In the first post in this series, we looked at 5 Steps to Making More Profit from Your Expertise.
Today, we are looking at one of the biggest reasons why most people are failing to make the most of their expertise.
The problem is that they haven’t worked out what people will pay for.
Investing a bit of time in this step makes the difference between a highly successful business and a disappointing outcome.
The keys to this are:
- Finding out what people want
- Making sure they are willing to pay for it
- Establishing a clear reason why they should buy it from you.
The biggest reason people don’t succeed with their business – apart from simply not trying – is that they try to ‘educate the market’ rather than give them what they already want.
What do people want?
One of the best ways to find out what people want is by using an Internet search engine like Google, even if you are not marketing primarily online.
Think about your area of expertise and then brainstorm a list of words that people would use to search for information about it in Google.
The next step is to check some of these keywords and see how often they are searched. You can do that using this free online tool:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Check out my separate posts on using the Google Keyword Tool and the Free Wordtracker Tool.
If you find that not many people are searching on your keywords,or you can’t identify anything that people would want to search for, you may need to rethink your offer.
Are they willing to buy?
You can also use this process to get an idea of whether people are actually spending money in this market.
Look at the paid-for advertising that usually shows along the top or down the right of the search page. If there are several advertisers, this implies strong demand.
Looking at the websites that come up in your search also tells you more about the market.
Explaining Your Service
Even when you know there is a market for your offer, you need to be able to explain it to people in a way that is appealing and makes clear why they should buy it from you.
So you need to think about what the outcome will be for them of buying your expertise. You need to consider the result they will get rather than the process of what you do.
To do this, you need to be able to sum up in a few words why they need what you are offering, why it will be worth their time and money and why they should buy it from you.
When you can do that, you will not only be able to attract many buyers, you’ll also find a steady stream of clients approaching you willing to pay more for your other services.
So, when you have a strong proposition, the key is to turn it into a product or service that you can sell.
We’ll look at that in the next lesson in this series.
