Today’s consumer has an overwhelming amount of choices, is inundated with constant marketing messages and has less time than ever before. Yes, your services, gifts and talents ARE needed. Your prospective clients’ health and wellness is incredibly important.
But unless she views you as the expert with the solution to her specific problems, she’s not very likely to ever sign up with you. So how do you cut through all of the clutter and noise in the marketplace to position yourself as the obvious expert?
Here are 5 simple, no-cost, low-cost strategies for cutting through the noise in the marketplace, to position yourself as the obvious expert with the solution to her problems.
1. Write an Article
Throughout the ages, “published author” has been synonymous with “expert.” So one of the first steps to being viewed as an expert in the marketplace is to get published! Fortunately, this is fairly easy to do with all of the technologies available to us today.
You can publish your article on your own website’s blog (you DO have a website don’t you?). This is one of the fastest, easiest ways to get published. When you offer articles with real solutions on a regular basis, you begin to be viewed as an expert.
Once you’ve published the article on your own blog, you can post them to online article databases like EzineArticles.com which catalog articles available for publication in other e-zines and blogs. This makes your content available for syndication, which can offer you a far wider reach than you might otherwise have.
Another option is to approach appropriate offline publications and offer your article for publication. Let them know that they can have the article for free in exchange for including a resource box at the end of the article. The resource box is nothing more than a short blurb about you and what you offer.
Create a free gift and offer it their readers on your website in exchange for their name and e-mail address. Now you’re building a qualified list of prospects interested in what you have to offer.
Editors love to give away free things. It creates more value for their readers and makes them look good to their audience.
2. Write a Book
Speaking of publishing… Writing a book is the next best step to positioning yourself as the obvious expert. People dream of publishing a book and becoming a famous author.
While publication doesn’t guarantee fame and fortune, it DOES position you as the obvious expert just by virtue of having a published book. It doesn’t have to sell a single copy, it needs only to be published. Having a published book can open a lot of doors, including media and speaking opportunities that you might not have otherwise.
You used to have to submit a query and book synopsis to an agent and then wait and hope a publishing house liked your book enough to publish it. There was a lot of luck involved. Fortunately, today that’s no longer the case and there are a lot of different publishing options out there, including self-publishing, e-publishing, and collaborative publishing.
You can easily get your book into print and it will look just as good as the books from the Big Six publishers. Writing and publishing is my special love and expertise and I have a lot more to share with you about this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
My articles have been published in the New Mexico Weekly Business Journal and Personal Fitness Professional in addition to my book Boost Business Online.
3. Speak
When you’re introduced before a live audience and given the chance to speak on a particular topic related to your expertise, there’s no question that you’re an expert.
You can either promote your own events to speak at or speak at other people’s events. If your ideal clients are entrepreneurs or business people, contact your local Chamber of Commerce. Look in their local business directory or your phone book (or local city’s website) to see if appropriate national associations or other organizations have local chapters in your area.
Create a short list of one to three different topics with attractive talk titles. E-mail or call each organization to see if they accept outside speakers and if they’d be interested in having you speak to their audience.
People who have seen you and heard you speak in person will be some of your best prospects. You become a real person to them and are no longer just an e-mail in their overflowing inbox.
The good news is that speaking doesn’t have to mean getting out in person to speak. You can easily hold a teleconference (also known as a teleseminar or teleclass) and give your talk over the phone. I love this option because it’s a lot easier to do and gives me a lot more flexibility. And when people are hearing my voice, it makes our connection much more personal, as if I’m meeting them in person.
4. Publish a Newsletter
The Direct Marketing Association says that it takes 7-9 “touches” before someone will buy from you the first time. People rarely buy from you the first time they meet you or hear about you, so followup is crucial. The fortune really IS in the followup.
Publishing a regular newsletter is a fantastic followup tool and not really hard to do. You can either publish a printed newsletter that goes out in the mail, or publish a virtual newsletter, also known as the e-newsletter or e-magazine (“e-zine” for short). For ease, speed and cost, we recommend publishing an e-zine to get started.
There are all kinds of tools and resources to help you get your newsletter out, including done-for-you options. So don’t let the idea of publishing a regular newsletter overwhelm you. It needn’t be complicated. A simple tip of the week (for e-zines) or month (for printed newsletters) will work just fine. You can even publish postcard newsletters!
For publishing an e-zine, we recommend AWeber.com, which offers a wealth of publishing options, including pre-designed templates. To publish an e-zine, you need to use a publishing service like AWeber, which is designed to send out mass e-mails. (You do NOT want to be sending this out through your own personal e-mail account!)
For publishing a print newsletter, we recommend NoHassleNewsletters.com, which offers complete done-for-you printing and mailing services. They’ll also provide content for your newsletter if you need it.
5. Get Publicity
Aside from writing a book, being positively featured in the media is the ultimate positioning tool. The good news is that it’s fairly easy for a local business to get positive media attention from their local media.
The media are ALWAYS looking for good stories to fill space or airtime and they’d rather fill it with local stories. So offer yourself to be interviewed in your area of expertise.
If you’re a massage therapist, talk about how much stress affects productivity in the workplace and how massage can help relieve that stress, thus increasing productivity. If you’re a personal trainer, talk about the obesity epidemic and offer some quick and simple suggestions for losing weight quickly, even if you have an office job where you sit a lot and don’t have much time. If you’re a health coach, talk about how much our fast food culture and busy lifestyles are harming our health and offer tips for eating and staying healthy, even on the go.
Tie your expertise into problems the nation is facing right now and offer their audience simple solutions. At the end of your interview, offer their audience more information for free. Direct them to your website where they can claim that free report or audio – and then follow up.
For more tips and help on getting publicity for your business, go to PublicityHound.com and tell Joan Stewart I sent you.
I hope you found this helpful. Please let us know if you have any questions at all.
Supporting you for your success,
Michelle Nightengale
Founder & CEO
