Kara Stanford
Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years of experience.
CEO & Founder of The Marketing Spaces.
Kara Stanford
Strategic Marketing Consultant with over 25 years of experience.
CEO & Founder of The Marketing Spaces.
Knowledge + skills + experience = expertise
People buy expertise. Whether it is in marketing, accountancy, law, woodworking, painting and decorating, cooking, or delivering charitable services, it’s that collection of knowledge, skills and experience that creates a product or service that people will choose.
Over time, industry experts build a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness by consistently delivering accurate and valuable information. The practical, actionable insights they offer help individuals and organisations solve problems and achieve goals, making their expertise highly valuable and sought after.
In this article, we’re making space to consider:
Why positioning yourself as a known industry expert is good for business
First, answer these questions:
- Does your organisation ‘sell’ something that isn’t tangible, i.e. it can’t be seen, heard or held?
- Does your product or service rely on skill, knowledge and experience?
If you answered Yes to one or both of these questions, you could probably benefit from adopting a Known Expert strategy.
As people are making their way through your Buyers Journey, trying to decide if they want to engage with your organisation or not, they need reassurances along the way.
The questions your potential clients need answering might include:
- Do people working for this company know what they are doing?
- Can I trust them to do this right?
- How much experience have they got doing this for other people/companies like me/mine?
- How well do they do this?
- Do I like the way they do it?
It is our responsibility, as marketers, to answer all these questions for them.
We can do this by adopting a Known Expert strategy throughout the entire Buyers’ Journey, which answers all of their often unasked questions.
Make space and take the time to think about:
- What questions a prospective client, new client, and current client might want to be answered?
- What reassurances a prospective client, new client, and current client might need?
Defining your ‘Known Expert’ strategy
If you think you need a Known Expert strategy, it’s good to start by defining what that means for your organisation.
The ‘Visible Expert’ was a phrase coined by the marketing group Hinge. You have probably also heard it called Thought Leadership Strategy, Expert Strategy and so on.
Hinge has a very comprehensive definition of a Visible Expert. I recommend you work through our Insights article first, then read How Ordinary Professionals Become Thought Leaders for further ideas.
A Known Expert strategy is an approach you have to marketing that relies on you clearly and consistently showing your audience that you have that combination of industry knowledge, skills and experience they are looking for.
Let’s look at a few examples:
1. An accountancy firm is operating in a competitive arena. They know their customers choose them because of their SKILLS in understanding and being able to explain complex corporate finance clearly. So their Known Expert Strategy is defined as ‘Consistently showing the skills our people have in explaining complex corporate finance’.
2. A national charity attracts and retains donors because of its KNOWLEDGE of the natural world’s benefits and its SKILL in campaigning to protect nature. Their Known Expert Strategy is defined as ‘Sharing our knowledge of the natural world and our progress and success in lobbying and campaigning.
3. A small Digital Marketing Firm is focused on becoming experts in one particular digital technology, with years of EXPERIENCE and KNOWLEDGE of that tech. Their Known Expert Strategy is defined as, ‘Highlighting our years of experience and deep knowledge in XYZ tech’.
Each of these organisations understands what elements of their experience, knowledge, and skills are essential to their market. These are what they have built their Known Expert Strategies on.
Make space to jot down ideas on:
- What is your definition of a Known Expert strategy?
- Which skills, knowledge, or experience do your clients appreciate?
- Which make you stand out from your competitors?
3. How to adopt a Known Expert strategy in your organisation
A Known Expert Strategy has to be adopted and implemented consistently throughout your entire marketing, and there are two fundamental approaches you can take:
a) Consistency in all your marketing.
This means every piece of marketing you produce has to reinforce your interpretation of an industry expert.
Ask yourself: if someone looked at our website copy, blog posts, social media posts, webinar content or any other marketing collaterals and communication, would they immediately know what we were experts in?
b) Key pieces of marketing.
These need to be defined by what your audience needs to see, hear, read or watch at different stages of the Buyers Journey.
Identify the most common channels, techniques and tools that you use for your businesses and then make sure that they reflect your experience, knowledge and expertise. This includes things like websites, social media profile descriptions.
All of these can be used to build up that Known Expert status.
Is this right for you?
A Known Expert strategy is highly effective for many organisations and businesses – it helps position you in people’s minds by creating a market status for you in a busy, competitive world, especially if you operate in a niche industry.
If it is the right approach for your business, then we can help you make it happen. We recommend you do our online course, ‘How to develop a Known Expert Strategy’ so you know what you have to do and how, so you can start reaping the rewards of being the expert.
