Today I want to talk about user education. Education, teaching, a topic that’s really often overlooked. I can’t say how many times I had to convince colleagues or management that making our customers more successful should have been priority #1.

Why? Because of our own bias: 

That’s all wrong

Education doesn’t only mean giving people the required tips & tricks to use your product. Education is making people get better in their field, master your product, and be fully aware of why you made their life for the better.

I see education as a 3-fold bonus for your brand:

We all rather solve things by ourselves. It gives a sense of accomplishment, it’s rewarding. So companies build wikis or FAQs to “make their customers better users”. But that doesn’t work this way.

Documentation systems are often framed by a “problem-solution” troubleshooting angle. For ex:

That’s really the minimum viable information you should provide.

But what will help your customers is to teach them how they can get better at doing their job, thanks to you.

For instance, Ahrefs is an SEO tool. So it basically talks to marketers. But maybe 30% of what they write on is specifically about SEO. They know their customers are marketers, so they write on marketing in general. And when their tool has a unique edge on a specific marketing topic, they put it in context and show how it solves the opportunity. Easy promotion.

Circling back to what I said first.

“If you need to educate people then maybe they’re the wrong users.”

Educating means sharing, teaching, and explaining how and why your approach to a problem is different. You may have different features or concepts people need to understand before they buy.

A non-software example I like to tell about is Patagonia. When they introduced synthetic clothes. Patagonia explained why and how to remove cotton, wool and down. So by putting together extensive guides on the benefits of more layers and new materials, they got people aware and turned them eventually into customers.

Those people were mountain climbers, not random people. They were the right users, but unaware of the new take of Patagonia on clothing for mountain climbing. That move changed everything for them.

Yes, helping people out is a great, non-arrogant way to build word of mouth.

3. Now on to the last aspect of focusing on education: leadership & expertise 

I believe it’s here that most companies do wrong. They don’t zoom out. Educating prospects doesn’t mean spamming your features when competitors can basically do the same. Instead, talk about the unique system and approach you have to a known problem. Whether it’s dealing with customers, designing great products, or better organizing your time — by teaching how you solve that in an interesting way, you have the opportunity to become the expert.

Just look at Basecamp's Shape-up methodology, that's a fantastic marketing move. Freely sharing your knowledge will strengthen your relationship with existing customers as well as attract new ones.

Oh and yes, one way to do is Open Source, I wrote a piece on that.

Thanks for listening, I hope you found something interesting today.

Until next time!