‘Why’: The Question Behind the Strongest Founder-Led Content
Expert-led content is helpful guidance and advice that stems from the unique knowledge and experiences of founders and business leaders. It’s a way to build trust and credibility with potential clients before the first conversation. It works because it turns the unseen, everyday thinking inside a founder’s head into marketing assets that build trust and set the scene for effective new business drives. The content is unique to each founder and their business, allowing firms to stand out from competitors who deliver similar services. To draw out the content that forms the basis of ‘expert-led’ content, I setup video calls with founders each month. Here’s how I make sure I get to the golden information, and why ‘why’ is such an important part that.
What’s the Benefit of Expert-Led Marketing?
In professional services sector, trust is key to winning business. Potential clients need to trust firms, and see credibility. Unlocking the wealth of valuable information and lived-experience present in business founders and leaders helps to earn this trust. Expert-led content can take many forms, from LinkedIn posts and articles, to explainer sheets or whitepapers. The challenge for many founders is they have often been in their industry, and their business, for a while, so it’s hard for them to step back and appreciate what information is helpful, and what isn’t. They might presume something isn’t worth sharing, when in fact it could be the solution to a problem many people in their sector are experiencing. My role is to open up their expertise and make it accessible through engaging marketing content. As well as raising the profiles of founders and their businesses, and earning trust with their network, it also lays the foundations for a new and effective business development avenue.
My Favourite Word to Use with Founders
To access these golden nuggets of information, I often lean on the word ‘Why’ during my content interviews. Why lets us dig a little deeper, reveal a little more. Often, founders aren’t asked why they’ve done something before, or why a challenge keeps cropping up for their business. But why helps them take a step back and explain their reasoning, thoughts or beliefs objectively. If they have a challenge, why do they have it? Why do they manage it that way? Why does that work? Asking why avoids leading the conversation, and it gives people time and space to think. Crucially, zooming out in this way can surface other interesting subtopics. The more topics that are discussed, the more founders reveal their natural interests and personalities, and the more accurately their expert-led content truly reflects them.
How to Get The Golden Information
Before I started my marketing career, I produced global business conferences for an events company. The conferences spanned different sectors, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and FMCG. As a ‘Conference Producer’ I was responsible for researching and writing the content that would be discussed by speakers at each event. These two or three-day agendas would have around 20 speaking slots, so there was a significant amount of content to cover. To understand what the most important topics were for each industry, I conducted 40 research interviews with senior professionals before writing each program.
Believe me, knowing next to nothing about the world of clinical trials but having to conduct a research call with a clinical trial director from GSK was daunting to say the least! But it got easier, and by the end of forty research calls, you felt you were able to speak the same language as clinical trial professionals. For me, getting to speaking with truly senior people at larger companies became the most interesting aspect of the job. I was lucky enough to work on several alcohol events. As a beer lover, speaking to the European CEO of Asahi, and Marketing Directors at Heineken, about the threat of craft beer to larger breweries was a real highlight!
“As a beer lover, chatting to the European CEO of Asahi, and Marketing Directors at Heineken, about the threat of craft beer to larger breweries was a highlight.”
The core aim of each call was to understand the biggest challenges professionals were facing in their sector, and turn these into compelling topics for speakers to take on at each event. It was these sessions on key challenges that would draw in the delegates, and in turn the sponsors. Getting useful content from each call was essential. Asking people to speak about their biggest headaches is fairly easy. However, many people, just like founders, need to be prompted to share enough information; this is the interviewer’s role. There are several ways to do this, but here are two techniques I learned as a Conference Producer that I use today to get to the need-to-know information:
Ask open-question, then bite your tongue. Not literally. Naturally, when there’s a pause or silence, we feel a temptation to fill that silence. Don’t. Let it play out. The person is thinking about their reply. It might not always come to them straight away. And once they’ve given their answer, give them time after their response. They may have more to tell you. Silence is often thinking time, not the absence of an answer.
Reframe their own answer. Often, if I want to dig deeper into a topic another way to prompt the sharing of more information is to summarise and interviewees point, and then say it back to them in a slightly different way. They’ll agree, and often they’ll find another point (or several) to add to their original answer.
These methods often leads to the golden information that resonates with audiences and builds trust.
Off Topic & Subtopics
…are the best places to go! On many calls, what can sometimes start out as a straightforward discussion of a set topic, can veer into completely new territory. This switch from scripted to unscripted often leads to a goldmine of interesting information. It might reveal more about the founder’s views or beliefs which shape their working life, or a life event that has shaped their view of their industry. In a similar way, discussions of larger topics often surface subtopics. Across subtopics and ‘off-topic’ discussions, you may notice themes, which again reveal the specific interests and beliefs of founders. For example, I’ve recently discovered one of my clients is particularly interested in personality profiling models, through repeated discussions which had veered onto this topic area. This strand of content now forms a key part of their content plan. It was only by going off-topic that this strand emerged. Today, it’s a topic that continually resonates with her network, and has sparked several conversations with clients.
Anecdotes
These are key. For every topic I discuss with a client, I always want to hear about a personal anecdote linked to it. I’m not being nosey. Readers resonate most with content that places a founder in the context of a topic. But it’s not just about connection. If we can’t share a personal story related to a topic, what we are saying (in theory) could be said by anyone. Anecdotes give weight and credibility to our stories, while also making them unique.
The Power of the Voice Memo
While content interviews are brilliant for deep-diving into topics, I also advise founders to capture ideas through voice notes, as and when they crop up. In a working day, things can happen so quickly, that ideas, thoughts or content ideas can come and go in a matter of seconds. To seize that moment of inspiration, I always encourage founders to send me a voice recording, then and there, unfiltered, so it can then be captured in our bank of content. If we wait, it’s likely it will get lost either partially or completely!
LinkedIn Is Scary!
Honestly, it scares plenty of people at first. I always find myself hesitating before posting content, but with 1 billion users and counting, it is the best stage for founders to share their expertise with their professional networks. Part of my role is guiding founders through this process, and making them as comfortable as I can. Several founders weren’t used to LinkedIn, and some had never posted on the platform before we started working together. Now, they’re delivering two to three posts a week, and they’re seeing the value in the form of growing networks, more leads and new business. Day-to-day, their content is coming up in conversations, and their voice is being heard. These are the signs that show it’s working, but to get these results, you need a structured method of capturing content to ensure consistency. My methodology ensures the time constraints on them are minimal, whilst maximising the content we can get.
You Have the Expertise, Let Your Market See It
In the professional services sector, the firms who aren’t demonstrating their expertise online are those who can struggle to stand out. Strong content from founders builds trust and credibility fast, in a time-efficient way.
The fact is, you already have the expertise your market needs, my job is to help you articulate it, shape it, and make it visible.
Ready to Build Visibility Beyond Referrals?
To find out more about how expert-led marketing helps professional services firms grow and stan out from competitors, download my guide to learn how to:
Position your expertise clearly
Create content that builds trust
Use LinkedIn and company channels more effectively
Grow your pipeline without large marketing spend
And if you'd like to talk through how this approach could work for your firm, you can also book a free 30-minute strategy call.
