Why ‘Why?’ Matters: Turning Founder Expertise Into Marketing That Earns Potential Clients’ Trust
In professional services, potential clients need to trust a firm’s expertise before they even consider reaching out. They seek out proof of their expertise online, and if a founder and their business aren’t visible, they’ll look to a competitor. Expert-led content creates this visibility by turning the everyday thinking inside a founder’s head into marketing that demonstrates their knowledge, approach and credibility.
Each fortnight, I run short video interview sessions with founders to gather these expert insights. It’s a time-efficient way for time-poor leaders to translate their expertise into effective, practical and helpful content that’s valued by their network. Here’s how the process works, and why asking ‘why’ is the key to uncovering valuable expertise.
Why Video Interviews?
The challenge for founders of smaller firms with limited time and resources is knowing how to translate their broad expertise into powerful marketing, and package it into the right formats. As their marketing consultant, I act as a ‘translator’, turning their insights into suitable content types, such as articles, LinkedIn posts, case studies, explainers, reports, video content and more. Regular video calls are the best way to gather the rich detail needed to build valuable content for their audiences, and it’s also the fastest way for founders to get their expertise across. Weekly marketing catch-ups fill in the gaps, moving along the work in progress and covering strategy.
Well-informed expert-led marketing offers several benefits to businesses and their leaders, including:
More inbound conversations and a lower reliance on referrals
Clearer niche definition
Warmer outreach
Stronger pricing power
Earned trust across the market & faster buying decision
How Do You Know What’s Important?
I’ve worked with professional services firms across the accounting, legal, recruiting, property and consulting sectors for over ten years. I’ve witnessed the core challenges, and I've felt the pain points. A general sticking point is that many firms simply aren’t visible to potential clients. But it’s no good shouting into the void without having something relevant to say. Each business works within its own niche, and does things differently to competitors. To make sure I understand client USPs, I take several weeks researching them, their market and their competitors before any content is produced. Following this, we clarify and define their niche, often a helpful exercise in itself for leaders. This ensures our interviews remain relevant, current and geared to their unique expertise.
How I Get The Most Out of Each Interview
Before I started my marketing career, I produced global business conferences spanning different sectors, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and FMCG. As a Conference Producer, I was responsible for interviewing senior professionals and creating conference programs that would attract sponsorship and delegates. Knowing next to nothing about the world of clinical trials, but suddenly having to conduct research calls with senior directors from GSK and J&J was daunting to say the least! But by the end of 40 research calls, I felt able to speak the same language, and I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the key challenges faced by leaders. The role taught me several interview techniques which I use today to glean as much information as I can about the professional challenges and views of founders. Here are two I use frequently:
Let the silence play out. It might sound simple, but our natural instinct is to try and fill any pauses with more talking. When you're interviewing, asking your question before letting the silence play out gives the person more time to think about their response. When they do, it is usually a more detailed and considered answer. Once they’ve replied, I give them time after they’ve stopped speaking to think further, as they may want to expand. Silence is often thinking time, not the absence of an answer.
Reframe their answer. If I want to dig deeper into a topic, a way to prompt the sharing of more information is to reframe the interviewee's point, and say it back to them in a slightly different way. This usually prompts them to agree and then add another point (or several) to their original response, revealing more useful details
These simple techniques help prompt founders to deliver the insights that can be translated into rich, practical content for their audiences.
My Favourite Word to Use with Founders
To access the golden nuggets of information, I often lean on the question, ‘why’. Why lets us dig a little deeper, and it’s usually a question founders aren’t frequently asked. Why do they do things in that way? Why does this challenge keep cropping up for their business? Why do they manage it in that way? Why does that work? Asking why avoids leading the conversation, and it gives people time and space to think. Zooming out in this way is also likely to surface other interesting subtopics. The more topics discussed, the more founders reveal their beliefs, attitudes and interests, and the more accurately their expert-led content reflects them as a professional.
For example, asking why recently helped me discover that one of my clients is interested in personality profiling models, after it came up in several discussions. This strand of content ties in well with their recruitment business, and it now forms a key part of their expert-led content. Today, it’s a topic that continues to resonate with their network, and has sparked several conversations with clients. Yet it was only by asking why, and going off-topic, that this theme emerged.
Why Personal Anecdotes Matter
Personal stories are key to reinforcing the credibility of expert-led content. For each topic I discuss with a founder, I always want to hear about a personal anecdote linked to it. This isn’t me 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 points, while also making them unique to us.
The Power of the Voicenote
While content interviews are brilliant for fleshing out topics, voicenotes can also help busy founders build content planning into their working day. I’ve recently started encouraging founders to capture content ideas through voicenotes outside of our meetings, as and when they crop up. These captures ideas, thoughts or inspiration in the moment, while they're fresh and newly formed. I then store this in our bank of content, ready to be repurposed. On the fly voicenotes have informed some excellent articles for my clients in the past, and they work perfectly as a way to make sure founders are covering the topics they want to be seen talking about.
Most Founders Don't Post on LinkedIn (And That's Okay)
With only 1% of LinkedIn users posting once a week, those who regularly share their views are a tiny majority. I know the feeling - I always catch myself hesitating before posting, but becoming part of this minority immediately gives you an advantage. With 1 billion users, LinkedIn is the best stage to share expertise with professional networks. Alongside creating a marketing content schedule, part of my role is to guide founders through the process of putting themselves out there online. Several founders I work with now weren’t used to LinkedIn before we worked together - some had never even posted on the platform. Now, they’re delivering two, three or four posts a week, and they’re seeing the value in the form of growing networks, warmer conversations with potential clients and new business. But to get these results, you need a consistent and structured method of capturing content. A structured interview process ensures time constraints for them are minimal, while maximising the volume and quality of the expert-led content that can be created.
You Have the Expertise, Let Your Market See It
In the professional services sector, firms that aren’t demonstrating their expertise online are those that often struggle to stand out from competitors. On the other hand, strong content delivered by founders, rich in practical guidance and unique learnings, is ideally positioned to earn trust and build credibility with their markets.
You already have the expertise your market needs, but if someone looked at your LinkedIn or viewed your website, would they understand the depth of your service? My role is to help founders make their true offering visible, while being efficient with their time.
To find out more about how expert-led marketing helps professional services firms and their leaders stand out from competitors, increase leads and elevate their profiles, download my marketing guide created for smaller firms.
