Monthly Archives: June 2016

In-Person Marketing: Your Printed Media

This post is about your printed media for local marketing.  I shall post about printed media produced by others in a couple of weeks’ time.  So, how can you use printed media to promote your business?

Printed media is a key way to drive traffic to your website.  If you can persuade visitors to subscribe to your site, you have a way to keep in touch with your local contacts.  If you are mainly concerned about local marketing, this can be the best way to build your contact list.  It can work faster than SEO if you get it right.

Printed media works for marketing beyond the local of course but it depends on circumstance.  If you travel a lot, for example, printed media can be a good way to promote your services beyond the local.  However, most businesses marketing beyond the local, would support in-person approaches with online methods such as SEO and ads.

The Value of Printed Media

Building your list is as important to local marketing as it is to any other approach.  Printed media is a key element of your approach and assists you in other ways.  Printed media

  • is an excellent short-term aide memoire. It presents useful information and saves you having to dictate complex contact details and your contact does not have to write them down.  It is easy to lose printed media, though.  This does not necessarily mean dropping it somewhere.  Business cards accumulate and finding a particular card becomes increasingly difficult.  Persuade contacts to sign up to your email list because it’s a good way to maintain contact a long time after they forget your printed media.
  • can include information about your business. This might range from a sentence on the back of a business card to a full colour brochure.  All these can link to your website in various ways.  The advantage of such media is its physical presence for a short time, allowing a contact to relax and read about your business at their leisure.
  • well-designed, assists branding. It can tell your story and help contacts become familiar with your logo or house style.
  • can reach large numbers of people who would not search for your services online. Hand it to people in busy places, or post it through letter boxes.
  • can provide support for talks and presentations. It can point to follow-up online information, contacts can get in exchange for their email address, for example.

Types of Printed Media

Here are some basic types of printed media, available for use in local marketing:

  • Business cards are an essential means to establish contact
  • Use leaflets to tell the public about your offer
  • Use more elaborate brochures are to help prospects decide between your offers or to pitch for support from established businesses
  • Information leaflets, can be left around in your shop, for example
  • Notes following a presentation
  • Books can also be a valuable source of information, although they may be a tall order for a small business

Essential Features of Printed Media

Whatever printed medium you use, make sure it includes these basics:

  • Your name and business name should be clearly visible
  • Your website url – on a business card this will be your call to action
  • More than one way to contact you. You might prefer people to call you on your mobile.  If they are reading your documentation late at night they are more likely to choose email and not risk disturbing you by phone or forgetting to call you next day.  Don’t forget social media!
  • If necessary, a brief explanation of what you offer. Depends on space.
  • A call to action, which might normally be to visit your website and sign up for something. It could take the form of an invitation or opportunity to buy something.

The more you think of your printed media as an extension to your website, the better.  This should include branding, so that when someone transitions from paper to online, they know they have found the right place.  Bear in mind, it is better to provide a url that takes the contact to the right page on your website.  If you are making a particular offer, the url should take inquirers to a page about that offer.  Don’t offer them the home page and hope they can navigate to the correct page.  Also, you have to print out the url in full on printed media and so if the page is deeply embedded on your site, you may find the url is very long.  This increases mistakes either in your printed media or when the contact copies it into your browser.

Mistakes in Printed Media

Finally, mistakes …  Get your printed media proof-read.  You may be able to proof-read a business card on your own but anything else, at least ask a few people to read it and look out for errors.  There are professional proof-readers who will help you get everything correct.  Get people to copy any urls into browsers and check they work!  We’re used to the ease of correcting web pages and the full force of a disastrous error in printed media perhaps doesn’t occur to us until we experience it.

How have you experienced effective use of printed media?

Third-Party Prospects

It is sometimes worth considering whether you can sell your offer to third-party prospects.  A third-party is someone who makes a purchase for someone else.

