Creating Intellectual Property to Attract Business

A successful client who is a specialist in his industry recently asked me how to improve his marketing efficiency and effectiveness. The most important method is to continually create and provide valuable information to your clients, former clients and target market.

Here are three ways to create powerful intellectual property (IP) and enhance your brand.

1. Topic
   What is your area of expertise? If your brand is about running and growing manufacturing businesses, then don’t start writing about landscaping or financial services. This would potentially confuse your target market.

Use specific examples. For example (see, it works!), many consultants and business advisors are more comfortable writing about their 18 steps and methodology…which their clients don’t care about. Clients care about results. Therefore, write about results and support this with client testimonials and case studies.

2. Focus
   Who is your ideal client? Write to and for a specific reader: your ideal client. If it’s a company with two or two hundred employees, then write for them. It’s okay to write for multiple audiences as long as you are clear who your specific reader is for that article.

It’s easier to build credibility when you write for a larger company because a smaller company can learn from this and aspire to grow. It’s more difficult for a larger company to say that advice targeted for a small company is relevant for them as well.

For example, “When I work with fast growth mid-market companies, we put in place information systems that tells them how fast they are growing. A race car that can travel at 250 mph needs a speedometer that can handle that speed. The speedometer in my old Datsun that maxed out at an optimistic 100 mph isn’t going to work in a race car.”

3. Alignment
   As your clients implement your advice, they will continue to grow and be more successful. Your advice needs to be aligned with their current and future needs and not their past needs. As Marshall Goldsmith says, “What got you here won’t keep you here.”

Sharing Your Message
Now that you’ve created a valuable piece of advice, how do you share it? Fortunately, technology enables and empowers you to create dramatic leverage. You can:

1. send it out via an electronic or print newsletter

2. post it on your blog

3. store it in the “Free Resources” section of your website

4. create a podcast and post on iTunes (and your website and your blog)

5. create a video and post on YouTube (and your website and your blog)

6. advice from my marketing guru, Chad Barr, "send the article to a specific client or prospect along with a note that says that you’d like to discuss some ideas you have to help them grow their business and request a meeting or a call

7. write a key point and share on social media along with a link to your full article

8. gather your articles and ideas and assemble them into a booklet or book

Next Steps
Who is your ideal client or customer? What are their top three needs, challenges or opportunities? What do they need to do to become more successful?

With thanks to my marketing mentors and gurus, Chad Barr, Alan Weiss and Zlatan Fazlagic.