10 Tips for Marketing Your Business with Public
Speaking
by: Jane Hendry
As a service provider and someone who sells their expertise and
know-how, one of the best ways to get your message out to numerous
people at the same time is through public speaking. When you speak at
networking events, industry associations or conferences, you're able
to position yourself as an expert, gain credibility by "association"
(i.e. if the organisation putting on the event has credibility with
the audience, then so will you) and get many more people exposed to
your message than might be possible by other means.
Public speaking is not for everybody (we're not all natural
performers!), but if you regularly attend networking events, then you
may as well gain the much greater exposure you'll get as the speaker,
than if you simply attend and only get to connect with a few people.
Here are 10 tips for maximising this marketing opportunity:
1. Make sure you speak at events that your target market attends
OK, this may seem obvious - but most people get this wrong at some
stage. If your target market is large corporations, and you find
yourself speaking at an event attended by small business owners, then
you're probably not going to get a lot of good business out of it.
2. Choose a topic that your audience wants to learn more about, and
create an intriguing topic title
Design your talks around some aspect of the service that you provide
that your audience doesn't currently understand, but wants to know
more about. Create interesting and curiosity provoking titles so that
event organisers and attendees alike will be intrigued and want to
know more.
3. Educate your audience - don't try to sell them anything
The worst talks are always those that involve obvious pitching and
selling. Not only is this totally transparent to most people, but
these kinds of talks are usually pretty boring. I would suggest that
you be smarter than that and use "subliminal" selling. This is not as
mysterious as it sounds. All you have to do is give enough information
to whet the appetite of your audience, without giving away the farm.
(Simply stated, this involves you explaining a concept and telling
them what to do, but not how to do it). By speaking knowledgably on
your chosen topic you'll be positioning yourself as an expert and the
person to come to for advice next time they have a need for your
category of service.
4. Keep it simple and interactive
Most of us can only concentrate for up to 20 minutes at a time, and
most people are not auditory, so learning through listening can be
quite challenging. Therefore you should aim to get across only one or
two key concepts in your talk, and make it interactive to keep
people's attention. And whatever you do, please don't do "death by
slides"! Powerpoint slides should be used to clarify your message, not
bamboozle or bore your audience to death!
5. Practice, practice, practice
What are the 3 P's of presenting? Preparation, preparation and
preparation! I suggest that you write out your speech in it's
entirety, and then practice speaking it a few times - the cat or dog
will probably humour you in this endeavour (or your plants or a
long-suffering partner!) Once you've rehearsed it a few times, you can
list the main points on some index cards, rather than reading a
script. This way your talk will seem more natural.
6. Create your own events
To gain even greater marketing leverage from public speaking you can
create your own events. Perhaps you can partner with some other
business owners who share your target market, but who don't compete
with you, to hold an event that you invite your combined contacts to.
7. If the thought of speaking in front of people terrifies you or if
you want to reach a geographically dispersed audience then . do a
teleclass instead!
There's no reason to limit yourself to only those events that you and
your audience can physically get to. Setting up a teleclass,
teleseminar or webinar is pretty easy and inexpensive these days.
8. Re-purpose and re-use your talk
The mistake a lot of people make is to assume that every time they
give a talk, they've got to come up with something new. But this is
just extra work and extra stress. After all, comedians don't do a
different show at every venue they play at, so unless your audience is
the same people, then you don't need a new talk! Most high-fee
earners have a signature talk that they've perfected over the months
or years, and they'll be invited to events to give that specific talk.
9. End your talk with an offer
Unless you give talks for the good of your health, you'll want to
motivate your audience to take the next step with you. Most speakers
miss the critical step of giving a "call to action" at the end of
their talks, or they aim for the immediate sale rather than courting
interest that will get them more sales long term. Rather than trying
to sell straight away, you should intrigue your audience by offering
them a free report or other giveaway in exchange for their business
cards and permission to follow up with them. Those who are interested
in what you offer or the information you can provide, will give you
their contact details and thereby "put their hands up" as being
potential candidates for your services.
10. Follow up
Once you have the contact details of your talk attendees, you should
follow up with them multiple times with a structured follow up
sequence. The easiest way to do this is to ask them to subscribe to
your ezine.
And remember this - those who succeed through public speaking and
media exposure are not necessarily any better at what they do than you
are. The only difference is that they're better at getting themselves
into the limelight and then leveraging that to their advantage.
Whilst you don't have to become some media-hungry pseudo-celebrity,
you can leverage all of your public speaking opportunities to build
your credibility, increase your exposure and create an audience
interested in what you have to say on your area of expertise.
Copyright 2006 Attractioneering
About The Author
Jane Hendry helps professionals, consultants and coaches to create
marketing systems that easily and consistently attract their ideal
clients. To get
your free Attraction Marketing Starter Kit please visit http://www.attractioneers.com/" target="_blank">http://www.
attractioneers.com/.
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