Gifts

Usually, we call this a gift and for some businesses gifts are a major source of income.  Before you move on to consider some other aspect of your business, it worth asking whether your business has potential in this market.

Let’s consider the range of possibilities for a gift.  Remember sometimes third parties make a purchase and we would not think of it as a gift.

  • The personal gift is where someone buys a present for someone else. The person to receive and use the gift might have no knowledge of the purchase when the purchaser makes it.  If the recipient is present, it is likely to be similar to selling to them direct.  You need to work out who will make the decision.  A parent buying for a child, when both are present, may need convincing as much as the child, for example.
  • The corporate gift is where someone purchases a service and receives a surprise gift as a thank you and perhaps to encourage them. A corporate gift relevant to the transaction could be a book that will help the client understand the subject area.  Alternatively, they might offer a gift as a thank you.  The gift might be a meal, for example, or else a card and a token such as a box of chocolates.  Gifts personalised in some way are even better.
  • Another type of corporate gift is for marketing purposes. We’ve all received pens, pencils, diaries, usually embossed with the name, logo and contact details of the business.  A particular category of this type of gift, is the gift for business associates.  For example, at Christmas a business might give away bottles of wine or spirits to people they work with.  Take care, as some public servants must register gifts in case they are accused of receiving bribes!
  • Businesses also purchase gifts for employees, eg a Christmas dinner or a works outing. A training event may be an opportunity to offer a special meal or a drink.
  • A third corporate gift is the incentive to sign up for something. So, you might offer a video or a pdf in return for an email address.  The target person opts for this gift if they are interested in it and so may become a prospect later.

An Example

One mistake businesses make is to assume their market is solely their users.  Jewellery and make-up are good examples.  Women usually purchase these for personal use.  However, a jeweller, for example, may find they sell significant amounts to men who are buying a gift for a woman friend or relative.

This business may need to ask: How can you encourage men to purchase from you?  Do they feel comfortable in your shop?  Can you help them decide by asking questions that will help them work out what the recipient might like?

Celebrations

Parties are opportunities to sell large quantities of all sorts of things.  They are opportunities for bulk sales and so it is worth deciding whether you have opportunities to sell in this market.

Obviously there is food and drink but also other possibilities, eg venues, transport, decorations, music, invitations, toys, etc.

Be aware of different types of event.  This will influence the budget, eg a wedding is likely to have a bigger budget than a children’s party.

Some events resemble celebrations, for example a training event might need food, accommodation, equipment, handouts, etc.

Prices

I’m not entirely convinced by the argument that gifts and celebrations are an opportunity to ramp up your prices.  However, there are legitimate reasons why you could charge more:

  • Where your services are at a premium. For example, if you organise wedding receptions, you could charge lower prices mid-week.  Most people want to be married at the weekend and so there will be more competition for your services at those times.
  • If you sell 100 cupcakes, most people would expect the unit price to be lower than if you sell 10. This is to do with economies of scale.  Most caterers over-provide and there are some good reasons for this.  However, it is worth looking at what you are actually providing.  Is it the cupcakes or convenience, where someone else provides the food so the event organisers have time to concentrate on other things?  The food you provide might be costed at the lower bulk buy rate but you must also charge for service; knowing everything will be there at the agreed time and place.
  • If you’re selling a product it may be difficult to ramp up gift sales because you won’t always know who is purchasing a gift. But how about selling a special gift package?  You could bundle a few things together or offer a product with a service, eg come in for a fitting or one-to-one tuition about how to use it.  How can the recipient feel even more special?  If you do this type of thing, you are helping the purchaser plan a quality gift.  What you really must do is show the person who receives the gift will value the additional service.  If they are unhappy, you can guarantee word will circulate with amazing speed.
  • If you are marketing a cause, a gift may seem inappropriate. But it is worth considering whether supporters might appreciate relevant information and support.  For example, if someone who makes a donation, might receive updates or a book about the cause.  It’s a way of saying thank you, increasing understanding of the cause and possibly staying in touch.

