Marketing Your Brand Through Speaking Engagements
Posted October 14, 2010
Speaking engagements are a great brand marketing and business development tool. Whether they are free, paid or fee-associated, effective speaking engagements offer significant intangible rewards:
- Enhanced visibility: promote your business, raise your profile, and increase awareness of your products or services.
- Increased credibility: establish both yourself and your business as thought leaders; become the go-to expert on the presentation topic.
- Expanded reach: benefit from effective lead generation through exposure to a highly targeted, desirable audience; build strategic alliances and valuable partnerships.
Just like any marketing activity, realizing the rewards of an effective speaking program takes strategic planning. Here are a few tips for creating a successful speaking program:
Finding speaking opportunities
An effective speaking program consistently puts you in front of the right audience with the right message. First, consider your desired reach: is your focus local, regional, national or international? Then, look for events within that scope whose audience represents the clients, customers and industries your business wants to target.
Speaking opportunities are available at conferences, trade shows, seminars, forums, association events, professional organization events and industry trade events. If you’re considering a sponsorship at a conference or trade show, ask about sponsorships that include speaking opportunities at the event. Once you have a few successful speaking engagements under your belt, you can also consider joining a speakers bureau to help expand your reach.
Ironing out the logistics
As you identify speaking opportunities of interest, keep track of your progress. Take note of each event, the dates, the event organizer’s contact details and all submission deadlines. Before you start submitting proposals, you’ll want to have on hand:
- your professional bio
- your speaker bio
- a professional headshot
- a clear, yet concise presentation abstract
Because you’ll be competing with several other speakers, developing relationships with the event organizers and following up with each submission will help boost your chances of being selected.
Creating a rock solid presentation
Landing a speaking opportunity is just half of the battle. Your presentation is the other half, and the most important factor in your future success as a speaker. Consider investing in speaker training — even if you’re confident speaking in front of a large group, speaker training can help you hone your skills and increase your chances of being invited back for future speaking engagements.
As for content, focus on creating a rock solid, informative presentation. The purpose of your presentation should be explicitly educational. Do not promote your company or your services in any way. A blatant sales pitch will alienate your audience, whereas a unique, educational presentation delivered effectively will provide value to your audience, build your credibility and eliminate any need for a sales pitch.
Getting the word out
Dedicate a page on your Web site to your speaking engagements. Include your speaker bio, highlight your past speaking successes and prominently feature all upcoming speaking opportunities.
In addition, send out an email announcement to current and prospective clients as well as colleagues and partners inviting them to attend; distribute a press release; and make an announcement on your blog, through Linked In and on Twitter.
Following through
After you’ve wowed your audience with your presentation, and mingled with all of the participants who rushed the stage at the close of your Q&A session, be sure to follow through. Follow up with anyone who you exchanged business cards with, who had any follow up questions or who may have been interested in your products or services. If your presentation was recorded, make it available on your Web site.
Feedback is always available, whether through candid remarks from audience members, or through more formal evaluations collected by the event planners — use it to enhance your next speaking opportunity.
As you continue to build out your speaking program, and increase the frequency of your speaking engagements, the visibility, credibility and reach of both you and your company will skyrocket.
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