Does Expertise Marketing Really Depend on Scarcity?

Article is adapted from a comment I made at another site.

If you want to be successful in any business, find or create the perception of scarcity in a market that has a healthy demand - then fill the need with your products and services. At least that used to be the mantra when information was a lot scarcer. People wanted the expert to provide depth of knowledge in areas where:

1. They feel they can’t trust free information.
2. Expert guidance is more valued than doing it yourself (DIY).
3. Expert information is scarce.

But does the new availablity of informaton from user generated content and the increasing effectiveness of search engines mean the end of Expertise Marketing?

No, because high quality, verifiable, detailed, guaranteed information will always be scarce. People don’t create resources that they’ll never get compensated for in some way. And not all information translates well to a video series, a CD set or a website. There are elements of talent, even skill at a task that can’t be translated. Some elements of expertise cannot be exported. While data is more available, information that can be used from that data is still scarce.

And reliable information? Still scarce as ever. Honestly, business is all about the perception of scarcity. Just not scarcity in fact.

When resources are perceived to be scarce, even if in reality they are not, prices go up, and if the idea of scarcity is maintained, it stays up. Here’s an example.

Diamonds are not currently scarce enough a commodity to justify its costs. Yes, sadly, people are losing their limbs in the blood and conflict diamond struggle, but that’s due more to cheap labor and high price than actually meeting the needs of the diamond industry. In fact, if you go through the right channels, you can get either a duplicate of a diamond so close that no one would know, or through the power of the internet, you can buy them at wholesale, or second-hand.

How does that translate to online business? Expertise is a true scarcity, but the perception of expertise is changing rapidly with the advancement of user-generated content. It’s getting to the point that either

• Expertise is achieved from the sum of the group.
• People who are not really experts at their subject matter are quickly found out.
• The smart expert who is able to exploit these two facts is in more demand, and getting compensated at a higher price than ever.

The educated end user is becoming the vocal majority, which is bringing about a change in how business is marketed. Hype is not enough anymore and fly-by-night companies can be researched at the click of a mouse. Yet when that information was hard to come by, markets that depended on user ignorance thrived. Now, the era of the true expert is destined to rule, but only for experts who properly embrace the nature of the rules of the Net to change.

At the same time, while general information that is readily available to the public is decreasing in value, because of the massive influx of those tools, time is increasing in value. It seems like the fastest way to make money, particularly in B2B these days, is to be in a position to market to those who are scarce of time. I spent about $6K since last September in personal concierge service in the last three months, and it was worth every penny because I leveraged the time saved into about $11K.

With more time to find better solutions I was offered higher prices by companies who could easily afford to hire me. This also lowered my prices for my DIY guides, and increased my production, resulting in more gross sales. And unlike other markets, since our overhead is so low, the more I can earn for the time I spent in creation, the better.

The game may have changed, but the expert still wins in the end.

[tags]marketing, internet marketing, online marketing, expert marketing, expertise marketing, web, business, work, working online, work at home, home business, entrepreneur[/tags]