You live and die by your ability to leverage one speaking opportunity into numerous additional bookings. It’s not enough to just be a great speaker, you also need to be an innovative marketer. The good news is your biggest potential marketing opportunity is your actual speeches.
Public speaking is one of the best ways to position and brand yourself as the local “go-to” expert in your field, and it’s also an excellent low-cost marketing strategy. The value of becoming a key-note speaker at local group meetings extends far beyond the event itself.
If you’ve attended any type of marketing seminar or paid any attention at all to marketing philosophies over the last few years or so, then you’ve no doubt heard the “you have to find your niche” party line. Now don’t get me wrong, having a niche or target is solid marketing. If you don’t know who your “Ideal Client” is, then there’s no way to focus your marketing strategy on them.
Whenever I bring this up to new clients, I’m usually faced with, “but I’m a speaker (or author), I don’t do marketing campaigns.” The fact is that booking a speaking opportunity or book tour is essentially marketing your most valuable commodity – YOU!
For most of us, it is relatively easy to get started with social media. Getting results in terms of growing your business is a whole different story. Not so simple. Like anything else in terms of sales, marketing and overall business development, getting results in social media requires consistent effort over a longer period of time.
What’s the one thing you want most for your business right now? How are you going to achieve it? Plan, focus, commit and do the work. Plan, fail, learn, adapt.