Public speaking is more than just standing in front of an audience and delivering a speech. It’s about building a successful business, and like with any other company, the role of marketing is paramount. You can be highly talented, but without effective marketing, your potential clients may never know your name. That’s why marketing is such an essential component of any excellent speaking business.
However, marketing yourself as a speaker can be a complex and multi-faceted task that overwhelms many aspiring speakers. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about speaker marketing—why it matters, how to position yourself effectively to get more speaking gigs, and the five critical tools needed in any marketing plan: a speaker website, a demo video, social media, networking, and testimonials.
Why Marketing Matters
Reach Your Target Clients
Obviously, the main reason marketing is so important is the ability is has to help you get booked reliably. Without successful marketing, no potential clients will even know about you, much less understand why they should book you for an event.
But with strategic marketing, not only will you establish name recognition and gain exposure, but you’ll also be able to effectively show your value and expertise to the right audience.
Stand Out
Excellent marketing also helps you stand out. Public speaking is a crowded industry, and if you plan to get booked reliably, you need to attract the attention of potential clients. Effective marketing helps you create a memorable impact on event organizers and decision-makers, increasing the likelihood of securing a speaking engagement.
By cultivating a professional image and using high-quality marketing tools, you convey an expertise and professionalism that builds trust and confidence among your target audience, who are more likely to book you if they see you as a credible and reliable speaker.
Build Your Brand
Marketing is also the cornerstone of building your personal brand. Your brand is more than a name or a logo; it’s the perception others have of you and your work. With a successful brand, you can convey your expertise and the value you bring to clients that hire you.
With successful marketing, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, cultivating a brand that communicates professionalism and expertise and makes it easier for event organizers to recognize and hire you.
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Marketing Tool 1: Speaker Website
The most important tool in building a successful marketing strategy as a public speaker is your speaker website. Frankly, in the speaking industry, if you don’t have a website, you don’t exist.
But don’t panic – if you’re wondering how to set up your website or what you should put on it, we’ve got you covered.
The Goal of Your Website
There are two main goals a speaker website should try to accomplish:
1. Establish yourself as an expert to event planners and other potential clients.
It’s important to note that your website is not primarily for those who will hear your talk. It’s for the people who book you to give that talk. Sure, if someone enjoys your talk and wants to learn more about you, they may find their way to your website, but your website is fundamentally a tool to get paid speaking gigs.
That’s why it’s important to structure the navigation and content in a way that is oriented toward someone deciding whether to hire you for their next event. The worst possible scenario is an event planner looking at your website, being unable to find out what you speak about and simply closing the tab.
2. Communicate who you are, what you do, and other elements of your personal brand as part of your broader marketing strategy.
Your speaker website should focus on the things that make you and your business unique. You are the CEO, salesman and product all at the same time, which is why your website should focus on you. Who are you as a speaker? What is your passion, message and mission? Your entire website should serve as an answer to these questions.
People will also draw conclusions about you based on the design and functionality. If your website is modern, professional and has the information they’re looking for, they’ll assume you know what you’re talking about. If your website is slow, outdated and generally terrible, they will assume that you’re terrible at what you do.
Choosing a Domain Name
Since, as a public speaker, you are the product, you should ideally use your own name as your website name (www.JohnDoe.com). If it’s not available, you can look for creative alternatives, but you can also consider changing the extension from .com to .me or .co or something similar.
Six Important Parts of a Speaker Website
Pursuant to the goal of your speaker website, there are six important things you should include prominently on your speaker website. Let’s go over them:
1. Demo Video
We’ll cover everything you need to know about demo videos later in this article, but for now, you should know that it needs to be front and center on your website. Your demo video shows highlights from your speaking gigs, giving clients an idea of what it’s like to have you on stage.
2. Contact Info
Having a “Contact” page is a great start, but you want to make it as easy as possible for potential clients to get ahold of you. That’s why you should prominently feature your contact information on your home page in addition to a “Contact” page. Typically, you should include both email and phone number.
3. Pictures
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but the importance of pictures on your website can’t be overstated. These should be a mix of professional pictures of yourself (such as headshots) and action shots of yourself on stage. These pictures are a big part of the first impression potential clients will get, so you should make sure they reflect an image of yourself that matches how you want to be seen.
4. Testimonials
We’ll also cover testimonials later in this article. Like with your contact info, these should be selectively featured on the home page as well as on a dedicated page.
5. Bio
You should also have a bio featured prominently on your website. This shouldn’t just be a resume, but a combination of your life story and speaking experience. You should also include human elements such as your family or pets. These help build trust with potential clients.
6. Topics
You also want your website to clearly explain to potential clients which topics you speak about. You should try to narrow these down as much as possible, as a clearly defined niche usually serves you better than overly general descriptions.
Setting Up Your Speaker Website
If you have no experience at all with websites, you should consider hiring a professional designer to do it for you. It can be a substantial investment, but as we’ve made clear, the importance of having a good website can’t be overstated.
