Overland Park, Kansas, Sept. 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- It used to be easy. If you had a business, you had a website. On that website you listed your services and qualifications. People looking for those services and for someone with your qualifications would search you out and call you. They would hire you and you would make money. It was easy.
Now there are lots of people that do what you do, or at least pretend to do what you do. They get online and list the same services you do, they list the same qualifications you do. The average joe has no idea the difference between you and them. Some of the people that used to hire you, start hiring them. They make money and you make less money.
So what do you do? You start to differentiate yourself. If potential customers are going to see your website and their website, you better provide some value that your competition doesn’t. You better be different in a sea of “the same.” If you don’t differentiate yourself, you’re going to get lost with everyone else.
The answer is education. If you want everyone to know what an expert you are in a field, telling them you are an expert isn’t going to make them believe it. Unfortunately, being an expert is something only validated by exhibition of one’s expertise to an audience. Consumers don’t trust credentials near the same as they used to. So if you want someone to think you are an expert, you better pony up and prove it to them and you better do it quick because there is another guy/website waiting in the wings if you can’t sell them on your expertise quickly. Again, the answer is education.
Alright expert, don’t sell me, educate me. Whatever your expertise is, a consumer has landed on your website and now is your chance to show them you’re an expert in the field. Give away information, tell them the tricks of the trade, explain how things work. Give away your secrets to convince them you are an expert. If you do this you will rock the boat. Others in your industry will not understand, they will think you are crazy for giving away valuable information. Others in your industry will say, “Well why do they need us, you’ve just taught them how to do our job?” Others in your industry will scoff at your attempts to educate and grasp onto the “old way” of here are my services and here are my credentials.
The one undeniable and unmistakable maxim that you can rely on, is that people are lazy and they want to know just enough to feel they have put their trust in an expert or they don’t value expertise and will never hire an expert anyways. You are not going to miss out on business because you educated someone on how to do something in your field of expertise. People are lazy and just want to know enough to pick an expert in the field. The few people that will attempt to use the knowledge you imparted on them were never going to hire you anyway because they don’t value expertise.
Here is an example of this mantra of education put into practice.
Roth Davies, LLC is a law firm in Overland Park, Kansas. The firm is successful and has been around since 2010. The firm specializes in person injury, criminal defense and family law. The firm began with a simple website displaying fields of practice and credentials of the lawyers at the firm. The firm did well with this model for a few years. Potential clients sought out lawyers with certain skills, they observed those skills on the website. Potential clients set up appointments to meet the perceived expert; at that initial meeting the lawyer displayed his/her expertise and the client hired the firm. Roth Davies, LLC made money and the client had access to the lawyer’s expertise to solve the client’s problem.
As the firm got bigger and online competition got more saturated there were essentially more firms in the same, “business space” as Roth Davies, LLC. More firms claiming the same qualifications and expertise ment Roth Davies, LLC needed to compete for new clients. The necessity of differentiation to succeed was apparent. The firm tried many different iterations of delivery on its website; including mixed media approaches with videos, snipets of valuable information with a call to action to contact the firm directly. The firm finally settled with its most successful strategy to date. The strategy was simply to educate on all aspects and not hold any information back from the end user.
The education strategy had a high barrier to entry and also a higher than previously tolerated risk profile. In other words, this strategy was going to take a lot of time and effort and might just cost the firm clients. In essence, the firm was going to teach users how to understand legal work for themselves and in doing so might provide some clients with a mechanism not to hire a lawyer at all thus costing the firm money. The education was risky but did provide one undoubted consequence, establishing expertise. Focus group after focus group and end user alike all rated the expertise level of the author as off the charts high. The no reserve, no call to action, unfettered education on a topic with no expectation of reward or acknowledgement created the perception of expertise in the end user. The perception of expertise is the functional realization of expertise in reality, so what the firm had created was expertise.
So what did the firm learn from this? Without a doubt the firm had created a perception of a high level of expertise in a subject and put that in front of a potential client. Now would the consumer act? With no call to action, no “call us” for more information, no nothing, the consumer reacted. The consumer called. However, this consumer was slightly different than before, when this consumer called the firm, the firm already had the shroud of expertise, there was a lot less of a sales pitch to this new consumer. What the firm had was a consumer whom had already recognized them as an expert.
So how does all this work? Businesses adopting this approach must accept the idea that being perceived as an expert is valuable to most consumers. Most consumers want to hire an expert and know just enough about a subject to differentiate an expert from a non-expert when making hiring decisions. Lastly, you aren’t going to convince a person whom doesn’t value expertise to hire an expert. Those non-believers can’t be sold and by definition can’t be convinced.
How do you put this strategy into play once you’ve adopted the above? Start. Start by taking your topic of expertise and generating content for your company’s website in excruciating detail. Start with a step-by-step of a complicated process and then break it down further. Explain every detail of a process and then the rationale behind each process, give your thoughts and inside tips along the way. The more detail you can provide the more expertise you will glean from the end user.
Media Details
Company: ROTH DAVIES, LLC
Person name: Brandan
Email: Brandan@rothdavies.com
Website: http://www.rothdavies.com/