RAVE stands for:

Reputation

Authority

Visibility

Expertise

Every small business owner, entrepreneur, independent consultant and speaker who pays attention to these four elements will see the results in their bank account.  In other words, taking action on these four key aspects of your business will improve the quantity – and quality – of the business that comes to you.

Let’s look at them in more detail:

Reputation – your reputation is, effectively, based on what other people say about you.  Can you control that?  No.  But you can influence it.

Authority – we all have our areas of specialism.  If you can establish yourself as the ‘go-to’ person in your industry, you’ll stand out from your competitors.

Visibility – this may appear to be obvious, but it also takes effort and often the activities that contribute to your visibility are the first to fall off your to do list when you get busy.

Expertise – nobody knows how good you are unless they see evidence.  Does that mean that only former customers can vouch for you?  Certainly not!  You can demonstrate your expertise by sharing your knowledge and people will soon see how good you are.

These themes are all related to marketing.  In today’s world they are mostly related to online marketing and that includes everything from your website, your social media activity, email newsletters and marketing campaigns, lead funnels, PR and much more.

If you’re just getting started in business it can all seem a bit overwhelming, but ignore your marketing at your peril.  Growing your business without marketing is an uphill struggle; if you have a sound marketing plan and ensure you keep up with it, long-term you’ll reap the benefits as business flows to you almost effortlessly.

Many people find marketing a bit ‘woolly’ and I’m often asked “How will I know if it’s working?”  Measuring specific results is not always easy, but my answer is “Stop doing any marketing and see where you are in three months’ time.”  That may be somewhat cynical, but it’s very true.

Of course you can measure your marketing activity, but the secret is to know exactly what to measure.  Chasing likes and comments on social media isn’t a direct measurement, especially as many people who read your posts don’t stop to like or comment – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t influenced by your content.

If you’ve done your homework (and we’ll be discussing that in Chapter 1) you should be able to create highly targeted content and put it right where your ideal customer will see it.  That’s the start of your influence campaign.