Why all the clamor about education-based marketing? Because it is not sales-based marketing!Education-based marketing is providing your prospects with informative and useful materials that pertain to your area of problem-solving expertise. There is nothing in it, either in content or method of presentation, that pitches them anything. There is no pressure or suggestion of sales. What you offer consists of tips, advice, updates on relevant happenings, references, and upcoming events… period.As anyone who has been called by telemarketers can tell you, they are sick to death of the unwanted intrusion and being pressured to buy something they do not want. They learn nothing from sales pitches but to unplug their phones at dinner time.With educational marketing everything you do provides education. And all your educational materials are simply available to those who choose to seek it out themselves. It is entirely their decision to become better informed.Of course, the more materials you make available the better. You do not want to rely upon any one avenue alone. Over time you want to provide not only new information but also new information in different formats. This means that you need to do a multiplicity of activities around providing what prospects need and want to know to create the groundwork for solving their problems.If you use ads, you need to offer prospects a free content-rich handout in either digital or hard copy format. In articles you write and in interviews of you you need to do the same. On your website you need to give prospects the opportunity to ask by e-mail their “most burning question” and receive a free handout which answers prospects’ frequently asked questions. You need to offer access to your free ezine, hard copy newsletter, and blog.But this is not all, You want to expose prospects to you as an expert and accessible resource in as many ways as possible. They need to view you on their local cable talking about their concerns. This gives them a chance to see you as a person who is confident, easy-going, knowledgeable, caring, and giving. They need to hear you on radio to expand and reinforce your presence and message. They need to learn from you in person in seminars as well.One advantage of education-based marketing is that you are doing nothing to make your prospects defensive. As a result, they can trust you more rapidly. But the biggest advantage is that everything you do works together. Each piece of written, verbal, and visual information – each exposure – reinforces the next and the whole (what you provide and how you provide it). This creates a synergy for you that magnetically attracts, not pressures, prospects to your practice.