Can you think of ways you can adapt your offer for third-party prospects?

Speaking About Community-Based Marketing

This Tuesday evening I presented my keynote talk, “Four Community-Based Marketing Cornerstones for Your Business”. This was my first time speaking about community-based marketing.  It took a lot of rehearsing and I was completely “off the book” – I spoke for about 40 minutes without access to notes (they were at home).

Overall the response was very positive.  The presentation was to the Sheffield Coaching Exchange and 25 people were present.  Eleven signed up for my Community Marketing Conversation and several others have indicated they will be in touch with contacts and possibilities for future presentations.  See my recent post about public speaking events for the theory behind what I did.

I won’t dwell on the feedback from the session, primarily because I would like to see how it pans out over the next few weeks.  This is a new experience for me and like everything else, it is important to take time to work out the best approach and learn the lessons.

In this post I’ll break down my talk, show how I structured it and explain the decisions I took.  I am not going to go into detail about the content: book me to speak if you’re interested!

Introduction

This was practically the same as the excerpt from my keynote talk I published a couple of weeks ago.  The recording was from the Public Speaking Academy‘s retreat weekend.  Since then I performed it for a group of friends.  The feedback from Tuesday suggested this was the least popular part of the talk.  Some people thought it was too long and some could not see how it related to the rest of the talk.

It comprises three main parts:

  • a teaser about the general theme of the evening
  • biographical information about me
  • introduction to the four cornerstones (and one keystone) for community-based marketing

The purpose of the biographical section is to establish my authority as a speaker, so it is important to include it, especially with an audience who did not know me.  (No-one present was previously known to me.)  Previous feedback was that it sounded impressive – which is the point after all!

The feedback was not particularly negative and I suspect, part of the problem was it paled in the light of the rest of the talk.  I shall consider ways of making it shorter.

Teaching

The aim of this section is to offer substantial memorable teaching.  I deliberately chose not to use PowerPoint or written notes.  My thinking here is something memorable is more likely to stick in people’s minds and influence their thinking about their own coaching business.  Of those who responded when asked about this, 12 indicated they were happy not to receive notes and 8 would have liked them.    This is something to think about further but it seems I may be on the right lines.

I explored the four cornerstones in turn.  The first is use of stories and I illustrated this with three imaginary coffee shop proprietors.  I acted out each one, allowing them to tell their story.

My intention was to model the prospects for the three businesses.  I divided the room into three groups, according to the coffee shop they would most like to visit.  I was then able to ask questions for the other 3 cornerstones of prospects for the 3 businesses.  This was highly participative and people entered into the spirit of it.

Conclusion

The conclusion fell into 5 parts:

  • I reviewed the 4 cornerstones and the keystone and suggested two ways to approach the keystone (how to market your business)
  • first, by applying the coffee shop model to their own business.  I invited them to jot down insights about their own business during the break and then we had a few minutes to discuss issues arising in small groups before a final plenary to discuss what came out of the discussions.
  • second, by signing up for a Community Marketing Conversation.  I prepared a matrix of available dates and times and allowed people to sign up who couldn’t make the times I suggested.  This approach simplifies arranging meetings.
  • An example from an existing client.
  • Various ways they could support my work, eg by signing up for a conversation, signing up on my website, completing an evaluation form, etc.

Feedback

All of this will be subject to review, particularly as I meet participants face-to-face over the next few weeks.  It will be interesting to find out how helpful the talk was to them as they reflected upon it.

To finish this post, I’d like to share this testimonial from Lisa Read, the Leader of the Sheffield Coaching Exchange:

“Thank you for an inspiring and thought-provoking talk at Sheffield Coaching Exchange last night. You got us all thinking about how we can market our businesses to our local communities more effectively. You also reignited our passion for how our coaching contributes to our city. I’ve come away entertained and with lots to think about. I’d recommend your services to other small, local businesses, and I’d encourage all to listen to you talk.”