There are plenty of low-cost options as well. For example, consider asking a friend who knows how to build websites, asking local college students, or checking gig listings on Fiverr or Upwork.
If you want to do it yourself, you’ll need to know more about choosing a domain registrar, a site-building platform, how to optimize your website for search engines and more. You can check out our full article on building a speaker website here!
Marketing Tool 2: Demo Video
The next important tool in your marketing campaign is your demo video. A demo video is a fantastic resource that helps event planners understand what they’re getting by hiring you, and gives them a sample of what it’s like to have you on their stage.
But there’s an art to making demo videos. The editing, look and feel, music and speaking content all play a big role in selling a potential client on your services. So in this section, we’ll go through the formula for a successful demo video, and tips on having one made (and getting the necessary footage).
The Demo Video Formula
When creating a demo video, you should always be thinking about what the goal of the video is. If it’s to make potential clients pick up the phone and hire you, you should ask yourself what do they need to feel in order to do that. And from there, what they need to be thinking in order to feel that. So think, feel, do in that order.
With that in mind, you should structure your demo video around the following formula:
- Hook me – captivate the viewer from the start to keep them watching
- Show me – show yourself speaking in front of an audience to give the viewer the experience of being in your audience
- Prove me – use testimonials to prove that your listeners like you and that you make a difference
- Close me – close the sale and give a clear call to action – make the ending so good and so compelling that it compels the viewer to respond
Let’s go through each aspect of the formula.
Hook Me
The first 60 seconds should showcase you in a variety of different settings and platforms. This part of the video should immediately captivate the viewer and get them interested in what you have to say. You might do this by starting the video with a shocking statement or one of the most impactful lines of your talk.
Show Me
The next 2-3 minutes of your video should be dedicated to showing the viewer how you speak and giving them an idea of the value you can bring to the table for them. You should include powerful clips from your best talks in this section.
Prove Me
The next 60 seconds should be dedicated to customer testimonials (again, we’ll cover how to get these and how to utilize them as a separate category later in this article). These serve as proof that people enjoy hearing you speak and learn from your insights.
Close Me
The last 60 seconds of the video should follow the testimonials, showing more clips of you speaking and interacting with people. This should serve to validate interest in your services.
As this is the finale of your demo video, you should end it with the most inspirational lines and focus on what you want your potential client to feel when they watch it. It should leave the viewer wanting more and include a call to action.
Getting Footage for Your Demo Video
If you don’t have any footage of yourself speaking – either because you haven’t done much public speaking or your events haven’t been filmed, don’t just give up on having a demo video. You have a few options.
First, you can find a local event where you can speak for free, such as a Rotary Club, chamber of commerce, Toastmasters, work meetings, church, etc. These events can be a great source of demo footage.
If these avenues aren’t an option, you can try hosting your own event. It doesn’t have to be anything major – you can rent a room at a library, coffee shop or restaurant and invite friends and family to come. Even five to ten people is sufficient.
Lastly, you can speak to an empty room. This option isn’t preferable, since it’s hard to show your speaking talent without an audience’s energy being present. But if you can’t make anything else work, this is better than having no demo video at all.
Equipment for Your Demo Video
But how do you get the video itself? You may not have an expensive camera capable of shooting cinema-quality video, but the solution could be in your pocket. Today, phones have incredible cameras and can shoot amazing footage. Of course, if you have access to an expensive camera or can afford a professional videographer, by all means do that.
For a microphone, there are a variety of options for cheap, clip-on mics that you can run to your phone or camera. You should probably use a second phone to capture audio and sync the two sources.
How to Make Your Demo Video
By now you understand the elements of a successful demo video, the formula you need to follow, and how to get the footage, but you may be wondering, “How do I actually make it?”
If you don’t have experience editing videos, you should probably hire a professional to do it. Trying to do it without the necessary experience can be incredibly time-consuming, and the end result won’t be as good.
As with the website, if hiring a professional isn’t in your budget, you can try asking a relative or friend, or check out gigs on Fiverr or Upwork.
Marketing Tool 3: Social Media
In the modern age of the internet, social media presence is one of the most important aspects of your digital marketing efforts. In this section, we’ll take a look at the steps you need to take to make social media one of your most vital marketing channels.
Look Professional
The first step to successful marketing on your social media accounts is to look professional. You want potential clients who view your profile to view you as a professional and someone they can trust. When a potential client gets an email from you, the most likely thing they will do is look you up on Google. That may end with them going to your website, but it also means they will probably go to your social media.
When they land on your social media profiles, what are they going to see there? Do your social media accounts accurately reflect the way you want to be perceived? Or will they find a chaotic, disorganized presence that may lead them to draw similar conclusions about you?
Make sure you have a professional profile picture and banner, and make sure your bio accurately reflects who you want potential clients to see you as.
Be Authentic
At the same time, you shouldn’t try to be too professional. It can be tempting to pursue perfection at the cost of authenticity, but your audience can sense when you’re just putting on a show. An overly polished profile can make you seem fake.
