If you want to make sales without chasing customers or making cold calls and do it in a way that is pleasing for you as the marketer and comfortable for the prospect, there are strategies that you can implement so that people will be calling and lining up to do business with you.
In this article we will discuss 9 Strategies on How You Can Achieve Expert Status In Your Niche. We’ll begin with:
Article Marketing: Writing articles and giving well-researched information to your niche and placing them on your website or social media platforms will be a great way to get started in positioning yourself as an expert in your niche.
You can also distribute them in article directories as long as they are of quality such as Ezine Articles or trade publications in your niche (online and offline).
Write a book: The book can be in the form of an E-book that is downloadable or it can be in hard copy. You can have the book traditionally published or you can self-publish. If you’re a beginner, I would start off with an E-book. It’s less expensive and it doesn’t have to have as many pages as a hard copy. It’s also easily accessible by your prospects or clients. The people who write books are usually automatically perceived as experts in their niches.
Produce Information Products: Information products can come in the form of a book, special report or DVD/CD. Creating and selling information products (or giving them away) helps position you as an expert or guru in your particular niche. You can give a teleseminar or interview an expert and by recording it, begin a great line of information products for you.
Publish a Newsletter: A newsletter can be published and sent to your subscriber list once a week, bi-weekly, or once a month. You have to produce information that they find useful and timely in the form of a newsletter. If the information and content is good, the subscribers will look forward to receiving your online newsletter. Some publishers even go so far as putting a price on their newsletter and soliciting advertising revenue. That will come sometime down the line, but in the beginning do a free newsletter to build up your credibility and increase your audience.
Give Speeches: There are plenty of opportunities out there where you can give your services to speak for free, and which place you in front of your niche market. People who see you speak on a platform automatically perceive you as an expert. You wouldn’t want to start out charging for speaking engagements. After you’ve established yourself as an expert (authority), then you can begin charging. Look for plenty of opportunities to give free speaking engagements that will boost your reputation and credibility.
Give Seminars: There are opportunities where you can give your own seminar, but in today’s climate it might be a little difficult to take the risk of renting a venue and hoping people show up. In the beginning, you might seek out an opportunity to participate in other people’s seminars (a breakout). If they have a workshop or seminar where you can offer to give a class, well – that’s a great opportunity. If you have the opportunity to speak at seminars, you have a chance to sell your information products and increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Public Relations Campaigns: To get attention through the media, you can submit press releases online and offline. It’s an excellent way if you can get featured in some publications or magazines. People will really begin to take you seriously as an authority. When people see you being covered in a magazine or newspaper you get more credibility than when you pay for an ad. People think that when you’re featured, the publication is definitely standing behind you as an expert. So make sure you send out your press kit to different publications in your niche so you can have a chance to be featured.
Establish an Internet presence: Even if you’re a brick and mortar business you must have an Internet presence. Setting up a blog would be an excellent (and inexpensive) way of establishing an Internet presence for yourself. When you set up your blog/website, fill it with quality content targeted to the interest and challenges of your niche market. You have to make sure that you’re consistently pumping out interesting quality content and over time, you get to interact with your clients/prospects. You’ll find out what their real needs and challenges are and they’ll begin to know, like, and trust you. People like to do business with people – not with businesses and brands.
Your Internet marketing strategy ideally would also include social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Having links on those social media platforms pointing back to your blog/website is a plus for your reputation.
Critical Mass: This is where all of the strategies you put in place start coming together in a synergy and creating a force that will propel you into the position of an expert in your niche.
If you implement the previous 8 strategies according to the amount of time and resources you have available, the better off you will be.
You will find that out of the 9 strategies, one or two will really propel you into the position of expert or guru in your niche. So you intensify those particular steps that are working for you. Remember the 80/20 rule. 20% of your efforts will give you 80% of your results and 80% of your efforts will give you 20% of your results. So make sure you identify the strong 20% that gives you 80% of your results and intensify them.
About the authors: Robert and Juliette Samuel are successful Internet marketers and students of the industry. Their business is based on the fundamentals of Selling Online where they specialize is Marketing Strategies for Businesses in the Beauty Industry.