This is an overview of what I did.  Please feel free to raise questions in the comments or discuss some of the issues.

In-Person Marketing: Shop-Fronts and Buildings

There are advantages to having shop-fronts or buildings but not always.  I have written about how buildings can be a liability for community groups.  Many of us have experienced arriving at a cold, dark community centre, sitting on uncomfortable chairs and wishing it was over and we were in the pub.

Well-run, comfortable centres can be an asset but it is hard work.

Shop-fronts can be an asset for businesses, especially those that specialise in products that can be carried away.  However, there are issues such as costs, security, theft, safety that need to be addressed.  However, my interest here is how shop-fronts and buildings can work as marketing tools.

Footfall

The key to any successful on-street business is footfall.  If plenty of people pass by, it is the equivalent of traffic for a website.  The way you lay out your shop, present your goods, resembles conversion.

Increasing footfall is something you can do with others.  Sales are mostly your responsibility.  So, how do you increase footfall and sales?

Collaboration with other traders or organisations can help you increase footfall near your shop-front or community centre.  Community centres can collaborate with local traders to bring people into the area. If it is clear about what it is offering, then it has a role to play in supporting local economic activity.

So, here are a few things to consider doing together.  Some of these activities may be possible alone, but usually they work better where there is collaboration.

  • Shared website promoting the local area.
  • Campaign for local amenities, eg public toilets
  • Support other businesses so they can collaborate. This might involve encouraging businesses likely to draw new people into the area.
  • Events such as an occasional street market. If there is a community centre in the area, events there may draw in new people.
  • Invest in local economic development initiatives, eg an app that helps people find local businesses that sell what they are looking for. This will work better if all the local businesses and organisations can join in.
  • Support initiatives such as local currencies.

Sales

Whilst nearby shops might direct customers to your shop, the sales you make are largely your responsibility.  Here are a few things to consider:

  • Window dressing may be an important way to draw people into your shop. Perhaps if you are a grocer most people will know what to expect but otherwise show them what you sell.  Special offers may entice people over the threshold and then they will see what else is on offer.
  • Think about how you build relationships with local customers. If you know what they like, they are likely to come back.  This sort of service can be radically different to the impersonal supermarket experience.  A fifteen minute conversation may mean a customer comes back for years, especially if you remember their preferences.
  • Ask customers to sign up to your email list. This might be a collective list for traders in your area or your own.  This will allow you to tell customers of special offers.
  • Consider a blog! This might not work for everyone but if you can find an angle, combined with an email list, you can publish valuable information.  For example, a food shop could publish recipes and stock the ingredients, a fashion shop could write about style, a jewellers could write about provenance and craft.  Remember lots of people are interested in how to make things and what goes on behind the scenes.

Note how you can introduce online approaches to support your in-store activities.  This is an effective way of using a website or social media, in support of what you are doing on the ground.

How have you promoted your business using a shop-front or building?

How Many Questions Need Your Prospects Answer?

You need to know whether your product or service will benefit your prospect. If your charges are high, you don’t want to sell to someone who will not benefit from your product or service.  So, where you are selling something complex, you need to ask questions.

Questions Commensurate with Commitment

If you want someone to download your ebook in return for adding their email address to your list, you do not need to find out much to sign someone up.  Downloading an ebook, they may choose not to read, is not worth too much effort!

You really must ask for their email address because you are using the ebook to build your email list.  Strictly speaking that’s all you need!  Most businesses ask for a name as well.  This helps you personalise your emails.

You do not ask a lot of people on your list.  You hope they will read or view your offer and open at least some of your emails.

If someone shows interest in your premium products, they will understand you don’t want to sell them something that will not help them.  So, a few more questions can help you both make a good decision.

Classification Questions

Ask questions to work out which products or services are likely to be suitable.  You aim to find out more about the prospect and use the information to discuss a couple of products or services that may be helpful.

