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?
