People are only likely to buy from you when they know something about you and what you can do for them.
In the first step of this series on productizing your expertise, we looked at how to define the right market.
However, when you have chosen your market, you don’t just want presence in the market place. You should establish preeminence.
The dictionary definition of preeminent is ‘notable above all others’. When you have preeminence:
- Potential clients will contact you
- People will recommend you to others
- You’ll be able to charge higher fees
- You’ll easily attract business partners
Sharing your expertise: The key to preeminence
The basis of establishing preeminence is that you must be willing to share your expertise with others before asking them to buy anything from you.
That’s a challenge for some people as they feel their expertise is what makes them money so they don’t want to give it away.
In a sense you’re letting people try you out before they have to buy anything.
When people see what you have to offer, they will be more ready to pay you.
Some will make that transition quickly, while others may become customers a long time after sampling your free information.
How to Build a Preeminent Presence
In today’s highly-connected world, having a preeminent presence means that you need to be in a lot of different places and attracting people’s attention. However, with the right system and message, that doesn’t need to be difficult.
The five key building blocks of preeminent presence are:
- Free information offer
- Blog or website
- Email follow-up
- Social networking
- Personal branding
1. Developing a client-attracting free offer
One of the keys to building preeminence with your prospects is to have them sign up to a mailing list where you can keep in touch with them on a regular basis.
This gives you a chance to build relationships so that they will buy from you when they are ready.
People are unlikely to give you their email address without some incentive.
You need to create an offer that gives them valuable free information in exchange for giving you their email address. This can include:
- A series of lessons in a mini-course
- A special report or white paper (such as this one – though it can be shorter)
- A video or audio for download or viewing online
- A regular e-newsletter or tips
Creating this type of information is much easier than you think. You just need a series of short articles – which you don’t even need to write – or you can repackage content created for another purpose.
2. Creating a preeminent blog or website
The central marketing and contact point for most businesses is a website or blog.
But many business owners have wasted a lot of money in creating a web presence that doesn’t give them a good return.
While one aim of a website is to provide information, the key objective should usually be to capture contact details of visitors so that you can keep in touch with them.
If you don’t have a website already, all you need is a simple page where people can leave their contact details. To do this, you’ll need a web hosting account from a company like Bluehost or Hostgator.
All it needs is a simple landing page where people can leave their details.
The illustration here shows a page I’ve used for allowing people to sign up for a free report. Something like this can be created and posted in a few hours.
If you already have a website or blog, make sure the option for people to leave their contact details is very prominent.
When you have that system in place, you can then focus on building a more detailed blog or website providing a greater depth of information.
As your business develops, your website is a powerful way of being able to share your expertise with others and to allow them to see how you can help them.
These days, there are many advantages to choosing to have a blog instead of a website. The benefits include:
- Low cost to set up and can be easy to maintain
- Provides a good focal point for social marketing activity
- Search engines like them so you’ll rank better in searches
- Convenient to update content regularly
- Encourages you to create new content that can be used for multiple purposes
You can host a blog on your own website domain or have it hosted separately by a provider such as Blogger or Typepad.
A popular option is Wordpress, where you can use free software to create a blog on your own domain or simply create an account at Wordpress.com, where it will all be hosted for you.
A blog can be very profitable if you follow a strong process such as the one suggested in Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind program.
3. Ensuring effective email follow-up
Many people make the mistake of collecting email addresses and then thinking the free report or mini-course is all they need to have in order to build a relationship.
To use email effectively for communication, you need to create a series of follow up messages to send over the following weeks.
The essential tool you need to make this approach work is a system for collecting email addresses and sending out emails.
Don’t even consider trying to do this from your own computer.
If you are serious about building this business, you need a professional autoresponder service from a specialist such as Aweber.
The autoresponder company will give you code you can include on your website to create a sign up box for people to leave their details.
An autoresponder allows you to mail people at any time and also to set up a series of pre-written messages at set intervals after they sign up. This is all automated so when you set it up once, it continues to run without any further work on your part.
As many of these emails will be promoting products and services, this becomes an automatic income system.
You need to keep sending emails to people on a regular basis if you want to build relationships.
You should accept that some people will sign up for your free report and will not want anything more. Some of them will unsubscribe quickly.
The onus is on you to provide valuable information so that the people who are in your target market want to hear more from you.
If all you do is sell, sell, sell, they will quickly be switched off.
The key is to focus your attention on the people who are interested in what you have to say – and forget about the rest.
These are your potential customers and the lifeblood of your business.
4. Using the power of social networking
One of the most popular and effective ways of establishing your presence using online channels is through the growing number of social networking sites such as Facebook and Linked-In.
In addition, Twitter is currently very popular as a way of building a lot of contacts fast.
And bookmarking sites like ‘StumbleUpon‘ can be helpful in establishing contacts and website prominence.
Many markets also have very active forums that can be a valuable way to make contacts, develop your knowledge and even win business.
For many people, these are becoming more attractive ways of keeping in touch than email.
Building a successful business means you need to use all of the popular channels of communication.
5. Building your personal branding
These steps provide the core system which you can use to build your presence and reputation. But there are many additional ways you can share valuable information with others to grow your preeminence. These include:
- Articles: Publishing articles online and offline is a great way to become seen as an expert.
- Podcasts and video: While writing articles is still a very useful way to promote your expertise, online video and podcasts are now easy to produce and have many advantages.
- Book writing: It’s now remarkably easy to become a published author. Your own book is a powerful calling card that makes it easier for you to increase your fees.
- Speaking: Most people don’t like to do it so anyone who is willing to get up and speak about what they do – whether to a local interest group or an international conference – is almost automatically seen as an expert.
- Seminars and workshops: Running or participating in seminars online and offline is another way to build reputation. You benefit from association with the others taking part.
In the next part of this series, we’ll look at how to package your expertise for maximum profit.
Links in this post may be affiliate links. See our links policy.
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