4-Step Process To Help You Grow Your Public Speaking Business
As a business owner, your ultimate objective must be to improve public perception of your business and brand. This is challenging, whether you're trying to do it through content, advertising, or networking. These challenges are keenly felt in the public speaking business.
Attracting an audience and winning their confidence are two of the most difficult tasks for any public speaker. This holds true for keynote speakers, product or service promoters, and whether you are speaking in person or through a webinar.
Here, we'll discuss several powerful marketing strategies that can help you increase your customer base and business prospects.
Why Do Public Speaking Businesses Fail?
Lack of a clear strategy
Successful speakers rarely book random events to speak on random topics. Instead, they focus on outlining a clear strategy with a central goal, topic, or niche in mind. Creating this roadmap allows you to direct time and energy toward speaking engagements that support your goals, which can only help your business grow.
Modern audiences are becoming more sophisticated. Traditional models where keynote speakers deliver “expert advice” to passive audiences are being phased out. With rapid technological advancement, people now expect features like live polling and interactive experiences, even for large gatherings.
To succeed, you must create a strategy that plays into your message and who it’s made for. Decide what channels to prioritize to maximize your impact. Will it be YouTube videos or podcasts? Or is it tweeting content? Will your speeches require just-in-time feedback, surveys, or downloadable handouts? Ignoring these factors can undermine your message and sabotage public engagement with your brand.
Poor marketing skills
Being the best in the business means nothing if you’re not getting access to the right audience. It sounds good on paper, but no one wants to be the “best-kept secret."
Not all paid speaking gigs will offer the same value. You must learn how to present yourself and who to connect with to book speaking engagements that boost your speaker profile. Without this, your amazing speech or message will have little impact.
Poor speaking skills
Unfortunately, some people still fall victim to this. Complacency is the biggest threat in such cases. Compelling public speaking is an art form that must be cultivated and nurtured. The Benefits of Motivational Talks can be immense for both the speaker and the audience. Passion and expertise are not enough. You can have the right words but still fumble the delivery.
Stay informed on new, creative techniques to engage audiences. Consider attending seminars or taking coaching lessons. When you’re always looking for ways to improve, you’re always making your message clearer and more impactful. This allows you to engage your audience and create memorable experiences that enrich lives and boost brand awareness.
4-Step Process To Help You Grow Your Public Speaking Business
Public speakers in today's environment must be comfortable and confident in deploying creative marketing techniques to maintain brand relevance. To get started:
1. Define your brand persona
Any rebranding or new brand creation must accurately represent you. This means carefully choosing the image you wish to project to the public to succeed in promoting yourself as a speaker.
Your brand persona should be a reflection of who you are and what you stand for, as well as who you want to connect with. Think about the terms/ideals/values you'd like to be associated with, and use those as a guide to refine your brand persona. There is a strong connection between your beliefs, your position on topics you care about, and the words you use to describe yourself.
The final stage of developing a brand persona is identifying your target market.
Think about your strengths and values, and then use that to narrow down your target audience (people who stand to benefit the most from your message). Several industries/niches may need your wisdom, but you should zero in on a small subset of that population to better target your marketing efforts. You'll have an easier time selling your services and explaining their worth to the target audience if you narrow your focus.
2. Create a website and host a blog
Nowadays, a company's success or failure hinges on the existence of a functional website. What you do and who you are should be described in detail on your website. To make a strong first impression, your website needs to look professional. Launching a blog on your site is the best way to do this.
Having a blog gives you a competitive edge. Blogs provide a public platform for expression, sharing of useful information, the establishment of expertise, and can even act as a sales platform. Blogs will keep readers abreast of any recent happenings, developments in the sector, or new offerings, while the website's pages can focus on more practical matters.
People may approach you with identical enquiries. Constantly having to explain the same information might be tedious. Imagine having to share your expertise on technical topics like small business Cloud PBX several times with different knowledge-seekers. Yet blogs can help you save time by providing customers with all the information they need.
The primary benefit of a blog, though, lies elsewhere.
People search the web for just about everything. Creating relevant, educational content means people will find your blogs when they search for related information. Organic searches will lead visitors to your pages. Increasing your website's organic traffic will significantly expand your marketing reach.
3. Maintain a strong social media presence
Leveraging social media to attract the attention of event organizers and other decision-makers has grown in importance in recent years. Maintaining a solid social presence markets your brand, message, and skills.
Find out what resonates with your audience and use it to actively engage them with relevant brand content. This allows you to build a community and following around your brand, which is one of the most effective forms of marketing in the modern market.
4. Leverage podcasts
Another excellent strategy for reaching your target audience and expanding your listener base is to make guest appearances on popular podcasts.
You need to appear on a podcast where the audience is already engaged in your field of expertise. Starting a podcast of your own is a great way to do this, but some might find the process reminiscent of those early days spent getting over the fear of public speaking.
The second option is to actively seek out possible hosts and advertise yourself as a guest. You can get on several podcasts if you contact enough of them.
Your study of your niche should have given you a concept of your target demographic. This information will help you better target your podcast promotion efforts. You only need to identify which podcasts are popular among your target demographic and approach the hosts with an offer to share your expert insight with their audience.
Compile a list of suitable shows you could contribute to and identify how you can provide value to their audiences. The next step is to reach out to each podcast's host, introduce yourself, and ace any appearances you might receive.
The secret to success is to approach podcasts that are likely to accept your request. The goal should be to use your appearances on lower-traffic podcasts as stepping stones to shows with more viewers. After some time, if you have a compelling message, you may be invited to appear on the most popular podcasts.
Bonus Points
It's time to put what you've learned about marketing your public speaking career into action now that you know several strategies that successful public speakers use. The world is evolving, and new business solutions like small business VoIP continue to push the boundaries of what consumers expect from brands. The situation might mean reviewing your previous marketing strategy if you already have one. Creative techniques like influencer partnerships can make a big difference.
One clear advantage of collaborating with social media influencers is gaining access to their audiences. A collaboration with an influencer who already has a sizable fan base will increase the number of people who see your messaging. This will also allow you to experiment with new forms of content.
Be flexible and open to new opportunities to connect with your audience. There’s no reason you can’t have fun with it. Your audience will pick up on your enthusiasm and message when they see that you’re passionate about it.
