Top 10 Ways To Market Yourself As A Speaker

TOP 10 WAYS TO MARKET YOURSELF

There are 2 main challenges for any speaker. This is the same whether you are a keynote speaker or one that promotes products and services, on stage or during webinars. 

 

  1. Getting an audience for your speeches. 
  2. Gaining the trust of your audience. 

It’s called Speaker Marketing. 

You have to put in a lot of work to market yourself. Luckily there are some tried and tested methods to market yourself as a speaker. These methods will increase your exposure and will lead to more work. 

In this post, we will outline different ways to get your name out there and ultimately gain more clients or selling opportunities.

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1) Identify A Niche to Market Yourself

Everyone has interests, passions and areas of expertise. Therefore, your first step is to pick a market that will benefit from what you have to say. Focusing your marketing efforts on a niche will narrow your market, but it will target specific groups of people with a shared interest. 

Targeting a narrow market is far more effective than trying to open yourself up to as many people as possible. The reasons for this, are:

  • There will be less competition
  • You will be speaking about things that are more within your knowledge base,
  • It will be more fun speaking about topics that you are interested in
  • You will become an authority in that field.

When choosing a niche, you need to ask yourself, “Who wants to hear my message and who will benefit the most from it?”. The answers to these questions will make it easier to identify the right people to contact within your field.

 

2) Build A Website With A Blog

You cannot have a successful business without a website these days. Building a website is not as difficult as you may think. In most cases, you can have a website up and running within a few minutes. Your website should be full of information about who you are and what you do. A good website creates a positive first impression of you to your customers and makes you look professional.

But, your website should be dynamic and show signs that your business is alive and kicking. The best way to do this is to add a blog page to your website. But blogs have many other advantages too. Blogs, make it easier to show your personality, inform your audience, build authority and stand out from the crowd.

Pages on your website will have practical information, but your blogs will update people with events, industry trends or new products and services.

Lots of people may contact you asking the same questions over again. It can be time-consuming answering the same questions every time. But, you can save time, by answering these frequently asked questions in the form of blogs. You will be able to send the link to the blogs to customers to answer their questions easily. But this is not the biggest advantage of having a blog page.

Most of the time, people will search online for answers to their questions. If you create blogs properly, they will appear in people’s online searches. Ultimately, this means people will find your website organically while looking for answers. Building organic traffic to your website is a no-cost way of reaching more people.

 

Enable Comments

To maximise the effectiveness of your blogs, We recommend enabling comments. Comments allow your audience to ask you questions and share their thoughts on the subject directly and publicly. Interacting with people through your comments increases audience engagement, which builds trust in you and your brand. In your comments section, you can direct people to different pages on your website, providing them with relevant information too. 

Blogs also act as great content for sharing on social media. This is because your blogs appear to people who have an interest in that particular subject or industry. Also, if it is good enough, it will be shared with other people that share the same interests.

Regular blog posting shows that you are knowledgeable in your industry. This will build trust with your audience, and people are more likely to do business with you because of it. 

Blogs also increase your authority with search engines. Each website is given a score concerning their domain authority based on how helpful and informative they are. The higher the domain authority, the easier it is for your content to rank highly in online searches.

 

 

3) Write a Book

One of the best ways to show the world that you are an authority in a subject is to write a book. You can use a book to promote yourself as a speaker in two ways. The first way is to give it away as a free download. Free downloads encourage people to join your mailing list (I will go into this later). The second way is to sell it and make money from it. 

 

Self- Publish

These days you do not need to find a publisher, as you can do it yourself online. Platforms such as Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, CreateSpace, iBooks and Bookbaby, make it possible to get your book out into the world without going through a traditional publishing house.

The process of self-publishing is simple:

  • Write an amazing and informative book
  • Decide which self-publishing platform to use
  • Get it edited
  • Get a cover designed
  • Upload and click publish

You need to realise that you are responsible for absolutely everything when you self-publish a book. The good news is that you will get all of the royalties from sales when you self-publish. The only thing that is taken away is the distribution costs.

When it comes to marketing, you can just get it done yourself rather than waiting for the publisher to do it.

 

Traditional Publishing House

If you go through the traditional way, you need to do the following:

  • Determine what your book is about
  • Find a publisher and an agent
  • Prepare the required submission materials outlined by your potential publisher
  • Submit your material
  • Hope for the best

When you use a publisher, you often need to wait for the green light to proceed with any marketing efforts. But, they will have the experience and knowledge to market your book well. 

When labelled as a traditionally published author, you get the benefit of prestigious.

This title demonstrates that you have had to go through a thorough process to produce a quality book.

Finding an agent could take a while, but if you have a great book, you could expect a large advance payment. However, be careful as you may need to give this back if your book flops. In addition to this, there are other people involved that will take a cut of your profits.

