Kelford Labs Daily: What to give away
And what to keep exclusive.
When you’re creating content for your business, how do you know what to give away and what to keep exclusive for paying clients?
I’ll often hear business owners say, “I don’t want to give away my secrets,” or, “I don’t want them to take my ideas and run with them themselves.”
The problem, though, is that people don’t know we have secrets worth paying for unless we reveal some of them.
No statement in English backfires worse than, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
To truly trust someone else, we need them to demonstrate to us that they know what they’re talking about.
And the same is true for us and our prospects. We need to show them we know what we’re talking about—we can’t just promise that we do.
So what do you reveal and what do you hold back? Well, there’s an old saying, “Opinions are free, advice you have to pay for,” and it holds up fairly well.
Use your content to demonstrate your value by delivering it in the form of opinion, anecdotes, philosophy, and perspective.
But counsel, advice, customized instruction? That you have to pay for.
If you’re holding back your ideas from your content but heavily discounting or giving away your services, you’ve got things flipped around.
Demonstrate your value by delivering insight, opinion, and expertise in your content so your best customers would happily pay anything for your advice and your one-on-one counsel.
Don’t hold back your best ideas in the hopes someone will one day come around and pay for them.
Reveal some of them in the form of engaging, inviting, and captivating content.
So the people who stand to benefit most know that you’re the best option for them.
