have taught about brand photography. I co-hosted a meeting a workshop with a local networking group and I taught a workshop called. How do you remember what it was called? But it was about. What your headshot needs to be. In the new year, it was around new year's time. Around this time of year. And I just taught people, Hey, if you're running a business, Your traditional headshot that you maybe would've gotten in corporate is not going to cut it to market your own business. So I just went through my framework of here are the types of photos that you need for your business. And then of course, inevitably. It led to people saying, oh, well, can you do this for me? Can we have a conversation about this? And then I moved from California to Boston. So there was no direct result, but I did get leads from that is the important part. So, what I want to talk about today is how can you use this? If it's something that you're interested in, how can we use this to generate leads for your service based business? Now, this goes hand in hand with networking, which I have talked about on the podcast and on my YouTube channel, and literally everywhere. It's so important to get plugged into your local community. So how can we. Take this education and teach something that you like to teach, but use it to get clients. So the key to picking a topic to teach is. They obviously need to be interested in it. It needs to be related to the thing that you sell. Um, but maybe it's the DIY version of it. So if you are a website designer, maybe we're teaching a quake, DIY your homepage, um, put together your. A quick homepage template, yada yada. You know, you show them the outline and everything that needs to be on it. You give them general design tips and then. Uh, months, couple of years, maybe down the line, they're like, oh, Hey, so-and-so was super helpful. When I was putting together my first version of my website, now I'm ready to invest. So we, when we're teaching, we want it to be the intro level of the thing that you do. And then eventually the idea is you are so helpful to them and they really like learning from you that they eventually hire you to do that same thing. This is a long game. I do teach a lot of long-term marketing strategies. I mean, I'm in business for the long haul, so that is fine with me. But I have found this to be a really effective way. Because not only are you giving them something valuable upfront, but you were also establishing yourself as the authority on this. If you're teaching it, you know, your stuff, right. So that's the goal with this kind of market, um, this kind of education as a form of marketing. Now. I do want to jump into some tips on how to make a workshop or presentation a little bit more engaging. So this is kind of a high level overview of. How to put together, said presentation. A little bit more of my background. Um, I've talked about it before. I used to be a software engineer at apple where I swear half of my job was giving presentations and communicating very technical things to not technical people, which I imagine is a lot of what. We teach as creatives, it's technical in its own way. Right. But we need to be able to communicate it to someone who's like, I have no idea what this is. So how can I teach that? So I do like to have visual aids when I am teaching a workshop like slides, for example, tip number one. Do not put paragraphs on your slides. I see this happen a lot. Um, which you know is fine, but the key to having an engaging presentation and having people listen to you. Is less words, the less words that you can have on a slide, the better. I recommend like maybe one sentence maximum, but really what I prefer. Is no words on a slide. So my process, when I am teaching something in person, what I'll do is write out type out, whatever you use, whatever age you need to. I'll write everything out. That I want to teach. I will then transfer those words on two slides. Then what I do is think of, okay, what kind of icon or photo? So my brand photos are important. Um, what kind of icon or photo or clip art or whatever is going to visually communicate? The thing that I'm trying to talk about? And then I will use that as a cue of what I'm going to talk about. Another example of when I have done this, I recently gave my first keynote presentation at a conference called bringing up the pitch club. I used to photograph this event and. The last time I went, I was a keynote speaker. I didn't really have any words on the slides at all. They started out with words on them, but as I iterate through them, I am removing them. And basically what I do is this is like my memorization technique. If I don't, if I can't have my laptop in front of me, What I'll do is say, okay. I have three things I want to talk about on this slide. We'll start with the three words as bullet points. Then I'm like, okay, is there any way can turns into a photo that will then cue my brain to remember these are the three points that I want. And then the key is just practice it. Many times out loud, actually presented at full volume. And that is what burns it into my short-term memory so that I can be a more effective educator. I feel like where people get tripped up with this is they will try to memorize their entire script for the workshop word for word. And then if you miss a word, you're like, oh, oh