Position Your Company as an Industry Expert

Here's a market niche that's crying to be filled. Reposition your company as the source for industry information - as the expert in the industry - and you'll be amazed at the increase in business that results.

First do some homework. Read everything you can get your hands on to keep abreast of industry trends, developments and forecasts.

You can have somebody ghostwrite a book or report for you that you disseminate through press releases, trade journals or have the publication available free to anybody who wants it. It can also be distributed for free and/or sold by people who own bookstores.

Approach bookstores and offer to allow them to sell your publication and keep all the money for themselves - just for showcasing the book. If it's a report, you can have people give it out as a bonus or let them sell it for pure profit. You're getting all the free publicity you could hope for, and the only costs are your writing and printing expenses.

You could put on seminars throughout your area - either free or for a low cost. You could team up with other business experts who have complementary products or services and who are noncompetitive with you, to organize the seminars. For example, if you're an accountant you could get together with a financial planner, an attorney and a management consultant and do seminars on how entrepreneurs can protect and increase their wealth in the coming years.

You can buy time on radio stations for half-hour shows. You can become the keynote speaker at all sorts of organizational meetings. You can start hosting regular breakfast and lunch meetings at your facility (or at a restaurant) on the subject that you're expert in. You can publicize yourself and your product.

In fact, you can get on radio talk shows at no cost simply by calling them and applying. This also ties in with, making yourself a personality in your business. If you become widely recognized as an authority (and this takes years) you instill confidence in your customers.

This is a form of branding. In other words, it's a powerful method of brand recognition, which automatically leads customers to you and your product.

One obvious way to do this is to title your company under your name. For example, I like Harry Brown Motors better than Fourth Street Auto. Use your picture in your ads and sales literature. However when you make yourself a personality, you better follow through with service and quality, otherwise negative word of mouth will rapidly make your name mud.

Start sending out lots of press releases. You'll get reporters calling you. Start a local, regional or national telephone information hotline service. You can have a free, informative recording. At the end of the recording, make this proposition: "If you want more information, call this number and talk to one of our specialists."

Conversely, you could have a paid hotline (900 line) that gives advice people perceive as valuable that you sell to people. It's inexpensive to run and can be a nice little business.

Every business has untold opportunities to educate. For example, a stock brokerage firm should educate its prospects about its services, the investments it has available, its financial strength, the number of people it employs in research to help the client, the trading staff, special employees and other interesting and helpful facts. Beyond the standard research reports, it should have books and reports that teach and encourage stock and bond investing .

Educate people to appreciate the value of your products and services. You can't appreciate value in a vacuum. You can't appreciate anything until you're educated about it. Most people forget this when it comes to marketing and they lose millions of dollars!