Experts Offer Something That No One Else Can
Experts provide unique and in-depth knowledge like no-one else. Their perspectives and opinions are based on experience and skill, gained through research, education, and practice. That’s why experts are trusted and viewed as an authority. That’s why, according to research carried out by Forresster, customers are more likely to take action when they perceive a brand as trustworthy, helpful and valuable.
Most organisations are bursting with experts who have insights, solutions and recommendations. To understand the role your experts can play in realising your marketing goals, you must first identify experts within your organisation and figure out what knowledge and experience they hold that is of real value to your customers. Only then, can you create compelling expert-led marketing content.
Here is the Expert Takes guide to identifying experts in your organisation.
What Do Experts Offer?
Identifying experts in your organisation isn’t always obvious or easy. It’s tempting to assume that experts must have practical knowledge to share. This is not always the case.
We’ve learned from working with clients across a variety of sectors and business types that you will often find experts in roles and parts of an organisation that you don’t expect.
When you’re trying to identify potential experts to speak on behalf of your business, it is important to look beyond the job titles and discover what value colleagues can offer your customers. If you can share this through your content marketing, you can create awareness, gain trust, and win more customers.
Identifying an Expert – Five Tell Tale Signs You Have An Expert On Your Hands
Thought Leadership research undertaken by Orbit Media and Mantis Research (2020) revealed that thought leaders don’t have to be high-profile. For audiences to be persuaded by content, they think it should be educational, drive action, use data, say something new, and cause discussion.
What differentiates experts and expert-led content is that it offers all, or some, of the following attributes AND substantiates it with data, evidence, or real-life experience.
Persuasive, compelling and credible experts offer five things:
- Experience: Experts have experience that customers can benefit from. They can share relatable real-life examples and case studies to illustrate the practical applications of their expertise. This fosters trust in a product or service and tells your customers you know what you’re doing.
- Unique Perspectives: Experience allows experts to have valuable, innovative, and thought-provoking perspectives on their subject matter. Whether that’s the direction of a particular industry or the impact of socio-economic activity on the future of certain products, your expert’s experience allows them to have a respected and persuasive point of view.
- Evidence Based Insights: Experts can share industry trends, emerging practices, and valuable insights into specific problems. Their expertise allows them to demonstrate a deep understanding of a topic or subject. Helping customers understand why a problem is arising, and what they need to focus on to relieve it is invaluable and lets them know your organisation can be trusted to do the job.
- Feasible Solutions: Experts can present solutions with detail – their expertise means they can identify benefits and offer effective solutions that are based on a clear understanding of their impact on a customer or organisation. Giving personalised recommendations or advice on the specific needs and goals of potential customers is a powerful way to build trust in your product or service.
- Valuable Recommendations: Experts recommendations are hard to beat. They can present ways for you to resolve issues, address pains and help your customers achieve goals. As experts they can be transparent about possible limitations, challenges and risks associated with certain solutions, fostering trust with your customers through honesty.
Conclusion
Recognising the role of experts is the first step toward unleashing the full potential of expert-led content and enhancing your marketing efforts.
Now that you know how to identify the experts within your organisation, why not consider integrating them into your B2B marketing strategy?
Stay tuned for our next blog post on aligning experts with precise marketing goals – the essential next step in transforming expertise into a successful content marketing strategy.
Learn more about Expert takes
Expert Takes is an end-to-end content marketing solution that makes it easy for organisations to tap into their expertise to produce content that achieves business goals.
Find out more about how Expert Takes works, check out our pricing page, or contact us directly.
1 How Customers Think, Feel, And Act: The Paradigm Of Business Outcomes (2019) Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By FocusVision – link
