Establish Your Expertise to Earn Trust

If you’re running a membership site that is primarily focused on teaching people how to solve a problem or achieve a goal, then you’re going to want to make sure that you establish your expertise both on your sales page as well as off-page That’s because people would rather learn from an established authority or expert in the niche, versus learning from some Joe Blow that they’ve never heard of before.

Makes sense, right? If you want to learn to be a better basketball player, would you rather learn from Michael Jordan… or from “Clyde,” some random dude on the internet?

That’s right, you’d want to learn from Michael Jordan, who’s a known basketball expert. And likewise, your audience wants to learn from a known expert in your niche too.

The good news is that you don’t need to have Michael Jordan level or skills in order to sell more memberships in your niche. You just need to prove to people that you know what you’re talking about. And you need to build some familiarity in your niche so that people recognize your name and brand.

So, let’s talk about how to do that…

First off, let’s consider on-page factors. Here we’re specifically referring to what you need to do on your actual sales page in order to build credibility.

This includes things like:

·         Sharing your relevant credentials. Here you mention any education, experience, relevant awards, notable results, publications, and so on that you’ve achieved.

·         Providing testimonials. Ideally, these should be verifiable and credible testimonials. No “Jim from New York” type testimonials. Instead, they might be video testimonials, or you might have a text testimonial that links to a website where someone can verify another’s identity.

·         Sharing endorsements. If other notable experts have endorsed you, then share those endorsements.

·         Offering case studies. Here you want to focus on your ability to create good results for yourself as well as other people in your niche.

This is not an exhaustive list. You’ll want to think about all the reasons why people should listen to you and why you’re an expert, and then share the very best reasons inside your sales materials.

The second factors are your off-page factors – this what you do off your sales page in order to build recognition and credibility, which in turn boosts your membership site’s conversion rates and sales.

Here we’re referring to things such as:

·         Distributing content all across your niche. Every time your prospects look for a solution to a niche problem, you want your content to pop up. To that end, you can start a blog, do guest blogging, start a YouTube channel, run popular pages on other social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, run a niche group on Facebook, answer questions on Quora, syndicate your content, publish Kindle books, and so on.

·         Doing guest expert spots and interviews on popular podcasts and other platforms.  When you’re the interviewee, it establishes you as the expert. You can do these guest spots on podcasts, webinars, or even your local talk-radio type programs.

·         Publishing a hard copy book. It doesn’t matter if you get a publisher or you self-publish. The point is that people view those who have hard copy books published as expert.

·         Doing guest talks at live events. This includes niche conferences, expos, trade shows, workshops and similar. You can also do guest talks and demos at local relevant organizations. You can also do talks at more informal niche meet ups, such as those you find on meetup.com.

·         Doing joint ventures with other known experts in your niche. Here you’re basically borrowing someone else’s credibility. When people see your name next to the names of other notable experts, your status in the niche is automatically elevated.

·         Sharing never-before-seen strategies and tips. True experts don’t just rehash what everyone else is doing. Instead, they test ideas, pioneer new strategies, and share new tips.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. The more visibility you can get in the niche and the more content you can share that proves your expertise, the easier it will be for you to grow your membership site.