Marketing Podcast Chapter 1: Become a Recognized Expert
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Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world. My name is Patrick and I’m your host. You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location. Today, we’ll be talking about becoming a recognized expert in your field so let’s get started.
Whatever your business, whatever your passion, whatever your objective, things get a lot easier when you’re perceived as an expert. Whether you’re selling a product or a service, consumers want to buy from people who specialize in that area; people who are the best at what they do or at least the best within budgetary constraints. That’s what we’re talking about here and the most important thing to realize is that expertise is more of a perception than a reality.
Do you honestly think the people who get all the publicity for being experts in their field are, in fact, the smartest people in those respective fields? Are Nike shoes actually better or are they just better marketed? Are Bose stereos really better stereos or are THEY just better marketed? Well, sometimes they probably are. In fact, I would go a step further and say there’s generally a strong positive correlation between people’s perceptions of quality and the reality of quality. But it’s not always true. Fact is; people make their purchase decisions based on perceptions, not realities.
Now, am I suggesting you can go out there and claim to be an expert even though you’re not? No. Absolutely not. But most people who WANT to become recognized experts in their field get caught up on the fact they have no indisputable evidence of their expertise. I’m an expert on corporate culture because I spent 20 years directing a human resource department of a fortune 500 company. I’m an expert on military combat tactics because I spent 16 years as a US Marine. I’m an expert on stock market investing because I turned $20K into $1MM in less than 2 years. I’m an expert on leadership because I was the quarterback for a professional football team. I’m an expert on marketing because I started a business and became a market leader within 5 years.
Everyone’s looking for a badge of honor to point to before they claim the title of “expert” – but it’s a chicken and egg dilemma because you usually can’t gain that badge unless you’re already an expert and you can’t be an expert without the badge. Which comes first? It’s like when you first graduated from college and started applying for jobs. You can’t get a good job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. Breaking in is always the hardest part. Getting started is always the biggest challenge. Once you get that initial foothold, the journey forward gets a lot easier. A lot of what we’ll be looking at in this series is based on this effort; the effort of getting that badge of honor, that evidence of expertise and leveraging it to gain exposure.
I’m going to refer to this effort as building your platform. Picture yourself in the middle of a large crowd. And for someone looking down on that crowd, there would be nothing to identify you as any different from everybody else. You’re just another head in a sea of heads. In order to get noticed, you need a platform to stand on. Picture a soapbox. Once you have a soapbox to stand on, it’s much easier to get noticed. In this example, you’re now TALLER than everybody else. It’s also a lot easier to get people to listen to you when you’re taller than they are. It’s easier to communicate a message. So the trick is to build a platform, a soapbox, to stand on.
It’s almost like building a bit of celebrity. Think about Bono from U2. His initial platform was his music fame and now he’s using that celebrity to campaign for other charitable causes. Think about Princess Diana and her work for Aids awareness. Her initial platform was her royal stature and she went on to use her celebrity for other causes. Think about Bill Gates whose initial platform was created through his business accomplishments and now he’s using his wealth and celebrity in charitable ways. These people have a platform and now they’re leveraging it in various ways. So how can we build a platform for ourselves and use it to further our business objectives?
A lot of people write books to do it. This is no surprise to anyone. We’ve all seen interviews of people on one subject or another. And they’re considered experts, not necessarily because they have any tangible evidence to validate their expertise but because they wrote a book on the subject. Writing a book is a great strategy for building credibility but it’s not quite as easy as it sounds. In fact, writing the actual book is the easy part. The hard part is getting it published. Actually, these days, you can self-publish a book easily but then you’ve got some other challenges. Anyway, we’ll talk about this more in a later chapter.
Apart from writing a book, how ELSE can you become a recognized expert in your field? How do you get it started? Now, we’re NOT talking about situations where you DO in fact have some tangible badge of honor you can point to. If you HAVE some notable experience you can point to; if you already HAVE a platform to stand on, the problem becomes one of leveraging that platform, not necessarily creating it. Again, we’ll be discussing that throughout this series but right now, I want to offer a strategy for those who do NOT have a badge of honor, those who do NOT have a platform to stand on, at least not yet.
Well, it all boils down to one simple equation. Acquire expertise and give it away for free. Yes, yes, I know. You’re doing this to MAKE money, not give it away. Fear not. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to profit. Just stay with me on this one. Stay curious. Stay curious long enough to consider a different approach.
Becoming a recognized expert is all about showing people you’re an expert. Nobody’s going to consider you an expert if you just walk up and SAY you are. You have to demonstrate your expertise. You have to demonstrate your value. That’s the underlying objective. Make yourself useful. Identify your target market and then make yourself useful to them. Acquire expertise and give it to your ideal customer. Earn their trust. Provide value. After that, your target market has a reason to buy from you. By earning their trust and providing real value, you are positioning yourself as an expert in your field.
You have to understand the vast majority of people are either too lazy to be a threat or too busy to do it for themselves. When I was younger, I used to keep my business ideas secret, thinking someone might steel my idea and do it for themselves. Today, I know better. Most of the people out there never really get off their butts and do ANYTHING so I really don’t have to worry about them and the rest are far too busy pursuing their own dreams to drop everything and build MY idea from scratch. I’m not saying it can’t happen. Perhaps it can. But from my experience, no one’s going to steel your ideas or your knowledge or your expertise. If anything, they’ll appreciate it and then hire you to use YOUR expertise to grow THEIR business.
