The Hierarchy of Authority in Marketing

Hey, this is Josh Nelson with the Seven Figure Agency. On this video, I want to share with you one of the most powerful insights that was taught to me by Dan Kennedy to really drive income and drive authority within your digital marketing agency. So I want to kind of map this out on the board. This came up in our in our Seven Figure Agency members group the other day. One of our members was going through a training on what he referred to as the authority wheel. And he drew up this cool image, I've got it in the comments take a look at it.

But here's the reality. There's a hierarchy of authority in the world. Some of us don't realise it, some of us don't think about it. But really, if you look at this pyramid, right here, any business, any individual is kind of in one of these areas, a generalist, specialist, expert, or celebrity, right. And the fact is,the generalist makes the least right. The one that just kind of says, Hey, I work with anybody.

So if we think about this in internet marketing terms, as an agency, the generalist says, Hey, I do SEO, pay per click, social media, whatever, for anybody that will let me do it for them, whether it's the plumber, roofer AC company, e-commerce, right. That's very little expertise, very little power from a positioning perspective. And so you can command very low dollar for that.

The next rung up, is the specialist and the specialist maybe is someone that's very specifically decided, Okay, I'm going to get really good at SEO. I'm gonna get really good at Facebook advertising. I'm gonna get really good at website design, right. And as a specialist, you make a little bit more money, but you're still, you know, just kind of struggling to get by.

The next place up. And this is really where I want to see all of you guys is the expert. And so the expert is someone that probably has chosen a specific vertical like us, we work with plumbing and HVAC contractors, and have proven results. So we say, hey, look, we work with plumbing and HVAC companies, this is what we do. And this is the result we've gotten for other people out in, in the world, right. And you can see there's $$$ signs next to the expert.

But really the place that gets the most money, the place that really where all the dollars come in, is this celebrity expert. Right? The Celebrity expert in any business, and any vertical in any line is the one that makes the most dollars. Because the reality is people want to deal not with just the best company, but they want to deal with the Who, the person that does the best.

And I'll just kind of give you two examples of this in the real world that you can really anchor your mind to think about coaches, right? There's hundreds of coaches that do business coaching, life coaching, and everything in between. And the average coach struggles, the fact is they make maybe $75 per hour. Now there are specialist coaches and things that make more. But think about Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins makes over a million dollars per year for one client that he coaches. Why is that? It's because he is the celebrity expert. He's known. Everybody knows and recognizes him.

Just one last example of this. Think about psychologists, right? An average psychologist makes between $175 to $300 per hour, just because they're psychologists, they are specialists or experts at what they do. Then think about Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil charges exponentially more, because he's a celebrity, and he's known.

And what I really want to encourage you guys to do is, you don't have to become the Anthony Robbins, or the Dr. Phil of your space. But if you're in a very specific narrowly defined vertical, and you become an expert in that, the only other thing you have to do is to put yourself out there. Be the person on the videos, be the person in the ads, be the person you know doing the webinars, be the person speaking, so that people can know and recognize you.

People will pay a massive premium to deal with the expert, the celebrity in their space, right? And so how do we develop that expert status, and that celebrity status? There's really only a couple things. The Celebrity is the one that's speaking, the one at the front of the room, the one that's educating, the one maybe on the videos. And because they're being seen at the front of the room they become attributed with celebrity. The author, the person that publishes the book, right. We've got our book, ‘How to triple your sales by getting your internet marketing right', not nearly as hard as you think. But when you're the author, you immediately get that expert status. And when you put yourself on the cover. And when you put yourself out there, you become the celebrity.

The other things you can do to become known and to become celebrity status is really media, right? If you can get out on Facebook, if you can get out on Twitter, if you can get on the main major news outlets, you know, people automatically think abc news, that's a celebrity. So really what I've seen agencies do in this space. And every time I've seen it, the more you work up this pyramid of authority from generalist to expert to celebrity, two things happen.

One, the more desirable you become, right. Then more people are like I want to work with that person, right, and they start to come to you pre-positioned to buy. And Two, as you move up this rung, you become more highly paid, right? People are willing to pay a premium to deal with the best. And what I find is, agencies usually stop somewhere here, and that they accept themselves as the expert, right. And a lot of times they'll build the expert around their business brand. And I think it's powerful to build your brand, you want to have a brand, and you want to kind of be the company that's known. But if you really want to make premium dollar and become the really the most recognised in your space, you have to be willing to be the expert, you have to be willing to be the face or the celebrity in the business.

So you know, some great examples of this are posted in comments. Post in comments, I want to see the examples. I've got five members in the Seven Figure Agency that are doing this extremely well. And I can kind of point you to their website and some of how they're doing things. Because if you get this right, you can really amp the amount of income and the amount of authority within your agency. So hopefully you found this useful. Let me know in comments what you think. Are you trying to build yourself up this hierarchy to celebrity status? And post in comments examples, just examples, and I'll be sure to get you via PM some of those examples that you can take a look at. Thanks for your time. I look forward to talking with you.