Sales through Education: CNCKing.com’s Secret Ingredient
From the very beginning, I decided to mix my passion for educating with design and later, CNC machines… a very different approach from my previous businesses. I call it the “Sales through Education” approach. Building a business that relies on direct sale is TOUGH, I did that for well over a decade, the only way to stand-out is to out-service, out-advertise and out-do your competition! The louder you are, the more you stand-out within the community you serve – I wanted to try something different with CNCKing.com – Educate without any sales messages!
No Sales Call
Have you noticed, from the very first video I ever made till the last, there isn’t any pricing, call to action (buy now) or any other outwardly “limited time offer” in ANY of my videos or website? Let’s look at one of the first videos I uploaded to YouTube – uploaded Jan 25, 2008!
Yeah, a few days to render in 2008 which would take under an hour today! Wow, have things changed!
What has stayed the same? Basically, a website address along the bottom… the music, better resolution etc. are all bonus but the “call to action” has always been, directly or indirectly, visit the url you see in the video. I KNEW that people would share my videos across the internet so branding them was a MUST and that’s how I’ve marketed exclusively over the past 5 years! I’m not loud, I’m interesting… and visit me for more information – I know my visitors are smart enough to visit a website that they see in a video. My call to action is the site, not the product.
Why educate and not sell?
In 2008, nobody was doing what I was and to a certain extent, that remains true today. If you are the only guy doing something, you don’t need to be loud, just need to be THERE! It’s like being the only guy in the world surrounded by millions of woman – even if you are missing an eye, 90 years old and are butt ugly… you’ll find a date no problem! This is why education is so effective, if you can create yourself as an authority figure within an industry… the visitors will come as will the interest in your products AUTOMATICALLY. Sales follow authority, so a hard sell approach isn’t needed – only outreach!
Behind the Products
Another thing I’ve been doing a lot of is with my own designs, showing the evolution of the design process behind the finished model.
I learn as much from these videos as people watching them – I see where I could have saved time and by extension, produce additional material and knowledge to share with readers of this blog and my books. If you look at my first volume, Top 25 Designs available on CNCKing.com, you’ll see a tremendous improvement through to my third volume and my forth will have more pages and content than my first two volumes combined! I also produce videos showcasing the design process itself – something I really enjoy doing!
I’ll be doing A LOT more video as I find the entire process more effective both for my personal education and visitors to the site… the more we ALL learn, the better we will ALL be!