I do this through my Community Marketing Conversation.  I ask four main questions and have several sub-questions to ask if relevant.

My main aim is to find out whether I can help the prospect.  If I cannot, I aim to give them at least one good referral.

My second objective is to work out which of my services are most suitable for the prospect.  I usually offer a choice of two services.

Qualification Questions

Ask these to decide whether the prospect has the qualifications they need to take up your offer.

They are not always necessary but examples include, where you:

  • offer training validated externally
  • offer a product or service regulated externally
  • need to find out whether the prospect can pay for the product or service.

So, how many questions do you need?  It depends.  You need to think this through for your own business and be able to explain to prospects what you are doing, why you’re doing it and what you will do with their answers.

What questions do you use to recruit customers?

The Positive Power of Saying No

My main interest is in marketing and for many people the point of marketing is sales.  Many business owners struggle with sales and fear a prospect saying no.  I’m convinced a prospect saying no has positive power.

Of course, a prospect saying “Yes” delights most business owners.  After all this is the objective of their marketing and possibly months of careful work building trust with their prospect.

So, it is obviously a disappointment when the prospect says “No” – or is it?  Actually there are not two but four options and we should be aware of all of them.  Here they are in order of positive outcome.  The three first all have positive aspects, less so the fourth.

When Yes Means Yes – The Genuine Yes

You cannot be certain from the outset that the yes is a genuine yes.  You cannot be sure until you receive your first cheque or indeed until you have completed the contract.

Things can go wrong and the responsibility for that rests primarily with you.  The client is genuinely interested and so you need to arrange another meeting where you can discuss the details of your contract and arrange payment if everything is satisfactory.  This is a crucial time in your relationship with your client and if it goes wrong the fault is most likely with you.

However, we all learn from mistakes and if you do lose clients at this stage, you need to review what you did and work out where you’ve gone wrong.  The main thing to remember is keep communication open and arrange another meeting soon to cement the relationship.

When No Means Yes – No for Now

Your prospect says “No” but wants to maintain the relationship.  Sometimes they’ll tell you it is no for now and maybe there will be a deal some time in the future.  Other times you intuit they want to keep the relationship going.  What you need to do is agree some future meetings.

You could do this by inviting them to join your referral networking group, for example.  Alternatively, you could arrange to meet again and catch up at a later date, maybe 6 months later.

The key to this prospect may be they need to build trust with you.  It seems many businesses find they need between 4 and 10 one-to-one meetings to change that “No” into a “Yes”.  The thing is to cultivate the relationship, maximise the opportunities to get to know like and trust each other.

When No Means No – The Genuine No

You will have a good idea when the “No” is final.  And actually this is a good place to be.  If you do not have any common ground (and it can be you who says “No” to the prospect) it is better to be honest about it.

It is not a good idea to allow this “No” to be tacit.  You can ask if they know anyone who might be interested in your business.  This allows them to say “No” but also, if they do want to support you, they have an opportunity to find you a referral.

It is always worth having some reserve ideas for those who say no.  Perhaps they would sign up to your email list?  The point would be to remind them of you and so they can make referrals at a later date.

Just because the person in front of me is not a prospect, it does not mean they don’t know others who might be.

So, an honest “No” can have positive power.  It doesn’t mean you have to lose touch.  The main problem is finding constructive ways of keeping in touch with perhaps many such contacts.

When Yes Means No – The Silence

This is the worst possible outcome.  This Yes raises your hopes  but then your prospect goes silent.  Sometimes this happens part way through a contract.  Usually though it is soon after this first “Yes”.

Reasons?  Perhaps the prospect changed their mind but sometimes it happens because the prospect doesn’t know how to say “No”.  They say “Yes” to get out of the room.

Unfortunately, you may spend several hours preparing paperwork, planning how to handle this client and then find it is all for nothing.  When I started I had several such prospects and some of them lasted for weeks.

