7-Step To Turn Your Knowledge & Ideas Into Products And Services
We all have knowledge, talents, skills, ideas, or experience that we've gained over time. But, are you using these "hidden talents" that you possess to create new revenue channels, solve problems, help people, or educate and teach others what you know?
Below are 7-steps that you can follow to strategically turn your knowledge and expertise into products and services that can not only generate revenue, but also help people, help you establish authority in your market, and enable you to share your expertise with your ideal clients.
1. Identify Your Skills And Talents That Can Be Monetized
We all have different skills, talents, experiences, insights, or expertise that we've developed through work, through school, through experience, or through specialized training.
The first step is to dive into your own mind and identify which of these skills or talents can be transformed into a product, course, or program.
Here are some questions that you can ask yourself to figure out what skills or talents you can transform into a product, course or program:
1. What topic(s) do I know really well that I can share with others?
2. What areas do I possess more expertise than the average person?
3. What skills can I teach others to enhance their life?
4. What are the strategies or insights that you wish someone taught you when you were first starting out in your career or business?
5. What skills or experience have you gained through your work, career, or business that has drastically enhanced your performance?
These are good starting points that can help you identify your own strengths, so you can hone down one a few areas of expertise that are ready to be monetized.
2. Identify your ideal customer demographics and understand what problems they are facing
The greatest treasures in the world are not gold and diamonds, but the knowledge, skills, talents, books, movies, businesses, or inventions that are buried deep within us.
From a business perspective, you need to identify how you can use your knowledge to educate and empower your customers.
To do that, you need to spend some time identifying who your ideal customers are, what are their characteristics, what problems they are facing, and how you can use your experience and insights to help them.
For example, let's assume that you are about to start a financial coaching or consulting firm that helps people free up cash-flow so they can increase their monthly savings.
1. Who are your ideal clients.
2. Are they male or female.
3. What age group do they belong to.
4. Are they married or single.
5. Do they have children/dependents or not.
6. Are they employees or self-employed.
7. Are they homeowners or renters.
8. Are there certain income categories that you are looking to working with.
9. Where do they live.
10. Where are they consuming information relating to financial strategies at the moment.
11. What are some of the key areas that causes these individuals stress at the moment and how can you help them.
By going through this process, you've identified your ideal client "avatar". Now, you know who you're message is directed towards and who you're looking to help.
Without going through this process, you risk creating courses or programs that are too generalized and may not speak directly to your dream customer. The more narrow and niche you get, the easier it is to create advertisements, create posts, create landing pages and website, create video messages, and even create and sell your course or programs.
This is called "niching down". By going through this process, you can eliminate people who are not your ideal customers, and focus on creating your content and solutions specific to those customers who are most likely going to buy your product, course, or program.
The other benefit to going through this exercise is that you can use these metrics to create your advertisements using platforms like Google Ads, Youtube Ads, Facebook Ads, or even Instagram Ads (which are the most popular digital advertising platforms in the marketplace).
These platforms allow you to pinpoint your ideal customers based on these criteria, and also allow you to get even more granular, such as identifying what interests they have or where they acquire their knowledge from.
For example, they may be readers of Entrepreneur or Forbes magazine, or get their information by following a well-known influencer in their industry. The ability to pinpoint your customers at this level will give you sufficient data and metrics to create offers that resonate with your ideal customer avatar.
3. Create a presentation using Google Slides or Powerpoint to transfer your knowledge into a course or program
With the tools and technologies available in today's marketplace, like Google Slides, which is 100% free to use, there are a plethora of opportunities to create your courses, program, or service in a matter of days - all you need to do is create a simple slideshow with your content.
Google Slides requires a gmail account to access - which is also free. It also comes with pre-built templates that you can use to create your online presentation.
It has the ability to be downloaded as a PDF document, and can be accessed on the phone or the computer. It is a cloud-based platform, which means that you do not need to save it on your computer's hard-drive. It can even be accessed when you're offline.
In addition, it can be shared, it can be edited or private, and it can be used across multiple email addresses. In other words, it's a completely free software platform that allows you to create beautiful and professional slides-shows that can be monetized in your business.
Google Slides has it's own app - so you can access and edit it even from your phone.
As far as length of the slide-show or the presentation, that is up to you - you can make it short or long, depending on the message that you're looking to convey to your customers. The benefit of using Google Slides is that you can use the pre-formatted templates, edit them, and even change the slides to mix and match the exact slides, theme, pictures, or layout that you want to use.
