How to Design a Client-Magnet Presentation
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I see too many speakers, consultants, and thought-leading executives who commit to a speaking strategy built around their professional passions, interests, or favorite topics within their expertise.
Sounds like common sense, right? Well, that would be a huge mistake. DON’T do it!
For your speaking efforts to pay off in terms of marketing results, you need to design the presentation content NOT around what YOU are passionate about, but what your buyers and prospects are passionate about!
Imagine a pair of X-ray vision goggles that you are now using to zoom in on your target clients. Ask yourself the following:
- What do they want?
- What are they missing in their lives?
- What hurts?
- Where is the pain?
- What are they yearning for?
- What do they worry about most?
- What are their biggest headaches, heartaches, and hassles?
- What are their urgent, pervasive, and expensive problems?
Gather Live Ammo Data
What’s the first step? Research. Preparation. Homework.
Industry, regional, business, and company news is now at everyone’s fingertips on the Internet. Look for verbatim quotes, video clips, blog entries, trade journal profiles, and audio interviews to capture as much as you can from representative members of your buyer persona.
Then go directly to the source – YOUR real live customers and prospects. If you’re not intelligently researching your prospects’ issues, challenges, and pressures, how can you possibly come in with credible high-perceived-value solutions? One of the best ways to approach prospects is with:
- Interviews
- Surveys
- Research
- Data gathering
It positions you and your firm as an expert resource and it gives you valuable data you should be getting anyway!
Bottom line: for thought-leadership marketing to work for YOU, you have to be a dealer, collector, curator, and dispenser of thoughts... and one of the best ways to LEAD is to LISTEN.
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professional speakers, consultants, and professional services firms, one of THE most frequent questions I get is "How do I find the best places for me to speak so I generate business?"
I always come back with the following key question: What Audiences Are Your Clients In?
What groups do your ideal clients belong to? This will obviously determine which audiences you want to be in front of.
Not sure? Don’t guess – ask!
Here is the script to ask your current clients, prospects, and centers of influence who know your target market well…
“I’m looking to speak more in front of groups of [BUYER PERSONA]. I’d love to get your Advice, Insights, and Recommendations.”
(Thanks to my pal, networking and referral marketing speaker Michael Goldberg for the A-I-R approach!)
Another way to ask might be…
“Of all the industry groups and associations you belong to, which ones provide the most value in terms of the speakers and programs they present?”
With both of these scripts, the natural follow-up discussion would center around your desire to serve this industry/community more and to share information with them that would help them become even more successful.
Likely outcomes from this discussion would include:
- Names of specific groups, associations, and conferences
- Names of specific people serving in board or programming positions
- Names of other executives or decision-makers in the field
- Names of other companies or firms in need of similar information/services
- Specific networking introductions
- Offers of referrals to the individuals they already know
- An opportunity to reciprocate and ask how YOU might be of service to THEM
Resources for Targeting Best-Fit Venues
Finding venues to speak profitably could be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Here are some resources to help you laser-target your speaking to your best-fit audiences:
Have fun, speak well, and go generate some business.
Got questions? Comments? A resource or tip of your own? Please use the COMMENTS sections below and let's hear from YOU...
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach on the front lines of the meltdown economy, I'm seeing firsthand and through my clients that marketing has become even more challenging because – now more than ever – your buyers are lazy, busy, and befuddled.
See if some of these characteristics ring true with YOUR prospects and buyers over the last few months:
Lazy: Your buyers do not look forward to being marketed and sold to. The old standards of good, cheap, and fast have been replaced with the new “Web 2.0” standard of perfect, free, and now. Instant gratification, easy to buy, and effortless to install are the new watchwords for marketing and sales success. The expert at hand is the expert who gets hired.
Busy: Buyers have a million things on their plate besides researching the best options for products, services, vendors, partners, and trusted advisors. You need to become the obvious choice, the smartest choice, and the least risky choice – all in the span of a very short amount of time to be heard above their (internal and external) noise.
Befuddled: Buyers are overwhelmed with information, choices, data, specs, features, benefits, and marketing hype. It can be hard to separate the best service providers from the best marketers – and rarely are they one and the same. Your buyers have been burned, disappointed, and let down by slick marketers in the past.
So what can you do?
You won’t win them over with sizzle so your only choice is to convey TWO things with the utmost clarity and conviction:
1. We understand what you’re up against
2. We can fix it
That's marketing in a nutshell, folks! Agree? Disagree? Comments? Fire away down in the COMMENTS section and I'd love to hear from YOU...
What follows is not directly related to marketing, copywriting, professional speaking and the other topics I typically cover here — and it is easy to dismiss advice like this as simplistic or trivial.
But when copywriter Kim Stacey e‐mailed this list to me, I read it carefully—and found it to be deceptively profound and effective.
Here are 10 tips for living less stressfully, from “Loving and Leaving the Good Life” by Helen Nearing:
1. Do the best you can, whatever arises.
2. Be at peace with yourself.
3. Find a job you enjoy.
4. Live in simple conditions; get rid of clutter.
5. Contact nature every day; find the earth under your feet.
6. Take physical exercise.
7. Donʹt worry; live one day at a time.
8. Share something every day with someone else; help someone else somehow.
9. Take time to wonder at the world and at life; see some humor in life where you can.
10. Be kind.
If you have some thoughts to add, please do so in the COMMENTS section below:
For any professional services firm or consulting company working in or around the software industry, here's an invaluable resource: SoftwareCEO (http://www.softwareceo.com)
You'll find free business advice, discussion forums, online seminars, industry research, and links to software-specific resources.
