In our short marketing course today, here’s a quick look at one of the most important marketing tools for professionals and small businesses—becoming a specialist expert is a very specific niche. Becoming a specialist expert will help you sleep easier at night because you’ll suddenly have an edge over competitors that makes bringing in new customers and clients much easier. For today’s short marketing course, especially if you’re a professional, I’d like to show you how building your customer base is much simpler when you become a specialist expert, focusing on a narrow specialty.

A friend of mine, Neils, is an insurance rep with a booming business where others are struggling. His secret that applies to today’s short marketing course?

He has chosen to focus ONLY on construction-related clients. Specializing on construction-related clients was a no-brainer for him because he previously ran his family’s construction business.

But there’s an important message here for professionals that should not be missed by anyone taking today’s short marketing course.

By concentrating on this narrow specialty, of contractors, construction companies, paving companies, civil engineers and everyone else related to the construction industry, his business has grown in good times and bad.

An important lesson for our short marketing course is this…

People trust that Neils knows stuff that a generalist would never know. Like how to time the issuing of an insurance bond so it provides the maximum protection but gets activated late enough to rack up the least costs. Or simple ways to lower workers’ comp costs, an issue of real concern to contractors.

By specializing on this narrow niche, Neils has made himself much more indispensable and valuable than any generalist could be.

Another example in our short marketing course is Albert, a financial planner who was struggling, trying to find new clients. By getting him to use the same technique, and focusing him on a single type of client, someone where he could specialize and become an expert, suddenly winning new clients becomes much easier.

For Albert, he was most comfortable with public school teachers, where he had the most experience and could relate best to them.

And this is an important element to make today’s short marketing course work for you. Make sure, if you select a specialty you are comfortable with, and one where you will be able to somehow relate to these people. Because you’ll need to educate and immerse yourself in the issues they are facing.

Just as Neils found with contractors, public school teachers have a unique set of needs and concerns regarding financial planning. By becoming an expert in all their issues, Albert would suddenly become attractive to many teachers.

Of course, today’s short marketing course strategy of finding a niche where you become the expert, extends beyond financial services.

A sign maker I know has become an expert in shopping center signage.

A lawyer friend specializes in sports athletes.

Reynolds and Reynolds was an accounting forms printer that became a huge success by working exclusively with car dealerships, particularly those catering to fleet vehicles.

Even Johnson & Johnson specialized on babies, with their highly successful Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

To become successful using today’s short marketing course strategy, you’ll need to become an expert in the needs and issues of these people you’ve targeted, at least somewhat.

Make a list of everything this type of person is concerned about. You do this through research, maybe at the local library and certainly on the Internet.

But also, ask as many of them as possible, what they like, hate and don’t know about what’s available to them. Call or visit and let them know you are only doing a survey to help you understand. And initially, do not ask for their business. Just use them as a resource, to help educate you.

To excel with today’s short marketing course strategy, you’ll need to answer these questions…

Do you know what all their issues are? Do you know all the different services like yours they have to choose from? If not, how will you find out?

Make a list of every person and resource that could help turn you into an expert in this specialty you have selected.

And a key part of becoming successful with this short marketing course strategy is this…

Remember, you don’t have the right to just suddenly hang a shingle saying you are an expert. You must earn the right to serve these customers by truly becoming an expert.

The good news is, you can start becoming expert literally within a month or two, if you force yourself to learn or read something new pertaining to them every single day… Say, devote 15 minutes a day, perhaps bathroom time, to this.

Next with today’s short marketing course strategy, once you are beginning to become an expert in understanding the needs and issues these people face, create a flyer that explains your expertise. This will help you sell and will solidify for them that you are indeed a specialist, different from all the generalists.

Attend if possible, seminars or event for these people, especially to uncover some hard to find nuggets of info interesting to them. The sign maker I just mentioned joined the ICSC, the shopping center trade association, so he could get educated directly from the industry.

Next in today’s short marketing course, if it makes sense, you may want to prepare a small seminar or workshop for clients in your specialty, perhaps in a local library.

Public libraries generally do not charge as long as you provide valuable information without blatantly selling. Usually, all you need is to provide handouts to attendees with your business card, and the seeds of business will be planted.

Besides seminars, post your flyers wherever you can and print your specialty on your business cards. When you are in networking events, let people know who specifically you are looking for…

I’m a financial planner working with public school teachers. School teachers have unique issues unlike anyone else, such as how to… such-and-such. And I specialize on their specific needs.

Hear how powerful that is?

An ideal tool to help you with today’s short marketing course is, Google Alerts. Sign up for this. It’s free. You simply enter relevant keywords pertaining to your niche, and Google will send you summaries of every new article they find throughout the Internet, on the topics you select. Tell them you only want it once a week or your mailbox will get flooded daily.

So, the point of today’s short marketing course is this…

If specializing on a very specific niche makes sense for you, becoming an expert and then capitalizing on that specialty could dramatically simplify your marketing and build a sustainable and thriving business for you.