no, what was I supposed to say? That's not how I like to do it. What I like to do is remember the general point that I'm going to say. And then if I forget it, it's not a big deal. Cause I'm like, well, I'll just communicate it in a different way. So it does require practice. I have given hundreds of presentations at this point at apple. And then before, when I was. Going through, um, business school. And even before that, in any case, That's how I like to memorize these things. My second tip for having more engaging presentation so that people remember you as the expert is to make it interactive. So pause, ask questions. Um, Give people homework or do something during the presentation where they will either engage with you or with each other. Something that I do a lot is Q and a. It's probably the easiest form of engagement. And then when I gave my keynote, something that I had people do was find an accountability, buddy, because I gave homework of like, oh, go do these prompts clear at your calendar, blah, blah, blah. And I told them, find an accountability buddy, and set a date in your calendar when you're going to check in with each other. And that took up three to five minutes. The only thing to keep in mind while you're doing this is crowd control. So depending on how many people you are teaching, and if it's in person versus virtual, there's a whole bunch of factors that go into this, but in a person, this is something that I can work on. Um, you need to make sure that you can regain control of the conversation after you've had them go do something. So I like to start with the Q and a, because you can pick who is answering questions, you can say, okay, we don't have any more time when you do something free for all. Like what I did go off. And find a partner. A little bit harder for me to reign back in the conversation. So the easiest form is a Q and a, or you don't even have to do a QA. You could just give homework, right. And you can have them, um, Give them an action item and then give them a date on when they need to do it. The final tip that I have, which I've kind of already talked about, but my final tip for using education as a form of marketing is to practice. It's going to take some time, but go through your entire workshop or presentation in full, at full volume. I have somebody sit in the audience, if you need to. The very first time I gave my presentation in college and I'm using college as an example, because that's where I've given the hundreds of presentations. I was so nervous. Even though I had practiced. It gets easier with time. But the nerves are still there. Anytime, present anywhere. I still get that rush of adrenaline, but over time it goes away. So the more you can practice it, the better it's going to be. Um, some random quick tips here and there. I generally do not recommend having things like index cards. Honestly, if you could write it on your hand, that might be a little bit better, but I don't recommend having like a scraped or index cards that you're looking at because it's a little bit distracting. Um, th this is such a nitpicky thing. You can have it if it's like your first presentation, but if you can go without it, I generally recommend doing so, even when I'm doing. Online like virtual workshops or virtual webinars. I try not to have notes because I don't want like my eyes to be darting back and forth. But I practice right. The very first three-day bootcamp that I gave, I gave the whole presentation. To myself, it took three hours because it was an hour a day for three days. So don't be afraid to practice. That's what's going to build your confidence. What is my motto? Iteration over perfection. So the more times you practice it. The better it is going to get. So to recap. To use education as a form of marketing. We want to make sure that we are teaching. An intro level of the thing that we do, what's going to draw people in and establish you as the authority. Then my general presentation tips again, don't put paragraphs on slides. We do not want walls of texts on slides. Make it interactive and then practice, practice, practice, practice, especially if you're nervous. A good way to practice stuff like this. You've probably heard me talk about them before. Face to camera video, stuff like this, where I am talking to the camera or the mic, depending on how you are listening to this. Get on Instagram stories. You can use Marco polo. It's a free app record video, voice notes to your friends. Just get comfy listening to your own boys and listening to yourself talk. And I promise it gets easier. So, if you have ideas for education as a form of marketing, I would love to hear from you in the profitable creatives Facebook group. If you are listening to the live recording. This is the first time I'm doing it inside of the profitable creative space. But group now you couldn't drop questions in the comments. I am going to work on scheduling this. So it's more of like a weekly thing. And. It will go from there. So. If you're listening on a podcast app, head to the profitable, greatest Facebook group, it's going to be in the show notes and then keep an eye out for the next live recording, because what I'll do after I finish this podcast, recording is I will jump into Q and a. So that is all I have for this week. And I will see you in the next episode.