Are you actually struggling to get more clients or are you busy doing things that look like marketing? Posting, boosting, chasing leads, tweaking ads, following up, and staying visible. It takes a lot of work. So let's pause for a sec. If all that effort was working, would you still be worrying about where your next client was coming from? Here's the ship that most business owners miss. Clients are not looking for another sell. They're looking for someone who actually understands their problem and before their first conversation with you even begins. Educational content does that job consistently and at scale. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through five unignorable facts that show exactly how much money leaks out of your business when you're not educating your market. Not theory, not hype, real numbers that explain why some businesses attract clients effortlessly and others keep chasing them. Listen closely because I'm pretty sure one of these will hit home closer than you expect. So what are these five unignorable facts that are going to make you realize that you've been doing it completely wrong? Well, I'm pretty sure some of them you'll realize you've probably tried before or you've done it again, but you never realize maybe the implications of the work. I'm a strong believer that education sells. And I've proven that time and time again. And with the development of AI, as a speaker, the content on your website is being indexed, and AI is looking for answers for things even more than the search engines did. And the search engines are certainly using a lot more AI content as well. So answering questions and creating educational content is going to be absolutely essential for you as you move forward. One of the first facts is you're spending six times more than necessary. Traditional advertising and cold outreach cost 62% more than educational content marketing. And yet it delivers three times less leads. You're literally throwing money away while your competitors educate their way into your customers. It's a pretty amazing fact when you think about it. Cold outreach is not working like it used to, and neither's advertising. We see examples of this every day. I'm not saying they don't work, I'm saying they're not working as well as they used to. And it costs you 62% more to actually do that outreach. And the worst bit is that you're not really educating anyone to buy. So depending on where they are in the buying cycle, they might only be looking for some information. Then they find you and they learn something and they get interested and they dig a little bit further and eventually they buy from you. Most people, when they start out looking for a product or service, are come in where they're doing research. And if you don't remember that, if you're not creating content to take advantage of that and educate them around that, you're going to lose them if you go straight to the sale. And that is why that traditional advertising and cold outreach aren't working as well as they used to. So you need to think more about the cycle that you, just every other buyer, goes through before you actually hand over your hard-earned cash. As a speaker, it sounds simple. We get on stage, we speak, it's all good. But there's a whole lot more to speakers' businesses. There is only such a small percentage of speakers whose businesses are completely evolving around the stage. And I've talked about this plenty of times in the podcast, but most speakers' businesses are probably 70 to 80 percent other business and 20% speaking. So you need to get better at getting leads. Now getting them from stage is one thing, but you can't rely on that. We've had the example of COVID where we the stages were closed down. So we need to make sure that we are getting them. And so we want to get the best results out of our advertising. So instead of using paid advertising, creating really good educational content is a much better way to go. Number two, 74% of buyers choose your competitor before you even know they exist. Today's buyers complete 74% of their decision journey before ever contacting a sales rep. If you're not educating them during their research phase with valuable content, just like I've talked about in the previous step, you're invisible when it actually matters most. I don't know about you, but I know pretty well everything about a product before I go and buy it. I've looked at the reviews, I've watched videos on YouTube, I've read every article about it. I want to make sure it's right because these days there's so many lousy products around, so many fake products around, that I want to make sure the one I'm buying is the best quality. And it doesn't matter how much research you do, you can still get that role. So you remember your buyers are going through the same thing. They want to get the best service, they want to see examples of your work. That might be the case for some people, but for most people, they're going to be one of a group of speakers that I put up as an option. And then the speaker book is going to book them based on a whole range of things. But whoever does the initial research is going to be going to your site to look at that. And they're going to be looking at are you a good fit to educate our audience? Because let's face it, that's why you're there. Now, whether that educating is educating them to be motivated or educating them about a particular topic doesn't make any difference. You're educating. And that's what we do. So if 74% of buyers choose your competitor before you even know they exist, that means there's a heck of a lot of people right there, out there now, looking for what it is you do or sell. And if you're not producing good content that answers great questions, it gets picked up by the search engines and the AI and draws people to you and your other content that you have on your website, your YouTube channel, your Instagram, whatever, then you're missing a major proportion of your market. A friend of mine used to always say, you don't know what you don't know. And it's so true. You don't even know they're there. So how can you be worried about them? On the other hand, we often talk about the people who know you really well, the people know of you, the people that have heard your name mentioned, and the people don't even know you exist. And the biggest proportion of those four audiences is actually the people who don't even know you exist. And certainly they fall into that 74% realm. Number three, you're losing $168 billion in plain sight. Well, it sounds like more money than I would lose because there's certainly more money than I make. But brands lose $168 billion annually to customer attrition with 41% leaving due to poor follow-up. Educational content continues to nurture your relationships with previous clients automatically, turning your one-time buyers into loyal buyers for life. So it's often said that the easiest thing to do is sell to someone who's bought from you before. And that's true if you've done a good job. But it's really hard to continue to find new buyers. We all know that. So don't lose that money by letting people go. And the best way to keep them in your funnel, in your realm, in your sphere of influence, is to educate them and get them to be listening to your podcast, get them to be watching your videos, get them to be listening to your other content to read your newsletter or come to your website regularly. Whatever it is, you need to be continuing the educational process. Now, the key thing is here, it's more than just writing great articles and doing long videos. You also want short chunks of content that people consume every day, maybe multiple times. You know how it is. You open up