How I Learned to Market by Teaching
Before getting into digital marketing and UI/UX I was an English teacher for two years. I continued teaching part-time for another year. During that time I learned a lot of things that I applied to marketing and sales.
How memories are formed
The most applicable process I learned was imparting meaning in a way that stuck. In my TEFL program, we were taught the PPP model (not the 4 P’s of marketing).
- Presentation: words and their meanings are presented with flashcards, a PowerPoint, or a whiteboard
- Practice: students respond with short answers, fill in blanks, and perform simple exercises
- Production: students use the language from the lesson on their own. If the lesson was about actions and verbs, we would ask open-ended questions like “what did you do today?” And then correct them appropriately as they tried to apply the taught vocabulary and grammar.
In marketing, making a memorable impression on potential customers is key. If it can be done in a way that relates to their struggles or aspirations then it's even better.
The key: psychology
Having students or potential customers interact with whatever message you are sending improves the message’s impact. Giving positive feedback increases their confidence and also provides a frame of reference that encourages improvement by simply speaking in a flat tone when mistakes are made. Everything is relative.
Tieing lessons into students' interests was another technique that is shared in advertising.
Tieing lessons to prior lessons helped instill the curriculum. It also helped me test prior lessons. I liked to alternate my lesson plans with different activities while maintaining the PPP model. This technique is used in ad campaigns that are planned in advance and slowly warm an audience towards a purchase. The alternation and reflection are also similar to the method of split-testing albeit much less scientific.
Rapport, consistency, and social connection are fundamentals to just about everything.
Engagement
The practice of eliciting engagement is important in digital marketing where, in a nutshell, virility = engagement/views.
Engagement can be view time, comments, clicks, likes, or shares. Building a sense of community around a brand builds a connection with potential customers, possibly converting them to repeat customers for life.
Alternating activities also disguised the formulaic nature of lesson plans which assisted the students' engagement. The same concept can be seen with messaging in marketing.
If all of your messaging follows the same formula then it gets dry, engagement is lowered, and you have to start from scratch with a new strategy. This process can repeat indefinitely. If you strategize in advance then both the efficiency of your work and the impact of your message can be enhanced.
Story Telling
Storytelling is in many ways as much about eliciting engagement and interest as it is about actually telling a story. Framing your message in a way that speaks to your target audience is another key to communication shared across fields.
That is why this article intended for e-commerce professionals didn’t go into all of the times a student urinated on the floor, cried, or had their parents scold me. That is just a given. I wanted to focus on the positive takeaways and that in itself is a story.
Simplification
Another essential technique I learned teaching (especially by teaching English as a second language with full immersion) was simplification. Internet users have even shorter attention spans than toddlers in a classroom. Even the best copywriter can bore potential customers if they take too long to cover core selling points.
The standard for product pages is to have the selling points in a list near the call to action. This is the forced formatting in Amazon and it is used by most online retailers.
More expensive products typically provide more text. The longer read time of potential customers raises their investment in their product with the most important currency; time. The higher average time-on-page increases the likelihood of a sale.
These two psychological facts are very difficult to meet simultaneously. This article about product pages explores how it can be done.
My thesis is that much like an English lesson, core selling points need to be covered twice in a way that avoids redundancy. The redundancy can be avoided by making the storytelling visually molded into the product page with an impressive design.