The key is to follow-up immediately the prospect says “Yes”.  You don’t know if they mean it or if they mean it now and will have second thoughts later.  So, here are my suggestions:

  • the key is to arrange another meeting sometime soon.  If they are genuine they’ll be keen to get started and so be ready to have some detailed proposals as soon as possible
  • send details in advance of the meetings, primarily of your proposal.  At the meeting they can raise their concerns.  This may be the best time to discuss prices.  Start high and watch out for reasons to offer reductions
  • tell them what to do if they have doubts – ask them to contact you or tell you at the meeting.  Say you hope they will stay in touch even if they change their minds.  Hopefully they will agree that if on reflection they’re not sure they will want to keep contact in case they become sure in the future.

Keep communication going while you’re waiting for your first payment.  Sometimes there are management committees and the like to negotiate and these all allow time for doubts to set in.  I’m more inclined to be firmer about these issues than I was, given the amount of preparation a new client requires and that you are not reimbursed for the work you do until the first payment.

Conclusion

Notice how saying “No” is actually no bad thing.  It does not imply a termination in your relationship.  Sometimes it is a “not yet” and sometimes you may have an ally who can pass business your way.  Remember in a one-to-one, you may also be saying “No” to their offer.  The issue is not selling services to one another so much as finding working relationships that are mutually beneficial.

Do you have examples of good practice for fielding these four types of response?

In-Person Marketing: Public Speaking Events

When you use public speaking as part of your marketing campaign, you need to plan more than your speech.  Here are three things you need to consider, when organising public speaking events:

How to Find Public Speaking Opportunities

This is, I find, the hardest part of using public speaking for marketing.  You need to be clear about what you’re offering and who you are marketing to.

Ideally, you’re seeking an audience made up of several prospective customers.  So, this is not the same as addressing a meeting of people from the same business or organisation.  You could deliver the same speech to them but you have only one possible customer.  Such an organisation, if impressed by your speech, might refer you to others and so such a meeting might be worthwhile.  However, you need to be clear whether they are able to do that and confident they’ll find your performance worth passing on.

When you set up an event, be clear in advance what you will offer your audience as a call to action.  It is not a good idea to go for a hard sell.  Discuss your call to action with your host in advance.  It is a doubly bad idea not to tell your host if you do go for a hard sell!

As a call to action, it is helpful to offer an opportunity to explore your topic in more depth.  I offer a Community Marketing Conversation, where the participant takes away next steps for their marketing campaign.  Usually this will be a referral and occasionally I make them an offer.

What to Consider When Delivering Your Speech

Your aim throughout the presentation is to build relationships with your audience.

See my previous post about the practicalities of public speaking.  Be clear about whether you are providing notes, especially if you use PowerPoint.  Notes are useful because you can include contact details and details of your offers.

As you approach the end of your talk, ask those who are interested to sign up to your offer.  You can ask them to provide their name, mobile number and email address so you can contact them to arrange a meeting.  Or you can offer dates and times and encourage people to sign up for them.  It is perhaps best to combine these two as people who get to sign up late may find no slots remain they can attend.

You don’t necessarily need to provide your contact details to those who sign up because you will contact them within 48 hours to confirm your arrangements.  If you do want to make sure people can contact you, a handout that lists ways they can support your enterprise will do the trick.  Many people use business cards and these can be the best way of passing on details.

Follow-Up to Your Speech

Hang around and talk to people.  There may be opportunities to ask people to sign up who have so far hesitated.  In any event it is better than making a dash for the door.  You may also be able to find referrals from the people present, if they can think of potential customers for you in the light of your presentation.

Don’t forget to thank your host and check out they are happy with your performance.

Don’t forget to email those who signed up, confirming their meeting.  Don’t assume they entered it in their diary.

On the day, text them with details of the meeting.  This serves as a reminder but also puts your number near the top of their list in case they get lost or delayed.  See my post about sales conversations for more information about what to do when you meet.

And don’t forget to review your presentation as soon as you can.  This way you will remember elements that didn’t go so well.

