Category: Blog

Marketing yourself as a speaker is a big topic, so here is my second article on this topic. If you missed the first one, you can read it here. 

What specific Training do you need?

Too many speakers invest more time learning how to market themselves than doing the marketing themselves. There are thousands of marketing courses, training, masterminds, boot camps and programs available.

This is where setting objectives comes in handy because you can look at your objectives and then assess what skills, knowledge and confidence you need to achieve them. Once you know this, then you can make a plan around what training you need to invest your time, energy and money in. Anything else that just looks ‘interesting’ – park the idea for now and revisit it later.

Ninja Tip: Don’t be afraid to ask and be curious at PSA meetings. Every meeting is a learning opportunity, and you’ll gain far more by asking specific questions to other members, especially fellows who, in my experience, will gladly help you. Just be clear about your objectives, so the person you are asking has the context of what you’re working towards. The PSA is also a great place to find a mentor or a mastermind group to help keep you accountable, share learnings and work together to achieve a common objective.

Manage your own Expectations.

This is really really key when creating a marketing plan for your speaking business, especially if speaking is just an element of what you do.

Get really clear on how much time, energy and money you are willing to invest in achieving your objectives.

If you don’t have any time to do any marketing and want to get the speaking gigs, then you will either need to make some compromises elsewhere or invest some cash in working with someone to help you. If you decide to go down this route, make sure you and whoever is doing your marketing are 100% aligned on your objectives and expectations. Marketing is much more effectively outsourced once you have a clearly defined audience and approach that’s worked and you’ve got sales and bookings from it; sometimes, it’s better to get something working first when you start out and then outsource the running and optimisation of it.

Here are a couple of tips to help you:

1. Plan your marketing activity in 12-week ‘sprints’ so you’re always building momentum without it feeling like an endless task
2. Avoid endless marketing tasks such as; update website, write blog, record videos, post to social media. The more specific you can be, the better you can get into good habits – things like posting on LinkedIn 3x per week. Publish a new video once every two weeks both to LinkedIn and YouTube etc
3. Schedule marketing tasks in your calendar each week – don’t leave marketing to when you have time or the evenings and weekends, otherwise, you’ll resent it, and it won’t be fun.

Regularly Review and Reflect

The main reason I like planning your marketing activity in 12-week sprints is that it’s a long enough period of time to give something chance to work and a short enough period of time to nip things in the bud if they are never going to work, so that you avoid wasting too much time. When you regularly review and reflect on what you’re doing, you can identify things that work well so that you can keep doing it and keep improving and things that aren’t working well so that you can either stop doing them or make some changes so that they can work.

Don’t leave marketing yourself as a speaker to chance – hope is not a good marketing strategy. If you want more speaking bookings and gigs, then set clear objectives around this and review your progress against it, schedule time to do what needs to be done and make it happen.

Because speaking was a big focus for me and my business, I volunteered to become Regional Vice President of the PSA East Midlands and, next year, will become President. Doing this enhanced my commitment to speaking and ensured I attended every single regional event and made an extra effort to attend the Spring Conference, GSS and also other regional events. The result has been that I’ve never had as many speaking bookings, I’ve been offered payment for what would have otherwise been free events, and I spoke at an event where the audience was queuing in line for 20 minutes, waiting for me to speak. So if you’re serious about speaking more and improving your speaking skills – the PSA is a brilliant place to start, and you’re always welcome to come and quiz me about my approach at an East Midlands event or a regional event if I can make it.

Who Am I?

I’m the founder of Curious B2B Marketing and the creator of the OTTER marketing framework, helping businesses turn leads into sales with easy-to-apply systems and approaches. I host of The Curiosity Key Podcast and founder of The Curious Marketing Club for ambitious businesses looking to scale.

An engineer by background, I discovered I had a talent for sales and marketing when selling my homegrown Sardinian olive oil on a Yorkshire market stall, selling lasers down one of the world’s deepest mines and moving rapidly from marketing assistant to Global Head of Sales and Marketing for a major player in the Geospatial sector.

I am also an avid adventurer, cyclist and F1 fan. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website.

It doesn’t matter if you’re at the start of your speaking journey or you’ve been doing it for years – marketing is an essential activity for any speaker, and almost everyone has their own opinion on what’s considered ‘good marketing’. 

For me, ‘good marketing’ is marketing that works and isn’t a chore. In two articles, I’d love to share with you some insights to help you understand how to market yourself as a speaker so that you can get the gigs YOU want AND have fun whilst doing it! In fact, the OTTER is going to show you the way. (Keep reading, and all will become clear.)

Before we go into the detail, let’s explore a few key guidelines to help you avoid a lot of the stress, overwhelm and confusion I hear a lot of speakers experience when talking about their marketing.

1. What works for one speaker isn’t going to work for every speaker
2. Focus on what you need to do and not what other people tell you that you should be doing
3. It’s not perfection you’re aiming for, it’s consistency, and progress will beat perfection every time
4. If speaking is only one part of what you do, then you will need to be really clear and focussed on specific marketing activities as it will typically require a different focus to what you’re used to

So, let’s dive into the first thing every speaker needs to do before doing any marketing, and that’s:

Set Objectives

Try as hard as you can to resist the temptation to get stuck into the tactical side of marketing, such as writing content, recording videos and publishing it everywhere you can think of. The more time you invest in thinking about your objectives, the more you’ll get out of your marketing in the long term, and the more focussed you’ll be.

Think about:

• who your target audience is for your speaking business. Who is the person that you need to start a conversation with in order to get the speaking gigs you want?
• what type of speaking gigs you’re after? Audience size, speaker fee etc…
• how often do you want to speak, and where do you want to speak?

Once you know what you’re working towards and what’s important to move your speaking business forward, it will be easier to decide what type of marketing you want to invest your time, energy and budget (if you have one).

Then decide what marketing tools you are going to use

There are tens of thousands of marketing tools out there, and it’s always more exciting to try a new one than it is to improve one you’re already using, so try and avoid this temptation.

There are 3 different types of marketing tools available to you:

1. Functional Marketing Tools – things that have a function such as software, social media platforms, blogs, your phone for recording video etc
2. Valuable Marketing Tools – also known as marketing assets that have value, such as case studies, testimonials, blog articles, video content, thought leadership and PR features. Your LinkedIn profile is a valuable asset because you can use it as a landing page to attract the people that would typically hire you as a speaker
3. Resourceful Marketing Tools – this is where the PSA comes in handy because, as a member, you have access to a huge amount of resources such as experienced speakers that can share their learnings, people that see you speak and can refer you and/or give you testimonials, regional events where you can apply to speak or do a showcase and more. Also, think of your existing customers as resourceful marketing tools that can introduce you to others, re-book you and more.

I recommend keeping a marketing tools database so you know what you have access to already and can pick out assets as and when you need them. Using everything at once is impossible, so only focus on what you need.

The key to choosing the right marketing tools is to focus on places your target audience hangs out (LinkedIn has always been the best online tool for me as well as industry-specific events) and the types of marketing tools you prefer to invest your time in creating and using.

A good activity to carry out is to look at what your target customers listen to, watch and read so that you can pitch yourself as a guest contributor and put yourself in front of an established audience rather than have to build it yourself from scratch.

Ninja Tip: As speakers, we are usually in front of a camera or stage. Record yourself speaking (a valuable marketing tool) and then use that video to create other marketing assets such as audiograms, short video snippets, transcribe it into a blog (or two) or even create a podcast out of it.

That’s probably enough for you to be getting on with for now. I’ll share the next steps in my next article.

In the meantime, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website.