content marketing

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You have worked hard putting together mind-blowing presentations. You have taken the first steps towards building your speaking business. You might even have some consistent gigs going, so it is time to start thinking about getting more clients. That means improving your promotional strategy. 

Promoting yourself as a speaker is not an easy task in the ever-changing market we’re in today. To get recognized as a speaker, you must stand out from the rest. Whether it be your personality, your unique approach to your topic, or the experience you offer on stage, promoting yourself as a speaker is a big part of running a successful speaking business.

Here are four ways to promote yourself and gain recognition as a professional speaker. 

Keep the buzz going — in a good way!

You may have heard that publicity is always good, even if it’s bad. But we want you to stand out for all the best reasons. Highlight the most positive, interesting, and engaging parts of your brand to get your prospects excited. 

Another way to keep the buzz going is by staying relevant. Update yourself and your speech to address recent issues your audience is interested in. Perhaps the government just announced a change in economical politics. You can find out how that affects your target clients and weave it into your topics! Or maybe a movie that features the topic you are an expert on just got released. You can use this to create an opening with a wider audience in your presentation. 

These small details can help you keep your message fresh and gain exposure for your speaking business. 

Join the digital stage

For several reasons, the global market has turned to the digital world over the last decade. If you are here, you’re probably aware of the power of the internet to promote a business. Most small businesses today even opt to promote themselves through social media and websites only. This is usually more cost-effective and efficient when done right. 

As far as marketing and promotion are concerned, having a website should be your top priority if you don’t have one already. 

Promoting yourself as a speaker means you have to put yourself out there and showcase what makes you different How can you stand out in a sea of speakers? How will your website start that discussion for you?

After working over 15 years developing websites for speakers, the best way I can put is this: your website is your stage. 

Think of it, when you are on the stage, you have got to shine. You have to make people care. Websites are just the same. The purpose of your website — besides promoting yourself as a speaker — is also to showcase your brand and how you are uniquely capable of solving the issues your target clients face.

And, if you already have a website, give it a thorough look. Ask yourself:

  • ‘Can they look at it and immediately identify that I am the answer to their pressing issues?”
  • ‘Am I saying everything I need to be saying to my potential clients?’

Ultimately, updating your website can help your potential clients answer many questions and save you a lot of time you can use to grow your speaking business. 

Promoting yourself as a speaker is much easier with a website designed specifically for speakers.

Build a social media presence

One of the most recommended ways of promoting yourself as a speaker is by building a strong social media presence. The reason behind that is rather simple. 

You see, social media’s main goal is for people to connect. Being a speaker who wants to promote their personal brand — and by extension, your speaking business’s brand — social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are the perfect place to show yourself in the most authentic way possible.

One effective tactic to implement when promoting yourself as a speaker on social media is to create a content plan that balances your expertise and professional life with your everyday life.

I have a couple of blogs dedicated to the importance of social media marketing and social media strategies you can check out to improve your results there! 

However, I do want to make this clear. I don’t mean for you to get all technical and start seeing every interaction on social media as a numbers game. This often happens when you are creating a social media strategy. The idea is for you to share content that you find exciting and enjoyable as well. So then, you can transmit that same passion to your followers. 

The key to social media is consistency, diversity, and engagement. Create content that adjusts and promotes these three words and you’ll be in the right direction!

One last tip to grow your social media presence: use your hashtags! Most social media platforms have their own search engine that works with hashtags. Do a little bit of research and make sure to include a couple in your posts to encourage more views and attract the right people to your profile.

Finally, we can’t forget about the classics

Paid advertising and search engine optimization are almost a staple when it comes to marketing. I couldn’t let them out when talking about promoting yourself as a speaker through social media or through your website. 

A good strategy here is to use a mix of both, paid and organic advertising to improve your reach. It will depend on your budget how much you want to invest here. And you don’t have to spend an entire month’s worth of salary to obtain positive results. This is one of those situations where, when done right, you can scale quickly for very little. 

Additionally, the data you collect from advertising can help you improve your strategy even more. Looking at how long are people staying on your website or what link do they find interesting, just to mention some indicators, can tell you a lot about your clients’ intentions and interests. Knowing this allows you to implement changes when needed to achieve your business goals more quickly.

Even though there is a lot more to say about promotion for speakers. I hope this short list has given you some ideas to evaluate your marketing strategy and start promoting yourself as a professional speaker.

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We have learned a lot about creating quizzes in this series. We talked about the difference between polls surveys and quizzes, the four main quiz styles and we learned how to create a quiz for your own speaking business, but there are still a few general guidelines that we always have to remember.