A good webinar or presentation will generally have a title page, a table of contents page, an introduction page, 3 main points that you're going to cover, and a conclusion page with next steps.
4. Use your computer's built-in screen and audio recording software or download one to record your course or program
Whether you are using a personal computer (PC) or an Apply (Mac) - there are built-in software applications that enable you to record your screen, your video, and your voice at the same time. It's a good idea to test out these software applications before recording your course or program video or webinar to ensure you fix the slides, fix the audio settings, or the recording itself.
Once you record your video, it's a good idea to host it online on Vimeo or Youtube, so you can use those videos as the introductory video, the conversion piece itself, or to deliver your content to your customers.
If you're looking to share your content with paying customers, it might not be advisable to use a software like Youtube, which allows anyone to access the videos for free.
You can subscribe to a software like Vimeo, which allows you to make the videos private and gives you more control and access over the actual video that's being hosted on their platform. It also gives you the ability to control the user's control settings, such as the ability to pause or play, branding features, volume, and even whether the video should automatically start when the page uploads.
So, once again, you not only have these tools at your fingertips, but have the ability to create, host, and distribute your intellectual talents and skills to your dream customers with the click of a few buttons.
5. Create a website that can help your customers purchase your course or program online
Once you have the video presentation and the recording in place, you need to host the website or landing page on a platform, such as Wordpress, or more customized course hosting platforms, such Teachable, Kajabi, Clickfunnels or GohighLevel.
These platforms have been specifically designed to help you automate the manner in which you can host your videos, allow access to those who sign-up and also distribute it to members who have purchased your programs or courses.
6. Identify the different marketing avenues that you can leverage to attract your ideal customers to your course or products
The next piece of the puzzle relates to your marketing efforts and the manner in which you can advertise your courses or programs. Using digital marketing platforms like Facebook, Google, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, or more specific industry platforms can help you reach all the customers you're looking for.
Facebook advertising is relatively inexpensive to start - it costs less than $3 a day to create an advertisement and get started. Google Ads can be run for as little as $5 a day.
That means that for less than $150 a month, you can advertise your content to your dream customers and start selling your courses and programs and monetize your knowledge - how incredible is that.
Think about the traditional advertisements that you see or hear on television or radio, or even on billboards, newspapers, and bus stop banners. They cost thousands of dollars to produce, and the marketing agencies that control that real estate need a 1-month commitment (usually it's 3 or more months) - that's a risk and for that reason, you generally only come across large Fortune 500s advertising in those spots.
Digital advertising has enables small business owners to reach tens of thousands, if not millions of people with the click of a few buttons - for as little as $150 a month. Of course, to run a successful marketing campaign is a different topic all together, which will be discussed in another post.
7. Create a delivery mechanism that allows you to share your course, product, or program with your customers
The final piece of this 7-Step formula to turn your knowledge and expertise into products and services in order to monetize what you know relates to your delivery systems.
Once a customer purchases your product, course, program or service - how are you going to deliver your solution to them.
There are three choices here:
1. You can deliver it in a 1:1 fashion - which means you can work with each customer individually and set a schedule that will determine how they are going to be helped, similar to how most lawyers or accountants or doctors help clients.
2. You can choose to deliver it at scale which is a 1:many fashion - which means you can work with multiple people at once. This is ideal for those looking to sell courses or even group coaching/consulting programs.
For courses, you can digitize your delivery systems so the paying customers has access to a database of videos, templates, or training sessions that they can consume (similar to how online classrooms are conducted). This also works well with group coaching programs where customers watch videos, implement certain components of what you teach, and then join group workshops or training sessions to get answers to their questions.
3. You can incorporate both of these models, have a 1:1 and 1:many delivery system, which entails both of the above strategies.
To sum it up, you have a concrete 7-step detailed process that can be used by new or even seasoned entrepreneurs to create digital courses, products, programs or services and set you on the right path towards monetizing your knowledge and skills in a digital or virtual economy.
Whether you are in the medical industry, law, accounting, finance, insurance, health, wellness, mindset, strategy, relationship, property, investment, or entrepreneurship space, this 7-part process can help you create new revenue streams, monetize your knowledge and skills, and help you earn revenue and help people at the same time.
For more information on how to work with Sid or information on programs to help you transform your knowledge into intellectual property and monetize your knowledge, visit www.sidpeddinti.com
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