Many of us have heard the term Web 2.0 and it actually refers to a variety of marketing concepts used mostly on the internet. We’ll be discussing Web 2.0 in a later chapter but part of it revolves around this notion of making yourself useful. The up-and-coming younger generations are a resourceful bunch. They grew up with the internet and are used to educating themselves on the efforts they undertake. Before they’ll part with their money, they want to know you can truly help them. They want to have already seen your value. In fact, they want to have already BENEFITTED from your value.
These young consumers have been marketed to their whole lives. They’re suspicious of unsubstantiated claims. They’re skeptical of clever marketing slogans. They want proof. They want to see it for themselves. They want to see what you’re capable of. And once they’ve convinced themselves, they’ll be ready to spend money to make it all happen.
Acquire expertise and give it away for free. Let’s look at a few examples. Well, believe me, getting a book published is essentially giving your expertise away for free because let me tell you, you won’t be making much money from it, at least not on your first book. But as I mentioned earlier, we’ll be discussing that in a later chapter.
Of course, the beauty of living in today’s world is the availability of alternative approaches. Take this podcast, for example. By the time this project is complete, it will include at least 30 chapters at about 2500 words each. That’s 75,000 words. At 300 words per page, that’s a 250-page book! And I won’t make a penny on it. I’m doing the whole thing for free. And let me tell you, it’s a colossal project. In fact, it’ll COST me money to keep it hosted – not much but still. The point is I won’t be making any money doing this project but there are plenty of benefits. We’ll be talking more about podcasting in a later chapter.
In my mortgage business, I developed an 8.5×11 two-sided educational information sheet. It provides all kinds of little known details about mortgages, the way they’re structured and specifics about the underwriting process – information you really wouldn’t find anywhere else. The point is, I acquired expertise and gave it away for free and the people who receive it really appreciate it, especially the younger ones. The older generation thinks differently but the younger ones are very thankful. And perhaps more importantly, they keep it. How much mortgage marketing do these people receive? And they keep my one-page information sheet. Awesome!
I learned this lesson a few years earlier because I had a small business liquidating private mortgages – seller financing notes – and I wrote a short handbook describing the process and giving people an idea what discounts to expect. It took me about a month to write and about $2800 to print 2000 copies. I sent that handbook out to 2000 Business Brokers across the country and my phone continues to ring to this day, years later. I’m not saying I get tons of calls. In fact, I got out of the business because it was so unpredictable and sporadic but the point is, people kept my handbook because it offered real value. And when they had a need, they remembered me amidst the armies of competitors.
I’m working with a graphic designer who wanted to get into print brokering. I suggested he develop a similar 8.5×11 two-sided information card with various specifications for large commercial print jobs; something that would really provide value to people on the buying end of that business. He sent it out in large manila envelopes and followed up with a phone call and sure enough, jobs started coming in. No, it’s not a booming business yet but he’s off to a good start. And why? Because he’s positioning himself as an expert within his field by providing useful resources.
I’m working with a promotional products company and we’re going to setup a resource-based website designed to educate young 24 and 25 and 26-year-old marketing graduates who commonly start their careers buying promotional products for large corporations. The site will be specifically geared towards that audience, providing research, guidance and suggestions for increasing results from marketing campaigns involving promotional products. With any luck, the site will allow these young marketing employees to impress their bosses and advance in their careers. And if we pull it off, this promotional products company will have delivered real value to the CORE of its target market: aspiring marketing professionals in large corporations.
Once trust is established, the opportunities for commerce explode. And we’ll be talking about tons of these opportunities in the chapters ahead. But the foundation has to be built first. If you want to become a recognized expert in your field, acquire knowledge and give it away for free. Make yourself useful to your target audience. The process will go something like this: develop something to say, find an audience and leverage the exposure to widen the reach. Something to say, find an audience and leverage. That’s it. To me, that’s one of the biggest secrets in effective marketing.
Think about your business. Think about what you want to do. Now, think about your target market. What do they need? What are their challenges? What expertise can you acquire that will benefit them? And how will they use your expertise to improve their situation? These are the questions that’ll help you position yourself in front of a hungry audience; an audience looking for an expert.
Someone once told me the biggest ingredient for a successful restaurant is a hungry crowd. An awful restaurant in the middle of a hungry throng will succeed while a great restaurant amidst well-fed bystanders will fail. Find your hungry crowd. Find out what they want. And then acquire expertise in that area and give it away for free. You might be amazed at the response you get. And it will be precisely that response that will tell you how to monetize future offerings.
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I DO offer workshops, seminars and keynote speeches as well as consulting services so please email me at Patrick [at] TacticalExecution.com for more information. I’m also doing an extensive podcast series on stock market investing, real estate finance and the economy. It’s called Financial Audio and you can find it on iTunes.
Stay tuned. There is a lot more to come. In the meantime, think big, take action and market strategically. Bye for now.