Lead Generating Quizzes and Going Viral
  • Give participants an option to get their quiz answers without having to provide their email address. It is just good manners. But at the same time include compelling sales copy and great value on the results page to entice the prospect to opt-in to receive more. NOTE – THIS IS A CONTROVERSIAL OPINION – SEE MY BONUS POST TO LEARN WHY
  • Incentivize your quiz.  While sometimes the quiz itself is incentive enough, it is always a good idea to offer some kind of value at the end to encourage opt-ins. 
  • Always be honest about your marketing strategy.  If you are adding them to your newsletter, say so.
  • Never forget a call to action. Join your list, download your free offer… Whatever the next stage in your marketing funnel, don’t forget to provide a ‘what’s next’ call to action for your prospects
  • It is always a good idea to have Facebook and LinkedIn tracking pixels installed on your website, and in your quizzes. You never know when you are going to want to create a product to market, and having a ready-made audience that you can use as-is, or you can use to create a lookalike audience will save you TONNES of time and money. 
  • Follow up!  Don’t leave your audience hanging. Create an email sequence specific to that audience and those quiz results.

A bit on “Going Viral”

I can’t promise you your lead generating quizzes will go viral.  No one can (or at least, they shouldn’t), but I can give you some tips that we use on every quiz we create that makes them more likely to take off!

  1. Have a ‘share now’ option!
  2. Know your audience – and stay in your brand’s character
  3. Your results titles should be “share-friendly”. Even if they scored badly, the results need to be phrased in such a way that they still feel good about themselves and want to share their results online. 
  4. Pictures – photos are key on the results pages again as well.  Use pics of people (or animals)
  5. Descriptions – keep the fun and creativity going.
  6. Personalized Links – use the word” my” or “your” link to opt-in. The more personal it feels, the higher the opt-in rate.
  7. Add it to Facebook as a tab or pin it to the top of your page. Don’t make finding your quiz hard, and remember how quickly your content disappears
  8. Don’t stick to one social platform. Share that all over Facebook, Instagram and Twitter- but consider writing a ‘similar but different’ quiz for LinkedIn. My research shows that, depending on your brand, the ‘fun’ aspect is not always as appreciated on LinkedIn.
  9. Embed the quiz in related blog posts and pages. Keep it in the sidebar or try an Ad Inserter plugin and have it appear randomly down the page.
  10. Write an article that hits on the subject of your quiz and publish it to LinkedIn articles, submit it to article publication sites.

And remember – talk is cheap. Paid advertising will almost always be more likely to get more attention. Facebook and Instagram LOVE lead generating quizzes. But don’t just ‘boost’ your post. If you really want to grow your list on a massive scale, invest in a Facebook Ad campaign using the quiz. (assuming of course that your target clients are ON Facebook. 😉

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The Results

The results you ask.  Why write the results before the questions?

How to Create a Lead Magnet Quiz for A speaking business - PART 2

Because the results have to reflect the questions you ask. Just as when you write your presentations, you begin knowing what the learning outcome is, you should create your quiz knowing what the results are. 

If the goal is to create a lead magnet quiz that includes lead generation plus targeting, then the results are even more important. The results need to lead to the ‘bucket’ or the program that best represents their answers.

A few more things to think about when writing your results. Your results need to be:

  • Specific.  No one wants an overly generalized result. Your prospect has spent time answering the questions, you owe it to them to put in the time to write a specific and interesting result.  But how do you write a specific, accurate personalized result based on only 5-8 questions? It is all in the wording.

    For example, “You can be very outgoing when you want to be, but also need some alone time to recharge.” Since one behaviour is typical of an introvert, and another is typical for an extrovert – it is likely that it will resonate and sound specific, while being very general.  Another trick is to write one strong statement followed by a weaker contradictory statement, so both have weight and balance out the result without detracting from either assertion.

  • Creative and Fun.  No one wants to get a result saying ‘gold, silver or bronze”.  Please! A little creativity.

  • Flattering. No matter what the score, if the goal is getting shares and potentially going viral – then even the person who scores in the bottom percentage needs to get a laugh and feel comfortable sharing their results.

    One approach that works consistently for me when trying to soften the low score blow is humour . For example, one result was “Umm. Seriously? 3 out of 10?  While I know the quiz was challenging, some of these questions were dead easy! Be honest, were you just goofing around?” It is a surprising answer, and it immediately alleviates the pressure of failure.  

    Another great way to give a flattering result is to turn a negative into a positive.  For instance, if someone scored a “0” on a leadership quiz, instead of saying they have no leadership abilities, you could say “You have not developed any bad leadership habits. You have great potential to build a strong foundation without the messiness of having to unlearn pre-existing behaviours.”

Your Questions and Answers

While your results get your quiz shared, and your title gets your quiz noticed – when you create a lead magnet quiz, what gets your quiz completed is your questions. 

How to Create a Lead Magnet Quiz for A speaking business - PART 2

I like to brainstorm a large number of questions (don’t worry about the answers just yet) and keep them in a file under each potential topic or title. That way when I create quizzes in the future some of the heavy lifting is already done.  Remember, you can re-use the same question, worded slightly differently and provide completely different answers to keep the content feeling fresh.

