Sell with Authority: Own and Monetize Your Agency's Authority Position

Your agency has a point of view, even if you can’t articulate it yet. You may not think of it in clear terms or define it as such currently, but somewhere underneath the daily grind at the agency, you have some core beliefs that are woven through your recommendations and the guidance you provide to clients.

Cornerstone content is: • meaty enough to produce lots of smaller pieces of content. • significant enough to serve as the epicenter of your promotion, activity, and eventual fame—in your circle of influence, of course; we aren’t suggesting you’ll become the next Beyoncé! • consistent in how often you create content and how much you stay focused on

make them say, “Thank you. Every time I turn around, I see something helpful from you. Now that we’ve had a chance to interact, you’re just what I expected you to be.”

Just to be clear, your point of view is the truth you overlay onto your niche or industry-specific expertise. It’s an insight that influences the work you do.

It helps to collect what I call your agency’s “legendary stories”—those stories of glory you love to tell when you want to illustrate a point, demonstrate your value, or celebrate a victory on behalf of a client.

Our point of view is what we know to be true, and it’s this truth that defines how we approach the work and how we add value.

The next characteristic of cornerstone content is that it can be the epicenter of your efforts.

Cornerstone content is meaty, dense content that gives us plenty of opportunities to slice and dice it into cobblestones. It needs to have significance. Depending on the channel you choose for your cornerstone content, you might only need to create it once a year or, in the case of a video or podcast series, upwards of once a week. This is dense co

In other words, when consumers could see themselves in an influencer, they were far more likely to follow and trust that influencer. It’s not about having millions of followers; it’s about being someone you can relate to and connect with.

This combination of your POV and narrowly defined areas of expertise is the nucleus of your authority position. It’s the foundation upon which you build your content strategy with the clearly defined goal of attracting the prospects you most want to serve.