Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

CHAPTER 83

BECOME INCREASINGLY INDISPENSABLE

As successful marketing strategies become more and more about making personal connections and being authentic, it becomes increasingly important that you insert yourself as a vital component of your marketing efforts.

This means using your face, your thoughts, and your opinions on the most important industry or niche trends related to your business. It's time to take a stand on the things that are important to you and to let those positions be known.

Doing this will eventually make you indispensable to your audience, while those that are constantly neutral on all of the controversial issues will more easily be forgotten.

I see a great example of the power of being indispensable with many of my own readers. Whenever a new product or idea is introduced to the market, many of my customers faithfully wait to hear my opinions and insights before they will take action and make up their mind. It's not that they aren't capable of choosing on their own, rather they are interested in hearing my thoughts before they feel like they have the full story. That puts me in a position of being indispensable.

If I am unwilling to take a stand on important issues then it is unlikely that my audience will ever consider me indispensable. If you want to be an indispensable part of the decision-making process that your customers are making, then you must be willing to take clear stands both for and against those things you do and don't agree with.

If you can ...