5 Keys to Positioning Your Expertise for Maximum Profit

If you want to make the maximum profit possible from your expertise, you need to position yourself as the go-to expert in a clearly-defined and profitable market.

The first step in that process is getting to know and understand your target market. When you do that, you’ll find it’s easier to:

Find more of the customers you want
Stand out from the competition
Develop better products and services

Yet many people rush into business without taking time to do this. So perhaps it’s not surprising that so many businesses fail in the first few years.

Knowing your target market isn’t just about who they are and what they want. It’s about using your knowledge of the market to tailor your products and services to meet their needs in the best way possible.

Become the Obvious Choice

In short, you want to position yourself to be the solutions provider of choice to your target market in your field of expertise. There are five steps you need to follow to position yourself successfully.

Identify who your ideal customers are
Find out what they want
Determine how you can best help them
Identify a reason why they should buy from you
Establish how much money you can make

These five steps are some of the most important in your business. Yet many business owners pay little attention to them.

But taking a bit of time for this simple process will not only prevent you wasting time and money on something that won’t work.

It will also give you information that is extremely valuable to you in all areas of your business.

So let’s follow these steps one-by-one.

Step 1: Who are your ideal clients?

One of the big mistakes most businesses make is they try to be something for everyone. When you want to maximize revenue, it can easily seem that trying to appeal to a wide range of people will generate more sales. But the fact is this rarely pans out.

The truth is: you stand a better chance of becoming an acknowledged authority if you focus on a specific market rather than trying to meet the needs of a very broad field. So you need to define your target market as specifically as possible, taking into account:

Demographics: This is identifiable and quantifiable categories like age group, gender, education level, income group, geographic area etc.
Psychographics: This reflects how they think and make decisions. It can be harder to define but ultimately more useful than demographics. It includes things like what’s important to them and their interests and lifestyles.

So ultimately, when you define your ideal customer groups, you’ll find it’s a mix of demographics and psychographics, for example:

New business owners in San Francisco
Mothers of young children who want a career change
Men over 45 who like golf

When you know who your ideal clients are, you will also be able to identify how to reach them with your marketing – what media they use and what social networking sites they follow.

This step clarifies who are your ideal clients.

Step 2: What do they want?

There are generally two reasons people will voluntarily spend money on something:

They want to solve a problem
They want to make their life better in some way (including their family’s life or their business results)

This applies whether you are selling to individuals, to business owners or larger organizations.

To make the sale easier, your task is to find out what your target market wants and then give it to them. You need to get inside their heads and find out what’s on their mind.

What’s the big problem that keeps them awake at night?
What’s the big dream they really want to achieve?

Some people buy because they want to solve the problem and others buy to achieve the dream. So you need to think about your offer from both perspectives.

For example, one person may see their situation negatively: “My business is struggling to attract enough clients”. While another may be more positive: “I want to double my profits next year”.

Based on this information, you can define your service using a sentence that begins with “I help people who…”

“I help people who don’t have enough clients” OR

“I help people who want to double their profits next year”

This step clarifies why your ideal clients need your help.

Step 3: How can you best help them?

Once you’ve defined exactly what people want, you can work out the best way to give it to them.

In doing this, you have to take into account your own strengths and capabilities so that you can match those to what people want.

There are two parts to defining how you can help people. The first is specifying what you do. For example:

“I create marketing plans…”

“I offer an audio training course…”

That’s where most business owners stop. They focus on what they do. But the reality is that people don’t care what you do. They’re only interested in what it means for them.

So the second part has to focus on the outcome for them. It’s often useful to start with the term “…which helps them…”

“…which helps them generate a large list of prospects”

“…which helps them overcome their fear of speaking”

It’s useful to be as specific as possible about the outcome. When you are clear about how you can help people, this will help you develop more effective marketing and create better products.

This step clarifies exactly how you help your clients.

Step 4: Why should they buy from you?

You probably realize that your prospects and customers could almost always go somewhere else to get the help they need.

So you need a good reason why they should choose you.

The reason should set you apart from the competition – and you don’t want that to be ‘price’.

This may seem obvious but do you know why you are the right person to help your ideal customer?

If you can’t think why people should choose you, you need to find ways to change what you offer so that you stand out. Here are some factors about your offer that could make you right for them:

Your specific expertise and knowledge
A guaranteed outcome
Serving a specific geographic location or market segment
Personal service or coaching
Independent endorsement

Getting this right can help you break through the clutter in the most saturated market and become the authority. You don’t just want presence; you want to be the solutions provider of choice!

This step clarifies why your ideal clients should buy from you.

When you’ve completed these four steps, you should be able to combine them and write a short statement defining your positioning such as:

“I help new business owners in San Francisco who are struggling to attract enough clients. I create marketing plans to give them a huge list of prospects. They choose me because I give a guaranteed outcome.”

Step 5: How much money can you make?

Identifying what people want – and giving it to them – is only one part of the process. You also need evidence that they are willing to pay the prices you want to charge.

If you know your market well, start by looking at the competition and see how well they are doing. If nobody is offering the service already – or making money at it – you have to ask why. Ask your existing customers if they are willing to buy your products and services at the price level you want.
If you don’t know the market well enough, start by looking at how many people are searching for information on your topic on Google. Notice how many searches are being done on the topic – but remember that people who search won’t always be buyers. Look for the paid-for advertising along the top or down the right of the page when you do a search. If there are several advertisers, this implies strong demand.
Visit the sites that come up in your search to see what is currently selling and what the prices are in this market.