Loading...
Answers
MenuHow can I establish myself as a recognized expert in my industry in order to reach my target market?
I am in the consulting industry and I am looking to expand to more consumers and hopefully increase my fees too.
Answers
What I've done is write a book... Eventually there were 4 books and other special reports.
I sell them on Amazon but often give them away to prospective clients.
There is no greater pleasure than to submit a proposal to a prospect which includes the words...' I am an expert in this area and the author of the 2014 Best-Selling book on the topic...
The second step is to implement a social media strategy based on groups.
Set up a call with me if you'd like to know what else I've done.
Cheers
Dave
The key is visibility, social media campaigns are free and fabulous if you create the right content. Affiliations with organisations who serve your target market are also great for building your profile
☝ Stand out
It's not enough to work hard, you also have to sell yourself the same way, and that's where most people fail. Being an expert is important, but it's not enough. Anyone wanting to impact other people's lives and get results also needs to be recognized by their expertise. It's like having the most awesome product in the world but nobody knows about it.
While sharing your knowledge in blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin can help attract people that think like you do and may be able to pay for what you know, social media also mean more competition. That's the problem these days, there's a lot of noise.
☝ You can start by
♢ building a network of people you trust, those that can help you improve your ideas before you get them out into the world
♢ building an audience of people relating to your niche, by sharing your ideas
☝ Sharing is caring
Don't be afraid of sharing your knowledge for free. You don't need to give away everything, focus on the benefits of what they need to do, and less on the how. People hesitate to pay a lot for consulting, workshops or your product if they don't know who you are or what you think.
Look at what other people have done: Gary Vaynerchuk rose to fame by making videos promoting his wine business. Since then, he's been recognized as a social media guru, hustler, author of best seller books and TV appearances. He built his reputation by making low budget videos, getting them online and hustling so that they would be noticed.
☝ Have your own voice
If you're an expert and you want to be known, you need to stand out. In the real world, there are other experts in the same niche you're in, so you don't want to be like everyone else. When you stand out, you'll be the one that people will go to when they need a problem solver.
You can't be doing what everybody else is doing, and repeating the same mantra. Have your own mantra, and don't be afraid to have a different opinion. If they go left, you go right, if they go down, you go up. You'll eventually be seen as someone who isn't afraid to go against the herd, confident enough to tell it like it is and people will start seeing you as a leader.
As I tell many of my clients, before you get into the tactics, figure out your broader strategy: What do you stand for? What market need are you addressing? Who comprises your target market? What headaches are you resolving? What are you trying to achieve with your business?
Once you have all of that figured out, then develop a marketing strategy, including whatever tactics make the most sense for your services within the target market.
In short, you must build a brand around your business, and if your business is freelance consulting, that brand is you.
Good luck and let me know if you need more assistance.
To establish yourself as a recognized expert in your industry to reach your target market keep the following points in mind:
1. Become a specialist
What it does is dilute your value proposition and position you as a Jack or Jill of all trades, rather than an expert in your particular field.
2. Voice your educated opinion
As you begin to gain traction as an industry expert, people will expect you to have an opinion and provide recommendations based upon that opinion.
3. Use social media as a means of promoting your expertise
Social media allows you to potentially reach thousands of like-minded people within your industry.
4. Stay abreast of the latest industry news
People will have difficulty viewing you as an expert if you are stuck in the past without a clear understanding of the latest events in your industry. However, it is not always easy to find the time to stay on top of industry news.
5. Publish articles on LinkedIn
When you publish on LinkedIn, you can reach the largest group of professionals gathered online.
6. Harrison, Entrepreneur and Networking Expert
Publishing helpful articles on LinkedIn is an effective way to develop your professional identity and share valuable insight with thousands of industry connections.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Related Questions
-
Quitting job with after 5+ years and no references because I had to sue my employer. How can I manage this situation with my future employers?
Remember having a friend in a similar situation. This was my advice in that moment: -Make a list of the top 50 clients you had in the consulting firm, choose those which you had a close relationship and can actually talk about you (not fake it) -Call them and ask them if they believe you did a good job and if they were satisfied with your services. If the answer is yes, then here you have two options 1-Ask them if you can use them as reference. Don't talk about your ex employer. He doesn't matter. This is between you and them. Don't talk bad about him/her, it doesn't help. If they say yes, you are up to a start 2-If you ask and they say no, then you can make a decision. You can put them anyways and they will be called by your interviewer (not necessary they would talk to him or say good things, it's a risk) or you can just name the companies without a persons name or contact info Hope this helped! Good luckJC
-
How should I approach starting a coaching business when I am still job hunting?
Catch 22? Not at all...You need to project your weakness ( according to you) as a strength. Be open and bold about your online business. It is work experience and not a career break! You take that experience to the companies who are in the same line of business and you are very exciting for them. Please dont waste your time with recruiters. They have fixated ideas and mandates and can rarely identify or appreciate real talent. You need to get rid off your baggage you are carrying in your head. Your non-profit work would never become a business as your target customers cant afford to pay. Keep it that way and continue doing good karma. Join relevant LinkedIn groups based on your business and connect with like minded people. Target businesses in the same domain and directly contact them seeking appointments with hiring managers. Go as an entrepreneur and explore synergies. There is no shame in saying that your business did not work. But analyze why. If you feel that it is only because you did not promote it actively, then please go ahead and promote the hell out of it. Being an entrepreneur is the best work experience any employer can get as you would know the entire business cycle. You never know, your promotion, done in the right way may actually create more jobs!FS
-
What do you recommend I should invest my time and knowledge into at 18, that will impact my future for the better?
