In 2007 Forrester research showed that 90% of purchasing decisions begin online. In most cases, before a customer personally contacts your company they’re already armed with information about your company, your people, and your products. This is true no matter what they are buying.

What this means for you is opportunity-the chance to educate potential customers about your industry, possible solution choices, best practices, and the right questions to ask. This is how to build a relationship with your customer and make it easier for them to buy your product. That’s what content marketing is all about. In essence, the customer has initiated a conversation with you before you even know they are interested in your products and services.

Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. The majority of organizations are set up to sell products and services, not create editorial content that builds relationships with customers. But there are two things you can do right now that will kick start your content marketing efforts.

Number One: Start thinking like a publisher

Doesn’t seem to make sense, right? You’re a marketer, why would you want to think like a publisher? Actually, if you believe the first few paragraphs of this post, marketing today is all about publishing. It’s all about developing information based on the needs of the reader (your customer). That’s what publishers do. Before any decisions are made about what content to publish, you need a clear understanding of your customers’ pain points – to not only fine tune your communication strategy, but to figure out how you talk about your products and services.

Let’s look at an example. The US Postal Service had a problem. Marketers were spending less on direct mail. That’s a BIG problem for the USPS. Well, instead of just blasting out messages that promoted direct mail, they developed a publishing platform, including a quarterly magazine called Deliver, and a robust website that was updated with daily educational content.

In its print and Web editorial content, you never heard how great the USPS was. What the reader saw was engaging, editorial content focused on issues important to marketing professionals, such as ROI, marketing trends, and best practices.

The result: After reading the magazine, almost three quarters of the marketers receiving the publication planned on spending more in direct mail during the next year. In addition, traffic to the USPS website is booming, growing well over 100% over the past year.

Even better, the USPS has invested even more in expert eBooks, white papers, videos, and in-depth online content.

The key: The USPS stopped thinking like a marketer and started thinking like a publisher.

Number two: Stop selling

Selling to customers before building a true relationship is the kiss of death. Consumers can smell a sales pitch a mile away, and today they have the power to block or ignore your sales message altogether. The most successful content doesn’t just don’t sell. Instead, it performs the art of “Lethal Generosity,” as coined by Forrester Research’s social media guru Jeremiah Owyang. For Web content, this means that your goal with every online interaction is to be helpful. So how do you do that? Chris Brogan and David Meerman Scott, two of the foremost marketing thought leaders, recommend giving away helpful content wherever and whenever possible. Sound familiar? It should, because that’s an example of thinking like a publisher.

Being helpful allows you to develop a real relationship with your customers, which leads to good will and more trust in your brand. It makes people want to do business with you.

That’s how it works. You give and give and give…and then you get…more than you would ever anticipate.

By doing these two seemingly small things-thinking like a publisher and putting an end to all the selling-you will transform your company. It’s not easy, but this paradigm shift is necessary for marketing survival today.

Joe Pulizzi, a thought leader, speaker, writer, and evangelist for content marketing, is founder and chief content officer for Junta42, a content marketing/custom publishing community search engine and resource. Pulizzi is the co-author of the book “Get Content. Get Customers.,” which helps teach companies why and how to create their own compelling content to drive their businesses. Pulizzi is also president for Z Squared Media LLC, a content marketing consulting firm for marketers and publishers.