5 Ways to Position Your Business as an Authority in Your Field
There are plenty of benefits to positioning your business as an authority in your field. It’s good for your SEO, it’ll help you bag more sales, and it can boost your brand awareness.
But how can you go about it? Here are my top tips.
Focus on a niche
When you want people to start seeing you as an expert in a particular area, you’ll need to choose a niche and stick with it. You need to assess your skills and interests, and try to choose an area you’re passionate about so it’s easier to stay focused.
Let’s take a look at some businesses that have been able to choose a clear niche, and that are reaping the rewards as a result.
There are many digital marketing agencies out there, but Esq Marketing focuses on helping law firms improve their online presences and promote themselves. All of their services and content are planned with this in mind. Their guide to SEO for law firms is a great example.
Although niching down can shrink your target audience, it will make it easier for you to reach the right people and position yourself as an authority.
inVPN.com is another company that has chosen to focus on a very specific niche. The website strictly publishes content about VPNs, and their guide to lifetime VPN accounts is a great example.
If the site wanted to branch out, it could publish more content about other aspects of the online and digital world, but they’ve chosen a niche and are sticking to it, which makes it much easier for this company to position itself as an authority in the field of VPNs.
Offer free but valuable resources
If you want to attract your ideal audience and show off your expertise, it’s a good idea to offer free but valuable resources. Here are some of the different types you could make.
Tools and templates
Templates are usually free reusable files or documents that serve as a standard guide for people to follow, while tools could be interactive content like calculators or quizzes.
For example, HubSpot offers a great free tool in the form of its free return on investment calculator. This allows business owners to work out how much money they can expect to make by running paid advertisements.
Another example comes from PandaDoc, a software solution that helps businesses handle transactions. They have over 450 helpful templates people can use for free, which shows they’re experts in their field.
Webinars
You could hold free webinars about topics that affect your audience and provide helpful information on addressing these issues.
For instance, The Million Dollar Agency is a company that helps agencies to grow and scale their business past the seven-figure mark. They offer free webinars to help people with their digital marketing efforts. This allows them to show off their expertise and position the business as an authority in this field.
Video tutorials
Video tutorials allow you to provide in-depth information in an engaging visual format. If you need inspiration, Grammarly has a great video tutorial on how to use their spelling and grammar checking tool to improve your writing.
Although providing your customers with these free tutorials won’t make you money immediately, they’re great for showing off your expertise and building trust. It will pay off in the long run.
Anticipate common questions and answer them with content
If you can answer the questions people have about your specialist topic, they’ll start to see you as an authority in your field. There are a number of ways you can identify the questions you should be answering.
The first is through keyword research. You can use a tool like Google Keyword Planner to see which kinds of queries your target audience are typing into search engines. By answering these questions, you can boost your SEO and attract more high-quality website traffic.
You can also get inspiration by listening to the questions you receive directly from your customers, either through your customer service channels or on social media. Look out for queries that keep coming up and then address them with your content.
For inspiration, let’s take a look at some companies that are already doing a great job of creating content that answers common questions relevant to their target audiences.
An excellent example of a company that provides answers to relevant and common questions through its content is My Canada Payday. The loan provider is trying to reach people who are looking for financial advice or assistance, so a lot of their content focuses on answering common questions people have about money. For instance, they have a guide to how student loans work in Canada.
This is a topic that’s going to be super relevant to a large segment of their target audience, and will attract people who are looking for more information about loans, their finances, and general money management.
Another example comes from FreshBooks, an accounting software company that uses its website content to answer financial questions small business owners and freelancers might have.
For instance, they’ve created a guide that answers the FAQ “Should I hire an accountant for my business?”. In this post, they outline everything from the definition of an accountant to the process of finding one if a small business wishes to hire someone to manage their money for them. This is an example of a comprehensive guide that shows their expertise as an authority in the accounting niche.
If you’re looking to position yourself as an authority in your field, think about what questions people are asking and start answering them — it won’t be long before people start realizing you really know your stuff.
Try public speaking and guest blogging
To position yourself as an authority in your field, you’ll want to get your name out there. Two of the best ways to do this are through public speaking and blogging for other websites in your niche.
When it comes to finding public speaking opportunities, you’ll want to join business networking groups, build relationships with other experts, and contact the organizers of events you’re interested in. It shouldn’t be long before you get your first gig.
It you would like to give guest blogging a try, use a search engine to find popular sites in your niche and reach out to see if they take expert posts. And, once you start to get published, make sure you promote your posts on social media — the requests will eventually start rolling in.
Before you put yourself up for these activities, try to make sure you are familiar with public speaking and that you’re confident you can create credible and quality content for guest posting.
Explore your specialist topic with in-depth content
One of the best ways to show you know a lot about a topic is to create comprehensive guides imparting everything you know. These are often called ultimate guides and should answer all of the questions someone might have about a subject.
When you are creating a comprehensive guide, ensure that you are using sufficient examples and case studies to explain your topic thoroughly. Readers will be more likely to see you as an authority when high-quality statistics and examples back up your claims.
Here are examples of businesses that are already using this tactic to position themselves as authorities in their fields.
Venveo, an agency that specializes in the marketing of building materials, has created an ultimate guide on marketing to architects. It’s very comprehensive and includes numerous examples and statistics.
They have managed to create 7 comprehensive chapters that include case studies, statistics, and examples on how their readers can effectively market to their target audience. Now that is a company with expertise and authority in its field.
Similarly, Lawsuit Legal, a law firm that specializes in workplace disputes, has created a guide to employment laws that outlines everything worth knowing.
This guide helps to establish the company as an authority in its field, because it shows that its team really understands their area of work. They aren’t just generalists — they’re experts in employment law, so there’s no doubt that they’ll be able to help you with a problem you might have in this area.
Continental Message Solution offers phone answering services for businesses. In a guide to setting up an answering service for medical practices, they show off their expertise and what they’re capable of.
It’s clear from this article that they really understand their niche, as well as their customers and their pain points. If you cater to a specific segment of people, or have a specific service you want to teach people more about, writing an in-depth guide is a great way to do this. It shows you should be the go-to company to help solve their problem..
Summary
Positioning your business as an authority in your field is an excellent way to build trust and gain your customers’ loyalty. It also helps to convince prospects that they should be buying from you.
Niche down, offer free resources, and take advantage of public speaking and guest blogging opportunities. Over time, you’ll start to see plenty of additional sales off the back of it.
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Adam Steele is COO and co-founder of Loganix, which is an SEO fulfillment partner for digital marketing agencies and professionals. The company provides the SEO services that businesses need to grow and achieve their goals. If you enjoyed this article, you can find more SEO guides and templates on the Loganix blog.
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