What's your end goal? Do you want to be a great employee? Or a business owner? What kind of a business owner--hands on, or Olympian? Big differences. Specialized skills are what's necessary for being a great employee or hands-on business owner. If you want to be a leading, delegating, deal-making business owner, then you need a different skill set. In either case, simply knowing what you want and being able to articulate it will put you ahead of 99% of the pack. Most people have no idea what they want and drift from thing to thing...their next job is similar to their last, or the first one that was offered to them... You can literally shave years off your career path by being ultra-clear on your target and going straight for it. I've had employers create custom roles for me four times. Each one knocked several years off my career path. It's why I was a production manager with six supervisors and over 150 floor employees reporting to me at 26. I created that job, by sending the employer a package detailing my plan and requirements. Want to partner with the best to learn specialized skills? Sell them on the idea of why they need to hire YOU and only you. Want to learn the art of deal making, delegating and other soft skills? Sell the right kind of business owner on why they need to hire YOU and only you as their assistant. Get IN. Once you're IN, you will get a completely different view of the world. For example, I worked for a national electrical wholesaler for four years. A guy was an accounting clerk when I started, and after awhile he got promoted to assistant to the GM for an area with 11 branches. That guy instantly got access to all the high level data and IN on the decision making at that level. He got to see the issues, information, solutions, and people who played at that level. Near the end of my time there I did a stock tracking project and worked with him. On my first day, I was shocked to see all this data. I was suddenly IN. Nobody else in my department got to see this data. And it was "no big thang" for these head office guys; they worked at this level every day. Set your target and get IN. I bet you cut 10 years off your learning curve by doing so.JK
-
How can I make a small, profitable business on Wordpress?
It sounds like you have plenty of skills to get started now. There's no need to keep re-training in different areas when you have experience to get started today. My suggestion would be to pick a niche and try and become the go-to guy in that particular niche. Let's say, for example, you are interested in men's fashion. You have experience in creating Wordpress ecommerce sites. You could call up maybe 10-15 of the local businesses in that niche in your local city/state and offer to make their website and get them in on a set-up fee and then a monthly maintenance retainer. This approach would be lower stress (because it's something you're interested in) and also because you could create a methodical framework that you could apply to other businesses in that niche. That's just one idea. Second idea - create a course on WooCommerce development and put it on Udemy (or Coursera etc). Note down 10 of the biggest obstacles you've had to overcome when building sites for friends and family and then note down 10 of the most important considerations people should consider before people get started. Now you've got 20 video lessons for your course. Charge for the course on Udemy or use it as a marketing tool to get more b2b development work. Idea 3: Go make money on freelancer.com, peopleperhour etc. Perhaps you've tried this already? Skills like yours are in demand on those platforms. Idea 4: Take the things I noted in the second idea above, and turn it into a handbook. Sell that book via Amazon. Idea 5: Go on Tweetdeck. Create a column that searches for people who are using keywords like "Wordpress woocommerce issue" "Wordpress woocommerce help" "WordPress woocommerce problem". Give them your clairty.fm link and tell them you'd be happy to have 5 minute discussion to see if you could help them resolve their problem. Idea 6: Find 10 major theme development companies. Sign up to their help or support forums. Do a similar thing to what's noted above on Twitter and offer to have a quick call via clarity.fm to see if you could help. Idea 7: Go down the route of finding existing Wordpress/Woocommerce blogs. Write posts for them about specific WooCommerce issues, problem solving or project management tips. Do this with the aim of improving your inbound consulting gigs. Idea 8: Do the exact opposite of whatever those friends are telling you. Idea 9: With your skills you could easily start a dropshipping company. I won't go into all the details here but just start looking at sites like Clickbank or Product Hunt to get a feel for something you're interested in. Build your site and start dropshipping products. https://www.woothemes.com/2015/06/dropshipping-beginners-guide/ Wordpress consulting alone, yeah it's probably quite competitive, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of opportunities for revenue. I think you will be even more motivated, successful and less stressed if you pick a niche industry, product or service to focus on. Enjoy it!SC
-
How can I develop a good client base on Upwork or Elance as a freelancer?
I do a lot of business with people on Elance (which is now being merged into Upwork and is going away, so stick with Upwork). The real challenge for US-based workers (which you may or may not be) is the price competitive nature of jobs when competing against an international workforce. There are always going to be great workers in every country and sometimes in certain areas you just can't compete on price. For example, I do a lot of business with great people in the Philippines and their work is excellent, they speak perfect English, and they are very affordable. What I usually tell people who are first getting into the space is to be honest about that in your profile and do some jobs for near-free with private pricing so you can build up your profile with good ratings. There are some disadvantages to this approach, but I find it helps to get some jobs under your belt with employers. One of the keys is going to be differentiation. You have your industry listed but skills, language, specific experience, and other niche items are really going to help here. I'm a consumer of a lot of Upwork contractors so I'm happy to do a call and discuss my experience with you. I work with people all over the world on a regular basis and I've built my business around these assets.DL
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.