If you’ve read even just a few of my blogs, you’ll know that I believe that sharing your expertise is a great way to promote your business and grow your reputation. So in this blog, now that we’ve reached K in the A-Z of Marketing, I thought I would write more about the importance of Knowledge and how you can use it in your marketing.

Effective marketing is not about selling your services or about telling people what makes you so great. Successful marketing is about sharing your knowledge.

Why does sharing your knowledge help? When you provide a service, such as coaching, consulting or training, you can’t sell it as you would sell a product, by comparing it to another one. A service is intangible and you’re actually selling your time and expertise, so you need a way in which to demonstrate it. Sharing your knowledge is an excellent way of doing this. Here are some ways in which you can do it:

• Become an expert. When you specialise in what you do, you can use your marketing to demonstrate your specialist knowledge and establish your reputation as an expert in your field. Experts tend to be held in higher regard, are more in demand and can usually charge more than someone who is not an expert. Sharing your knowledge through publishing regular newsletters and blogs is a great way to do this. You can also write a book, or you can share your knowledge by giving talks and running webinars. When you do this on a regular basis and with generosity – without expecting to sell something every time – then you will start to build up your reputation as an expert.

Some words of caution about trying to become an expert – it won’t happen overnight and you really do need to know what you’re talking about. I once met someone who told me that he was a Social Media expert. When I asked how long he had been running his business, he told me he had been doing it and using social media for a year. In my opinion, that’s not long enough to become an expert!

Also, I don’t believe that you can call yourself an expert. Whether you are one or not depends on your reputation and what other people think about you. You need to wait for someone else to tell you (and other people) that you’re an expert in your field!

• Go into detail. Don’t assume that everyone else knows how to do what you do. If you treat people as if they don’t know much about your specialist area, then you can explain the details that you might normally skip over. This will help to establish your reputation and people who know very little about your subject will be grateful that you take the time to explain it. This applies to anything that you write, what you say at networking meetings, and in talks and presentations that you give.

The cautionary note – don’t try to build your reputation by showing off and using lots of industry jargon. Just as important is that you don’t go the opposite way by sounding patronising, as this will undo all your hard work!

• Give it away. The more help and advice that you give away for free, the more people will come to you when they’re ready to pay for your time and expertise. Closely guard all your knowledge and your potential clients will see you as someone who isn’t happy to share or help them. People will generally look for someone more generous to do business with. I wrote about the importance of Generosity in a previous blog in this series and it really applies when you’re sharing your knowledge.

The extra bit – treat all your prospects as if they are clients. Give them as much help as you would give to a client, even if they’re not paying for it. Don’t hold back and make sure that all the free advice that you give away is top quality. Don’t save the good stuff for the people who are paying for it. I know some companies that will only send their free newsletter to their paying clients and not to their prospects. I think they are missing a trick.

Share your knowledge and your ideas with your prospects and you will be able to build your reputation, as well as a loyal army of clients.

If you’re not sure of the best ways in which to share your knowledge and expertise, get in touch and I can share with you lots of ideas on the tools that you can use to do this. Call me on 01635 578 500 or click here to email me.