However, choosing between self-publishing your book and finding a publisher will depend on what your goals are. For example, if you want to have full creative control and less red tape, self-publishing is the way forward.

 

4) Build Your Marketing Email List

An email mailing list is a list of emails gathered from people that have visited your website or previous customers. With an email list you can send updates, information, promotions and other details about your business to people directly. 

The people in your email list, have opted to receive these updates. Therefore, they are interested in your work and are more likely to convert into paying clients. It is worth noting that email is forty times more effective at obtaining new customers than social media alone.

 

How To Build An Emailing List

There are several techniques to build an email list, but an effective method is to create calls to action:

  • Create a call to action (CTA) on your blog posts – An example of a call to action is “Click here to download your free ebook”. These incentivises people to give you their email address. But the incentive needs to be helpful, or it will come across as gimmicky or useless to your audience.
  • Pop-up form – Some people think that pop-ups are annoying, but when they are executed well, they are an excellent way of building a mailing list. When someone has spent a certain amount of time on your website, or they perform a specific action. 

An example of this is, making a sign-up form pop up when they move the cursor to close the tab. Again, you will have to incentivise the visitor to coax them into filling the form in.

  • Use humorous call to actions – Using CTAs such as “No I don’t want to know how to motivate my team with an amazing speaker”, under a link labelled “Sign Me Up!” will get you a better response than a boring phrase like, “do you want emails to see how to motivate your team?”. 

These CTAs remind your website visitor that there is a person behind the button, and it is harder for them to say no to something that will benefit them or their business.

  • Optimise sign-ups with value – Using language such as “sign up” in your CTA, you are not offering value. Therefore, you need to use words like “download”, “exclusive”, “free” and “access”. 

Top Tips For CTAs

An example of an effective phrase for a CTA is “download our exclusive ebook/checklist/report for free”, and include a sign-up form. This will make it clear for your website visitors that they will gain value from submitting their email address.

  • Encourage people to sign up immediately – Placing CTAs on blog posts and landing pages, you will capture website visitors early on in their session. These CTAs should reflect the purpose of your newsletter. An example of this is, “want to know how to motivate your team with a speaker? sign up to our newsletter”.
  • Place CTAs in your About Me page – As a speaker, people will be keen to learn more about you, so they will check out your About Me page. CTAs that encourage them to sign up to your newsletter will be more effective than trying to get them to book you straight away.
  • Place a scroll box on your website – It can be challenging to determine where to place a CTA . A popular solution to this is to use a scroll box. Scroll boxes are always visible to your website visitors as they scroll up and down. This will allow them to sign up whenever they are ready.

And while we’re at it, here’s a FREE Webinar Checklist for you to download. Just simply click here or the image below to get it.

 

5) Appearing on Podcasts As A Guest

Appearing on a popular podcast as a guest is a brilliant way of reaching your target market and growing your audience. You will need to get on a podcast that is relevant to your niche, as the listeners will be interested in the things you have to say.

There are two ways you can be a guest on a podcast. The first way is to simply wait to be contacted by the people running the podcast. The problem with this is that it may never happen, or take a long time depending on your reach. 

The second way is to reach out and promote yourself as a potential guest, which is far more effective. If you reach out to enough podcasts, you can appear on multiple podcasts each month.

You should have a good idea of who your audience is already from researching your niche. But, you need to know who your perfect customer is. You can do this by thinking about how they would describe themselves and how you would describe them. This will give you a good idea of how to find podcasts that your audience listens to.

There are a few ways that you can find appropriate podcasts:

  • Search in iTunes for specific keywords
  • Browse Apple’s iTunes Podcast Directory
  • Search Google for relevant podcasts
  • Browse online podcast directories

These methods will bring your attention to many different podcasts, but you ideally need a list of at least 10 to pitch to. 

The next thing to do is contact the host of each podcast and introduce yourself and kill it when you get invited to speak on the podcasts.

The key is to start with smaller podcasts that are likely to say yes. Each time, leverage your appearance on those smaller podcasts to move up to podcasts with bigger audiences. 

Over time, provided you have a good message, you could be speaking on the biggest podcasts. 

 

6) Get Media Coverage

The exposure you can get from publications such as newspapers and authority websites is immense. Good media coverage will bring lots of traffic to your website and will get you lots of speaking gigs. In addition to this, it can lead to more media coverage, which will give you even more exposure.

To get media coverage, you need to connect with journalists that are writing about topics within your niche. Journalists love it when they can reference an expert on the subject in their publications, as it makes it more convincing and gives it more clout. 

You can trawl the internet looking for these journalists (which is something you should do), but there is an easier way.