Have you any experience of presentations and tips you would like to share?

Conversations with Target Markets

Assume you have identified your target market.  This is not always easy but if you can do this you have no excuse for not having conversations with it!  Conversations with target markets are vital, if you are not going to waste time developing products or services no-one needs.

This post is about opportunities for such conversations but first let’s recall why they are important: your target market always has a better idea what it needs than you do.

That seems clear-cut.  Disagree by all means but if you think you know better, there’s no harm in checking out your ideas with your target market.

However, people don’t always know what they need.  Possibly, they know what they want.  This is why you need conversations.  Conversations enable ideas to develop; when this happens you have a potential customer in front of you.

In-Person Conversations

With a local market, you have many opportunities for in-person conversations.  If not, you will still be able to meet some people potentially interested in your business.

If you review my posts about testimonials, you will see recorded interviews are a good way to get testimonials; to discover what your clients might value from you in the future.

You can just as easily interview potential customers as you can actual customers.  If you find people who want to support you and are part of your potential market, you can ask them what they need.

So, how do you find people for your conversations?  Any referral marketing approach helps.  Ask contacts if they can think of anyone who might be in your market and willing to meet you for a conversation.

Online Conversations

You can hold face-to-face conversations online using Skype, Google Hangouts or other similar means.  Other possibilities include conversations:

  • in the comments on your blog
  • via social media
  • in online fora

There are no guarantees these will work but they are all worth a try.

If you have an email list, the chances are the people on it are interested in what you are doing and so it is worth asking if they would like to make contact for a conversation.

Seed Product Launches

These are usually online but could be done as a local event.  This is a general outline of the approach.

You decide on a product you want to develop.  This is likely to appeal to your target market.  Let it be known you are planning to develop the product and are looking for people to help you.

You charge a modest amount to those who are taking part.  This cements their commitment to several meetings with you.

You present your ideas at online or in-person meetings and receive feedback.  The aim to engage the group in developing the product.

Once  you have finished the product, give a copy to each member of the group and then you are free to sell the product, most likely at a higher price than the price you charged the seed launch group.  The seed launch group experience both working with you and the finished product and so their fee is well worth it!

Developing a product this way means it is more likely to meet the needs of your target market than a product developed in isolation.  You still do most of the work but guided by the insights of a group of people who will value the finished product.  They may also be pleased to recommend the finished product to their contacts.

There are many more ways you can find opportunities to hold conversations with a view to shaping your products or services to meet your target market’s needs.  Have you any favourite approaches?

My First Keynote Talk

Here is the first ten minutes of my first keynote talk!  The rest of it has not been written yet and altogether it will last about 40 minutes, with options to do some group exercises.  This excerpt comes in just under 10 minutes.

I’m not going to explain what has gone into it but I would be interested to hear your reactions.  I have to watch it a few times and spot my mistakes as a part of my public speaking course.  So any feedback would be really helpful.

The rest of the talk will cover the four cornerstones of local marketing.  I shall illustrate them using a worked example.  Then there can be opportunities for the audience to work on their own business in the light of the content.  The final section will be a call to action, an opportunity to sign up for my community marketing conversation.

Comments

Comments on either the content or the structure and delivery of the talk would be really helpful.

Please note I occasionally walk off-camera to address the audience.  I mostly forgot about the camera!

See if you can spot the main sections of the talk.  These include the initial hook, how I establish my authority and then set up the main section of the talk.

My first ever presentation of the full keynote talk will be on 21 June, in a couple of weeks time.

In-Person Marketing: Public Speaking

Public Speaking is a valuable local marketing tool.  This post focuses on speaking itself and the next is about how to organise public speaking as a marketing activity.

My main advice is practice speaking and listen to others speak.  You can learn a lot by listening, even to poor speakers.  You need opportunities to find your voice and become confident in your ability to hold your audience’s attention.  Despite what people say about audiences with the attention span of a gnat, the truth is a good speaker can capture and hold their attention for long periods.