Find Your Community
An incredibly important part of successful social media presence as a speaker is finding your community. Speaking is about finding the right message for the right people at the right time, and social media is no exception. You need to understand where your people are.
This can mean finding spaces to interact with the people who might book you, but there’s more too it than that. You should attempt to network with people within your industry who might recommend you to someone who might book you. Additionally, interaction within your industry helps establish you as a thought leader.
But what does this look like in practice? Maybe you don’t have the time to manage ten different social media platforms. That’s perfectly fine. One or two well-managed profiles can be more effectively promote you than ten generic ones. But try to find the platform that most clearly interacts with your chosen industry.
For almost all major industries, LinkedIn is an incredibly important platform for networking and building a community. But to use some other examples, Instagram tends to be better for lifestyle speakers who focus on wellness, fitness, travel or fashion. X – formerly known as Twitter – tends to work best for speakers in areas like technology or politics.
Obviously these are just possible examples, but you should try to apply the general principle when selecting the platforms you want to focus on.
Create a Conversation
The next important step to marketing your speaking businesses on social media is to create a conversation. A mistake many public speakers make on social media is letting their profiles become a stream of consciousness rather than engaging with the community around them.
These speakers will post, but not reply to people, engage with comments, or take part in conversations. This makes your social media presence devolve into screaming into a void, which is the worst mistake you can make.
So have a conversation, engage with people you follow, network constantly, be part of other people’s conversations, support people and cheer them on. It really comes down to building an online community, which is the best way to be successful.
Be Consistent
Finally, be consistent. You should make sure that across all of your social media accounts, you project a consistent identity that matches the personal brand you’re trying to build. Make sure your profiles follow the same design aesthetic.
Again, it’s all about building that distinct brand identity to build recognition with your target audience. Never ignore the little things like checking for typos. It all goes a long way to increasing your credibility and enhancing your marketing efforts.
Marketing Tool 4: Networking
The next major tool you should utilize for more effective marketing is networking. There are three main types of networking in the public speaking industry: community networking, referrals, and networking with other speakers. Let’s go over all three.
Community Networking
Community networking is networking within the industry you primarily speak to. So if you speak to teachers, this means networking within the education sphere. Attend conferences, seminars, and meetups where potential clients and decision-makers gather. These events provide valuable opportunities to introduce yourself, share your expertise and learn about the needs and trends within your industry.
A common mistake speakers make in community networking is trying too hard to market themselves at these events. When you’re interacting with people in your industry, don’t be overly focused on selling yourself. Try to build genuine relationships instead. Listen to what others have to say and show a sincere interest in their work. This will yield better results than just using every conversation as an attempt to get a gig.
Referrals
Referrals are an incredibly effective way to secure speaking engagements. After a speaking gig, you should do a follow up call with the decision-maker who hired you to ask what went well and what they thought you could do better.
During this call, you should ask if they know any other event planners in the industry who might want someone like you to speak. And since you can’t speak at the same event every year, offer to send other speakers who might be a good fit for future events their way in exchange. Which leads to our next type of networking.
Networking with Other Speakers
As we’ve mentioned, networking is about relationships. It’s not a one-way street, and if you want to be successful in getting referrals from other speakers, you should try to help them out as well. Offer to refer them to events you’ve already done or events you don’t think are a good fit, and chances are they’ll offer to do the same for you in exchange.
There are many good ways to get in touch with other speakers, such as speaking organizations, or just meeting at a conference you’re attending (or speaking at!). As with community networking, remember that you should focus on building a genuine connection with these people instead of just trying to sell yourself.
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Marketing Tool 5: Testimonials
The final important part of your marketing campaign should be testimonials. You can use these in a variety of contexts, from your website and demo video, to conversations with prospects. They generally fall into two categories: testimonials from organizers and audience testimonials.
Testimonials from Organizers
When you’re doing the follow-up call with event organizers we’ve talked about above, pay attention to what the client’s opinion of your talk was. If they have a glowing review, simply ask them if they’d be willing to give a testimonial for you to use when talking to other clients. These are incredibly useful in marketing, as event planners see other event planners as a voice they can trust when it comes to recommending speakers.
Testimonials from Audience Members
You shouldn’t overly focus on these, as testimonials from organizers tend to be more effective for the people who actually decide whether to book you or not, but these can be a great supplement to everything else. After an event, talk to people in the audience and ask what they thought about the talk. If someone has an especially impactful review or described an important impact your talk had on them, you can ask if they’d be willing to give a testimonial.
Conclusion
Effective marketing is absolutely crucial to a successful speaking career. Talent alone is not enough to be successful in the public speaking world; without sufficient marketing, you will struggle to find gigs. But by understanding the importance of marketing and utilizing essential tools like a speaker website, demo video, social media, networking, and testimonials, you can position yourself to stand out in a crowded industry.
Remember, marketing is not just about promoting yourself; it’s about building relationships, establishing your expertise, and building your personal brand. By investing time and effort into these strategies, you’ll be able to reach your target audience and secure more speaking gigs.
