Many of us want to grow our business, but not everyone knows how. In this short article Legal Growth will be sharing five tips to help grow communities of people that will deliver business growth. We’ll also share how to utilise and harness these communities.
Firstly, and apologies if we’re teaching you to suck eggs, we define communities (in marketing terms) as groups of people with shared interests. This can be anything from a shared interest in private client work, to those with an interest in growing their business organically using LinkedIn, to being a small business owner in a specific geographic location.
The most important thing to understand when it comes to community-based marketing, or as we call it – Position of Authority Marketing is that it’s all about building trust. If you can’t build trust with your target market, then they’re not going to want to do business with you.
One of the best ways to build trust is by creating and participating in communities. When people see you as an expert in your field and someone who is actively engaged in helping others, they are much more likely to want to do business with you. It’s therefore important to participate in these communities.
When it comes to Position of Authority Marketing, there are three key things (our first three tips) you need to remember:
Tip 1
Positioning: You need to be positioned as an expert in your field. This can be achieved by writing articles, blog posts, whitepapers or even creating video content. We can support with any of these, if needed.
Tip 2
Participation: You need to participate in communities related to your target market. This means being active on social media, answering questions, providing helpful advice and joining in discussions. Sometimes it’s as simple as sharing a link to an article you’ve seen.
Tip 3
Proof: You need to provide proof that you are an expert in your field. This could be testimonials from happy clients, case studies or even awards you’ve won. In the Private Client space, The British Wills and Probate Awards are the creme de la creme for position of authority building. An example of proof is that the Legal Growth Founder – Tom Stansfield wrote a book titled “Succession – 101 Tips to grow your estate planning business” which has worked perfectly for building trust and sharing knowledge.
Our fourth tip is centred around how to control the community:
Tip 4
Another principle to consider when it comes to using communities is to “own the asset”. In principle, this concerns being in control of the group for example running a networking group or creating a newsletter etc.
If you’re not in control of the asset, then you’re at the mercy of whoever is.
Tip 5
The final tip we have for Position of Authority Marketing using communities is to focus on quality, not quantity. It’s much better to have a smaller group of engaged and interested people than a large group who are unengaged.
Ultimately communities are a great way to build relationships and to build a position of authority marketing. The key is to focus on quality over quantity, and to be genuinely interested and helpful.
If you want to know more about Position of Authority Marketing or how Legal Growth can help you grow your business using Position of Authority Marketing, then please get in touch. We offer a free initial consultation so that we can get to understand your business and how we can help.