One important aspect of any compelling public speech is the use of stories.  If possible you should have a keynote or origin story, which is a story about you.  Its aim is to build rapport with your audience.  I won’t dwell on this here but refer you to earlier posts about the use of story.

Rhetoric is the process of speaking in public and involves several skills you need to bring together.  It isn’t easy but it is easier than it sounds!

Arguing

You may on occasion share a platform with someone with a message to some degree opposed to yours.  However, when you are the sole speaker you still need to hone your arguing skills.

Your argument is the strategy you use to engage your audience and keep them with you.  It may include telling a few stories and illustrating the point you want to make.  The argument should culminate in a call to action.  This means those persuaded by your speech can follow-up by taking some action.

The awareness ladder is one way you can structure your argument, starting where your audience is and carrying them forward to the point where they are ready respond.  There are of course other ways of structuring an argument.

Proving

Proving something may be part of your argument.  It can be central to your argument or else it may be a minor element.

For proof you need to marshal hard evidence and soft evidence as well as ensuring your narrative makes sense and actually proves what you claim it proves.

I recently attended a debate about the European referendum.  The Brexiter made two mistakes; despite being the most engaging speaker, his account did not stack up.  He claimed the European Union plans to create a single European state, which is not the subject of the referendum and then he went on to show that as 28 countries would have to vote in favour of such a state, it is almost impossible.  First, the chances are the UK would not support such a change as many pro-Europeans would not be in favour of it.  This is not the subject of the referendum, the pro-European speaker actually said he would not support a European state if that was the question for a referendum!  His second mistake was his proof (if we assume each state is 50% likely to join, the chances of agreement is one half raised to the power of 28) actually favours the “remain in Europe” argument.  After all, if a European State were on the agenda it is very unlikely to get the support it needs.  We can stay in Europe confident that we won’t be somehow turned into a single state.

So, make sure your proof proves what you claim it proves because if it doesn’t, it will favour the other side.

Inventing

The speaker at the European debate had invented what to him was a compelling argument.  He was a good speaker, let down by his own material.

By all means be inventive.  If I were speaking in the same debate, I would argue against the holding of a referendum at all!  I don’t believe the referendums, organised in recent years, have been democratic.  They are divisive and narrow down the debate to a binary decision that in no way mirrors political reality.

If I developed that argument, solely my own as I haven’t seen or read anything like it elsewhere (such arguments are beginning to appear, eg Irvine Welsh), I am confident I’d hold my audience’s attention.  I know this because I broached the topic in a two-minute speech recently and the response was positive, people wanted to hear more (which does not mean they agree with me).

Your invention can be in the argument you choose, the way you structure it and the stories you use to support it.

Memorising

Memorising relevant passages can be effective.  The chances of you stumbling means the audience will be with you and cheer you on.

However, that is not the main meaning of this point.  Memorising means getting away from your notes.  You remember the flow of your argument and put it into your own words.

This is impressive albeit difficult to do.  Especially in a long talk, it is easy to get off the point or forget the order of the argument.

But memorising frees your eyes to make contact with your audience, so that you can gauge how the talk is going down.

Delivery

And this brings us to how you deliver your message.  How you stand, what you wear, your tone of voice and the words you use to communicate.

This is an enormous topic and the value of training in public speaking is you receive feedback about how you are coming across and what you can do to improve it.

Figures of speech

Finally, figures of speech are what is normally understood as rhetoric although a small part of what you do when you deliver a speech.

They often involve some form of repetition.  If you can vary the rhythm of your speech and include memorable turns of phrase, it will impress people.  You can’t rely on these techniques alone because on their own they don’t add up to an effective speech.  However, they can be used to spice up a speech and are effective when used to support the other elements in your rhetoric.

This is a fairly standard list of the elements of rhetoric.  What do you find to be the most important consideration when you are speaking to market something?

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