By signing up to HARO (Help A Reporter Out) you will receive emails twice per day with a list of subjects that journalists need help with. By providing the journalist with the relevant information, they will reference you and place a link to your website in their article (which is also good for your website SEO).

 

7) Advertise Yourself

You probably have an idea of the customers you want to work with, but how do you connect with the right ones for your speaking?

  • Targeted ads – Targeting your intended audience with Facebook and Google ads is a relatively inexpensive way to gain exposure to the right people. For speaker marketing, things to consider when creating your target ads are geographic location, demographics, niche and browsing activity. These elements will focus your adverts on to your ideal clients.
  • Analyse your competitors – By looking at your competitors marketing strategies and their customers, you will be able to find customers to target and use their marketing efforts as a benchmark your own. Your unique selling point may be what these customers are looking for.
  • Reach out to potential clients – Speculative phone calls and emails may seem like a long-winded way of gaining clients, but it is worth doing if you connect with the right ones. However, face  to  face meetings are far more successful than emails, as people are more likely to say yes to your face while being more likely to say no (or ignore) an email. 

If you run your own Webinars or Seminars, you definitely need to run ads. Otherwise, you could show up to an empty room. 

Grab our Free Lead Surge eBook

 

8) Build A Social Media Presence

Social media is an essential aspect of your speaker marketing strategy. It brings your services to the attention of potential clients, but it also builds and reinforces the relationships you have with existing ones. 

Keeping existing customers engaged in your social media channels strengthens their loyalty and while acting as an online testimonial to instill confidence in potential new customers.

When it comes to building your social media presence, choose the platforms that will suit your brand, rather than being on all of them. As a speaker, your audience is more likely to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram than TikTok, so it is best to focus your efforts on those platforms.

If social media is not your strong point, you can employ the services of social media specialists to manage your channels for you. They will be able to advise you on the best strategies to get the widest reach possible.

 

9) Connect With Influencers

Once you have set up your social media channels, you may want to connect with influencers. Influencer marketing has spiked in recent years, as businesses are seeing big results from it. 

The biggest platform for influencer marketing is Instagram, and it works by associating yourself with people with popular social media personas. These people post about their passions and build massive audiences which you can tap into. 

By getting influencers to mention you and promote you, you gain social proof in the eyes of their audience.

However, when using an influencer, you need to be aware that their endorsement needs to be done genuinely and sincerely. If the message comes across as fake, you will not get the exposure you are looking for, or it may even damage your reputation.

You must also choose influencers that are relevant to your niche. It is essential that they are credible, have an element of attractiveness (yes, it is that shallow) and an ability to actually influence. Just because they are popular it does not mean that they are influential. Do your homework before choosing an influencer.

When you have found an influencer that you would like to work with, you need to contact them via email or direct message. If the influencer is well established, they may have a website listing what they can do for you and what it will cost you.

 

10) Write Guest Articles as part of your Marketing Plan

Much in the same way appearing in podcasts and in the media works, guest blogs and articles can increase your reach massively. But, you need to do it in the right way as many people spend a lot of time doing this but do not enjoy the benefits.

The first thing to remember when approaching authority websites to guest write for is that they need to be relevant to your brand. These websites do not have to operate exactly within your niche, but they do need to be related to it. It is essential to make sure that they have readers that are similar to yours.

You are going to have to put in some groundwork, as it is unlikely that these authority websites will find you, especially in the early days. But, it is essential to reach out to credible websites. 

Be prepared for a lot of rejections before you encounter people agreeing to let you post on their blog. 

Big-name websites are likely to have lots of traffic that you can tap into, but if you are not too sure how popular a website is, check the comments section on their blogs. If there is a lot of interaction, there is a good chance that it is a popular one with lots of traffic.

Writing guest blogs and articles is an inexpensive way to drive traffic to your website. Make sure you keep your usual writing style and ensure your blog is of the highest quality. By starting with an attention-grabbing introduction, you have a better chance of people reading the whole post and seeing the links to your website that you have strategically dropped in.

So, now you have 10 things you can incorporate into your speaker marketing strategy. They are all based on building your brand’s presence, connecting with people, increasing your reach and targeting the right people.

Start with two or three of these strategies, over time as you gain exposure, credibility and larger audiences, then adopt the other strategies mentioned here. Also, if you’re a coach or training, check out our in-depth marketing for coaches guide.

Need Speaker Marketing Services?

Before you go, just wondering if you’d like to know how WE can help YOU fill up your Webinars consistently?

Whether you’re just starting out your speaking career or a well-seasoned keynote speaker, we offer a range of speaker marketing services from consultation to promotion strategies and more.  With our many years of experience and proven results, we have been the preferred marketing experts to help take their speaking businesses to the next level.

If that’s something you are looking for, click the button below to get in touch with us!

 

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