C-level executives have similarities in their behaviors and how they buy. If you want to influence these types of clients with your services, then it is important to understand what will connect.
If you provide professional services, you are evaluated and eventually hired for your ideas. The value of your ideas has to be persistent and of high quality in your marketing efforts. Simply putting out mediocre content and ideas only drowns you in the sea of competition out there already vying for attention.
So, what can you do to ensure you are positioned and noticed? Well, for one, you have to build a connection with an engaged audience over time. For C-level executives, these are busy people who are looking for strategies that will help their organization make money, save time or beat their competition.
Michael McLaughlin recently wrote about the most effective way to reach these types of people is via thought leadership. We wholeheartedly agree and can see from our own content marketing and systems that this is extremely effective.
Executives are thinkers and they want to be in the know of what is working. Something that will give them an edge and is proven has to be discussed and presented. Their minds have to work on it for a while and buy-in.
If you want to be effective, you have to position your content with education and expertise. This means providing in-depth content pieces such as white papers and special reports that can elaborate about your industry and the strategies that you implement to help companies win.
You may not get the benefit of a phone call or immediate dialogue. However, you can keep a continuous stream of information out there and provide value around your knowledge.
Furthermore, you have to get inside the problems of these executives and connect the dots with how your solution may fit or be customized for their application. If the creativity and the value of your thinking is high, then this provides an impetus for a meeting where you can elaborate on your ideas further.
Just remember that there needs to be process and a commitment to share your creative thinking. This creates engagement over time and if enough trust is built and a problem is recognized, then you will find a natural connection with what might be inaccessible people to others who fail to establish thought leadership.
When you think of all the strategies to connect with a C-level executive, can you see thought leadership as a cornerstone approach? What else have you tried?