Instagram, you scroll the reels, and you're consuming those in 10 second chunks or TikTok. And so you want to be looking at doing that as well. You want people consuming you on a regular basis throughout a day, but you don't expect them to sit down for an hour and watch. People just don't do that anymore. Podcasts are great because you can listen to them while you're out walking, while you're riding, while you're driving your car. So you do have your audience for a little bit longer. But realistically, most people's attention spans pretty well limited to 10 minutes about one particular topic. So don't push the length of the content, push the regularity and the amount of content you're putting out there. It's that old story when I used to talk to people about SEO all the time. I used to say it's like fishing. When you fish, you go down there, you throw one line in the water, and you wait for fish to jump on. Well, that's great. But the people who fish every day to eat have many lines in the water, and the people that fish professionally use nets because they catch lots of fish at once. Content creation is a huge part of SEO. It's all about putting more hooks in the water, more places for people to find you, to bite on your content, and then come back and join you. And then you can educate them into buying from you. Number four, 87% of your market trusts educators, not sellers. Let's face it, we all hate to be sold to. We like to buy things, but we don't like to be sold to. The people that sell more educate people. And the best salespeople are really good educators. I started my life, my first real job was selling shoes. And I quickly learned that educating the person buying the shoes was the most important thing. For example, women were a large percentage of the business that I worked at. And if I was talking about a particular shoe, I could say, well, we've got the shoe, but it comes in three different heel sizes. Now, some women like a high heel, some women like a flat. Knowing that up front makes them more interested in it. The price is less important because now they're like, well, actually, that gives me some options. I really like the colour, I really like the style, and now I can get one for like work during the day or night when I go out and have the same shoe that I really think fits me well and is comfortable. So educating people is such an important part of selling. 87% of B2B buyers, so business-to-business buyers, say educational content makes them trust a company more. Meanwhile, many people are still pitching features instead of teaching solutions, teaching people about the product and how it will help them, how it will benefit them. The businesses that are winning today are the ones positioning themselves as teachers, not sellers. As I said in my example about the shoes, you sell a lot more shoes when you educate people about them. There's so much more to learn. It's leather, so it breathes better than plastic. So while the plastic might look great, it might not be great in the hot conditions here in Australia. Your feet will sweat and that'll be very uncomfortable. Again, the best businesses educate. And because you're a speaker, because you're in the business of educating people, that should be quite easy for you. The problem is we get caught up in our services and we don't educate people in how that service is really going to help them. A recent service that I've launched helps people tell their brand story. I sit down with you for an hour and interview you, and then using software, I create a 100-page report all about you, your brand, your target market, phrases you can use, all this information. It's an amazing product, and it will tell you everything you need to actually improve the messaging through about how unique you are as a business or as a speaker. But unless I educate you and tell you how this could change the world, okay? For you, I give you the potential to create unlimited content with AI based off this document, this brand DNA document that I create for you. Most people creating AI content on the fly and they're just putting bits in and getting bits out. This document makes it possible to make everything you produce on AI sound exactly like you, not an AI. So it's up to me to educate people on that product if I want to sell that. And it's no different in your business. I'm sure if you look around and think about what you've got and how you're selling it, think about am I really educating people about how this is going to help them? What value will it bring to them? Unless you're doing that, if you're just going, oh, I got to get that product up, they put it up and just hope that people buy it. You need to do better. You're going to get squashed because of so many things happening in the market, so many options. The internet was big before, now it's big and it's messy. It's something like 60% of the internet now is actually garbage and spam. So you're trying to stand out amongst all of that. And of course, there's trying to stand out in front of a room full of people as well. So these things apply just as much when you're in front of live people as it does when you're online or writing content to people from magazines or whatever it happens to be. Number five, your busy work is killing your business. You spend hours creating one post while competitors generate a hundred plus pieces from a single one-hour interview using AI automation. Okay, you're working harder, they're working smarter, and capturing your market share while you sleep. So it's certainly really important that you take advantages of changes in the market. Otherwise, you're going to get eaten alive by your competitors. Using AI is obviously one thing that I totally recommend for speakers. But as I said, if you're just creating random pieces of content using AI, it's going to look like random pieces of content. There's more to it than that. And using something like the brand DNA document that I've created will actually help you create fantastic educational content on an ongoing basis in your own words, even though the AI is writing it. So busy work is another thing that makes life really difficult when it comes to getting content out there. You're not just producing content, you're producing educational content. So don't just be busy creating stuff. Be really targeted. Think about why I am creating this? Who am I creating this for? And how is it going to help them? What is the value that I'm bringing here? Because it is so, so important that you continue that educational journey for them to the point where they want to buy from you. Because, well, that's marketing, isn't it? The brutal truth is if you're not systemically educating your market, you're systemically excluded from buying decisions. Every day you delay is another day your competitors become the trusted authorities that your prospects will turn to first. So think about that. Just to revive those five, you're spending six times more than necessary to get leads. 74% of buyers choose your competitor before you even know they exist. You're losing $168 billion due to poor follow-up. 87% of your market trusts educators, not sellers. And your busy work, not focusing in on education, is killing your business. Well, thanks for listening to the Profitable Speaking podcast this week with me, Brad Howe. If today's episode made you think differently about your speaking business, hit subscribe and share it with another speaker and leave a review. It helps me help more speakers. And don't forget to check out my books on Amazon. Microcourse Profits and AI Powered Profits, they're there to help you grow faster, earn more, and stay relevant in a really fast changing world. I'll catch you in the next episode.