Give Away Your Secrets

Your best stuff needs to be the stuff you lead with in your marketing initiatives.

Firms build up tools, techniques, methodologies, frameworks, or knowledge over the years. It’s a large part of what makes them valuable to potential clients.

So it’s not shocking that professional service firms are often hesitant to share too much through their Authority Marketing efforts.

But as a result their content is ineffectual at best, and potentially damaging at worst.

There are several reasons for this:

• Your client is judging you by the stuff you give away. So if you give away useless stuff, you end up harming your business more than you help.
• Your clients are not your only source of referrals. We’re tempted to think that clients are the only people who refer us to others. But this isn’t true. It’s not uncommon for people to follow your content, never purchase from you, but still refer you to others. But only if the content you share is legitimately useful.

So what should you do instead? Give away all your secrets.

Your best ideas. Your best knowledge. Your best experience.

This works because:

• It shows you actually know what you’re talking about.
• It demonstrates you can go deep on a topic.
• It differentiates you relative to the dozens of other firms that publish vague content that fails to serve anyone.
• Your client doesn’t realistically have the time to implement your suggestions, and you’re paid for implementation anyway.
• Your best stuff is more likely to get liked, commented, shared, engaged with, spread. This increases your reach exponentially, introducing you to progressively larger audiences over time.
• Your best stuff makes them assume that they get even better stuff working with you.
• Done consistently, it turns you into their trusted advisor .
• If you do a really good job, your ideas become frameworks that other people leverage. Think of consulting frameworks like BCG Matrix or the McKinsey 7S framework . This is obviously much harder to do. But it wouldn’t have happened for them either unless they shared the secrets behind them.

What are your secrets?

So assume you buy into this idea. Where do you start?

There’s great content all over the place, created as exhaust from what you do on client engagements.

• What kinds of deliverables do you create? Package them up as templates.
• What processes do you follow? Package them up as workflows or standard operating procedures or frameworks.
• What are some of the tips or strategies you’ve found to be most effective in generating client results? Share those.
• What are some nuances or ideas you’ve uncovered working with clients over time? Things that no one would know if they’ve only read a 101 or “for dummies” book? Those nuggets are extremely valuable.

Your secrets are some of your best marketing tools. Quit hiding them under lock and key - hit publish.

Madison helps professional services firms grow. We help you get clear on what you, who you do it for, and why you’re different. We help you show up consistently through Authority Marketing. And we help create respectful ways for prospective clients to raise their hands when they’re ready. To learn more, schedule a strategy call .