Standing Out in a Sea of Subject Matter Experts

Whether you’re a consultant, or some other service provider, or the person charged with marketing your professional services firm, let’s make it very clear what you’re selling: your expertise.

The way you work, your firm’s personality, and a bunch of other factors go into the decision of whether or not to hire you, but all of it is in service to the potential of you bringing your expertise to prospective clients. They hire you to get stuff done, move their business forward and, when need be, keep them out of trouble.

Therefore, your marketing should be focused on showcasing your expertise.?

And so professional services firms lean on their subject matter experts to help them produce thought leadership showcasing their smarts, demonstrating how they solve problems and how they think about the future of their industry.

But, let’s face it—there is a problem with this tried-and-true approach.

Everyone is doing it.

Okay, not everyone, but enough practitioners and firms to make for a crowded, noisy marketplace of ideas.

And, like sportstalk radio, the best ideas don’t always win out—it’s often the people with the biggest lungs and state-of-the-art megaphones. Couple this with the fact that many, if not most, professional service providers simply don’t like to broadcast their expertise. They don’t like the spotlight. Much of their training has been focused on the belief that if they are the best they can be, clients will find them. But this notion is outdated (if it was ever right).

We’re working in the most dynamic marketplace in the history of the world. We need to act accordingly.

That demands shining a spotlight on your firm’s subject matter experts (SMEs). It means pulling those thought leadership ideas out of their heads and putting them out into the public sphere for people to consume, agree with or even argue over, and to build an impression of your SMEs and your firm.?

And that’s only the start. Because, again, it’s a crowded, noisy, dynamic marketplace of ideas.

Service providers and their marketing teams need to go above and beyond mere subject matter expertise. Here’s the basic framework of what you need to do:

Consistently create thoughtful, helpful content (table stakes). Your super-smart consultants can best help the firm grow by participating in marketing. Of course, they are typically incentivized not to spend their time that way; they are hyperfocused on racking up billable hours. Which means they need help from their marketing team. Marketers, the easiest way to do this is to regularly interview your firm’s SMEs. Make it easy for them, and make sure you are respectful of their time. Not everyone will do it, but that’s okay—you’ll demonstrate success with those who participate, and others at the firm will clamor for your assistance and guidance.?

Distribute it appropriately and widely. Now is not the time to be shy, or cheap. Determine what this means for your firm. It could be LinkedIn (with paid promotion), it could be vertical trade press, it could be podcasts or speaking opportunities, or lots of other things. It could be all of them. ?

Develop a roster of raving fans who want to work with your firm. This takes time. It requires engaging with commenters and others on LinkedIn. Sometimes, it requires defending your point of view from trolls looking to start a fight. The goal is to make sure your audience (clients and future clients) know that you stand for something.

Continue helping their current clients. This is on the consultant and their colleagues, but it’s worth mentioning—you want to continue to do great work for your current clients; it’s far harder to land a new client than it is to keep an existing one. So don’t have your eyes so far out on the horizon that you trip yourself up.?

We’re going to spend a lot of time in 2025 talking about helping SMEs raise their game. Marketing is changing fast, and professional services firms need to meet the moment.