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Boost Business by Becoming an Expert
February 18, 2008

The topic of this week’s posts were inspired by a speech given recently by Bill Shor, a member of my local Toastmasters International club. I mention this at the outset because Wednesday’s post will discuss how joining a Toastmasters club can help us become better business professionals, and open up new avenues for marketing our services.

The name of this blog is “Expert Business Source” and it seems long overdue for us to discuss what it means to be an “expert”—and why becoming one is a key element of making marketing work. After all, if you were to look for someone to fix your car, you’d probably want to find someone who was an expert on cars (and not your brother-in-law, which is often the case). If you were renovating your bathroom, you would probably want to hire someone who was an expert on bathroom remodeling and plumbing, unless you like water to pour from unexpected locations. As customers, we are eager to do business with experts; as a result, it’s not unreasonable to expect our own customers to want to hire experts.

There many ways to become an expert. The most basic, of course, is to learn a lot about your chosen field. If you are in business now, either as an owner or an upper-level manager, you probably already know a great deal about your company, the market it is in, and the dynamics of your industry (let's hope). But as anyone can tell you, there is always something new to learn, and staying on top of the latest developments in your industry is vital. There are many sources of information, including books, trade publications, industry newsletters, Web sites, blogs, podcasts, and many other Web 2.0 media and platforms. We’re all busy people, but you’ll find that it can pay to block out specific times to do nothing but read and learn, at least a couple times a week, or even once a day if time permits. Attending trade shows, seminars, and other off-site networking events is also a good way to learn and interact with others in your field. Webinars are also a good middle-ground between publications and live in-person events, especially with travel budgets being what they are (or aren’t).

However, just as important as actually becoming an expert is marketing yourself as an expert. You may know everything there is to know about, say, fixing cars or renovating bathrooms, but that does not translate into business unless other people know that you’re an expert on cars or plumbing. This blog—my posts as well as my colleague Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s posts—provides many tips and techniques for marketing your or your business’ services. However, to market yourself as an expert often requires additional steps. In particular, all the means of becoming an expert that were cited in the previous paragraph also apply to marketing yourself as an expert. Nothing increases one’s cachet as writing about a topic, and these days there are more ways of doing that than ever. The easiest—and least expensive—is starting a blog, either on your company’s own Web site or with any of the free blogging tools online, such as Blogger or TypePad. This gives you a forum to discuss whatever relevant issues to your business you like; you can link to this blog from your company’s site, distribute the URL to customers, and include it in any of the other marketing materials you may produce (“See what out experts have to say by visiting www.[ourblog].com,” for example).

An extension of this tip is to include relevant news, tips, techniques, and a FAQ (frequently asked questions) on your Web site (you do have a Web site, right?). Say, for example, you are a tax accountant. On your company’s Web site you may want to have news about changes to the tax laws, answers to some of your most-asked questions, and other tax and accounting tips and advice. The point, of course, is not to give away the store for free, but to provide enough free information to attract potential customers who then are in a perfect position to become paying clients.

There are other avenues for writing about a topic. Contributing to trade magazines—feature articles, op-eds, or “guest columns”—can be difficult even if you are a professional, full-time writer, but may be worth pursuing if you have the inclination and writing ability. At the same time, publishing a newsletter—be it electronic or print—can also be an excellent way of enhancing your and your company’s reputation as experts in your field. And you don’t necessarily have to spend a great deal of money and effort producing it yourself; a financial consulting firm I know subscribes to a syndicated newsletter service that writes and produces the content, the firm itself simply includes their own logo and contact information. These are then mailed out to past, present, and prospective customers. There are similar newsletter syndication services in other industries, as well, such as commercial printing.

Depending on your ambitions, you can also write a book, which is the pinnacle of expert-ness. Nothing says “expert” like having your name on the cover of a book, the contents of that book notwithstanding. (And no matter how much you may think you know about a topic, you inevitably learn a lot more when you write a book. Trust me!) Again, getting published is not an easy task, but self-publishing using on-demand digital printing is getting easier and cheaper. Looking through Writer’s Digest or any other writer’s magazine turns up many ads from companies that can help with self-publishing. The key, as always, is marketing.

Finally, one other way of promoting yourself as an expert is speaking about your topic to industry groups, seminar audiences, chambers of commerce, and other venues. Becoming a good speaker about your chosen field is probably the best way to market your and your company’s services—and can be a great way to market the other “expert marketing” methods you have pursued. For example, if you’ve written and self-published a book, what better way to promote it than to have copies for sale (as well as flyers) at the venue at which you are speaking?

There is more to becoming a public speaker than just standing behind a podium and opening your mouth. Wednesday’s post will discuss one of the best business (and personal) decisions I have ever made: joining a Toastmasters International club.

Posted by Richard Romano on February 18, 2008 | Comments (0)