Because we created the results first, we can now map out quiz answers that will pair perfectly with each result.

Your quiz questions and answers are the most fun to create, I think anyway. This is where your creativity and humour can run wild, and your brand personality can shine. 

But there are still a few rules to keep in mind.

  1. Don’t make the quiz too long. When you begin writing all the questions down you may have 15-20 or more that you think would be great but remember – this is an introduction to your prospective client. A date so to speak.  I try to keep my quizzes around the 60-90 second mark form beginning to end, and that usually gives me 6-8 questions.  
  2. Variety! Use different question types and formats.  Include images, video and text styles. Always remember you have to constantly earn the interest of your followers. Keep your content interesting and valuable. Never take them for granted.
  3. Relevant. Don’t ask for answers to questions you won’t use. It might be interesting to know their favourite flowers, but if you aren’t going to add it to your database and send them those flowers on their birthday, don’t ask. Also, keep the questions on topic and on-brand.

Just landed in the ‘create a lead magnet quiz’ blog series? Click here to start reading from the beginning.

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Now there’s a post title you never expected to see from a marketing company!

Ever notice that sometimes great posts are born out of pet peeves?  This one is.

List building. Of course, I recommend it. It is absolutely necessary to carry out your online marketing tasks. However, in my books, there is a right way and an intrusive way to gain followers. I was just on Facebook and I saw a post I thought looked interesting – I clicked on it and got about 3 sentences in before a pop-up jumped up and blocked the content. This particular pop-up has no visible ‘x’ to close it – and the ONLY option was to opt-in to a webinar on a completely unrelated subject in order to keep reading the content.

Have we been reduced to children in the mind of the writer? Can we not have our pudding unless we eat our meat? In a world where content is still king, how dare that writer make opting-in to his material mandatory before I even have a chance to read the one thing that attracted me to him? This is not what list building is about. Think about your marketing funnel in terms of dating for friendship. You just met this person. All they said was

“Hi, my name is Steve.  Can I borrow your car?”  

They have earned absolutely no trust from you. They come across as sleazy, and obnoxious. And if you lend them your car you are probably just as crazy as they are. (No one is THAT cute)

list buildingIn order to have a successful list building strategy, you have got to give freely first. Share your content. Let your readers or viewers know that what you have to offer is valuable. Maybe you could even engage in a conversation with them. You know, maybe write a blog or social media post and encourage comments? Encourage them to ask questions – and answer them. No strings. Share your knowledge.

Like in any relationship, the time for one-sided giving does end, and you have every right to ask for something in return (like an email), but stop going for the sale immediately. When you are planning your sales funnel and when you are writing your content. Take the time to at least buy your reader a proverbial coffee before you start asking for their firstborn.

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While basking in the sun this Christmas holiday, I read an amazing book by Bob Gilbreath, called “The Next Evolution of Marketing”.   His main focus was how “Interruptive Marketing” was dead and was being replaced with “Marketing with Meaning”. 

I define Interruptive Marketing as the kind of marketing that forces you to stop doing whatever you were doing, to listen to / read / see the marketing message they are sending (TV commercials, print advertising, direct mail, and telemarketing).

Marketing with meaning (in a small nutshell) occurs when people choose to engage with you in exchange for something they perceive as valuable.  Meaningful marketing means the marketing itself adds value to people’s lives, whether or not they immediately buy what you are selling.  I found the concept fascinating. I am tired of being sold to and I know my clients (and yours) are tired of it too.  So, what do we do about it?

 

Marketing with meaning for speakers – selling through emotion

Now, this book was all about big brands, specifically brands that sell a physical products.  Pibworth’s speaker clients usually don’t rely on selling products to drive their business, they sell services.  In essence – they sell themselves.  So I got to thinking, how could I take some of the ideas for selling products as presented in this book, and adapt them to my service selling solopreneurs?  How could you benefit from my reading time on the beach?

I came up with the idea for a “Marketing with Meaning for Speakers” blog series.  Subscribe to our RSS feed or pop back weekly to get your tips on how entrepreneurs like speakers and coaches can implement this principle.

  • Free Samples – What is YOUR ‘football phone’?
  • Loyalty Programs – Do your clients know you love them?
  • ESP – What do your clients really want?
  • Teach people how to make the right decision for them (and it might not be you – and that is ok)
  • Deliver on your promise
  • Create an Experience
  • Do it themselves advertising – Using testimonials as a marketing tool
  • Understanding your Customer
  • Emerging Trends

So, you are in for a rather intense few weeks, but I will do my best to keep it interesting, relevant as well as entertaining.

 

 

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Top Tips for creating a speaker website that converts

Is YOUR website doing all it can to grow your speaking business? Are you sure??

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