Marketing and sales teams spend a phenomenal amount of money on traditional business development channels such as paid advertising, conferences, trade shows and SEO.

I recently attended the Digital Leadership forum and have come to realise more and more that authentic content, shared to personal networks is very much undervalued as a channel.

Firstly, you already have experts within your firm whose subject matter knowledge you can leverage for content - when produced by these people, content is authentic and valuable.

Secondly, they can access highly relevant networks, built up over their careers that contain high profile individuals. Furthermore, you know that these networks are filled with exactly the people that you want to be reaching. 

And thirdly sharing is free! Yes you can go down the paid-for route, however as per my previous point, if you have a trusted expert sharing, it will reach a high-value network of people.

David Ogilvy wisely said - "Don't count the people you reach, reach the people who count." There is no better way than to reach out to prospects than through authentic and valuable content from people they trust.