SoftwareCEO Site Members also have access to file downloads, proprietary data, and thousands of dollars in exclusive Buyers' Club discounts.
Members of the exclusive CEO's Circle enjoy private peer networking through a secure forum and member directory. Be sure to sign up for the free newsletter -- SoftwareCEO founder Bruce Hadley offers weekly tips, tactics, and case studies. SoftwareCEO will *never* share your e-mail address with anyone. To subscribe to the free newsletter, e-mail: freenewsletter@softwareceo.com
Just got a question from one of my NSA speaker friends, Kevin Lerner of PresentationTeam. His question is as common as it is tricky:
"Is it better to promote your personal brand or your company brand?"
He continued, "Do I put more focus into the personal or professional? I'm seeing more and more people who have mostly professional information in their social media profiles and activities (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). Do I maintain a presence for both? Which one is primary - me or the company?"
Good observation, Kevin, and even better question. As a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professional speakers, consultants, and professional services firms, this question comes up a lot.
The answer lies in building your brand sandwich. It's made up of several layers and each one needs to be hot, tasty, and fresh on it's own. (And avoid using ciabatta bread.)
Seriously - here are the layers for your brand sandwich:
- Your personal name/brand (in my case, David Newman)
- Your company name (for me, Do It! Marketing)
- Your book titles (ex: 21 Secrets of Simple Marketing Success)
- Your speech/seminar titles (ideally, there's a book or product with the SAME name in your arsenal)
- Your sound bites and building your "marketing language bank" (which is itself one of MY sound bites!!)
- Your favorite sayings or expressions (ex: "Fabulous!!!" or "BAM!")
When it comes to social media, the best plan is to market your PERSONAL brand first and foremost. After all, remember it's called SOCIAL media -- not BUSINESS media!
My three rules for social media (and these apply equally well to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your blog):
1. It's SOCIAL (be a PERSON first) - 3-dimensional, quirky, approachable, authentic, fun
2. It's OUTWARD-focused - Just like making friends, you'll make a lot more of them if you make your social interactions about THEM and not about YOU
3. It's a RELATIONSHIP and not a transaction - treat your followers, fans, and friends like real people. They have egos, they have feelings, they like being thanked, recognized, promoted, and praised. So DO THOSE things and you'll do great.
So Kevin - YOU ROCK, BABY! Thanks for asking the killer question!!
A corporate presence in social media is great -- if you're a corporation.
If you're a 1-5 person business (like 90% of businesses in America are), then you're NOT trading on your company's name - you're trading on your own. Make your social media strategy fit that reality and all the pieces will come together nicely for you.
This smart
marketing tidbit came across my desk from Joan Stewart, aka the Publicity Hound:
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One of the most valuable tips I learned is that the onslaught of emails I'm receiving from business people offering cut-rate prices on their products and services is, for them, the quickest way to the poor house. In fact, raising prices, even in a meltdown economy, is one of the fastest ways to success.
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Why is this so smart? Well, because Joan agrees with me on this point. I'm not ashamed to share with you that for 2010, I've just raised my speaking fee. And not by a little - by a lot. Specifically, it's up by 33%. And it wasn't low to start with.
Surprise: I'm booking just as many programs - and perhaps slightly more than before with (because of?) the higher fee level.
Leave a comment below and share YOUR wisdom on what YOU are doing to raise yourself above the competition - both literally with pricing and in other more customer-centric ways...
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, many of my clients have neither the budget nor the business model to justify a big advertising budget, much less advertising on TV... BUT a while back there was a Home Depot television commercial that brilliantly demonstrated an understanding of HOW their customers (and yours) make purchasing decisions.
It went something like this…
A man is standing in the tool department holding a drill while his wife looks on dubiously.
He obviously wants to buy it, but apparently expects some resistance from his wife so in an effort to convince her says, "Don't think of this as a drill, think of this as your new book shelves."
Well, his ploy worked because in the next scene, the same couple is standing in front of the table saws. He smiles at his wife, points to one and says, "And think of this as your new deck!"
The final scene shows the same couple getting ready to purchase a shop vac. Only this time the woman speaks up and says, "And I can think of this as my clean garage!"
Not only do they do a stellar job of articulating their products' benefits but they do so without mentioning one feature! So, the next time you're tempted to itemize your products' or services' nifty features take a deep breath and stop.
Instead, articulate how those features translate into customer benefits, outcomes, and results.
As a motivational speaker in the area of marketing and business development, I'm often asked by CEOs and business owners about how they can be better leaders of their internal marketing efforts.
My answer is you can't be a great marketing leader unless you're first a great leader.
Here are some guidelines that the best leaders across all disciplines have come to recognize as foundational to their leadership success and that I share with you for the benefit of your own marketing success:
- Expect the best from people you lead.
- Become fully aware of others' needs.
- Establish high standards of excellence; communicate them
clearly and often. - Create an environment where failure is not fatal.
- Climb on other people's bandwagons if they're going
anywhere near the neighborhood you want to go. - Employ stories, examples, analogies, and models to
encourage success.
- Use a balanced mix of positive and negative feedback in
a constructive spirit and with specific substance.
- Appeal sparingly (or not at all) to competitive or
aggressive impulses.
- Encourage and reward collaboration.
- Build into the group an allowance for healthy conflict
and "fights" around issues, not around personalities.
- Recognize and celebrate achievement.
- Take steps to keep your own level of motivation genuine
and high
Testimonials are among the most powerful marketing ammunition in your marketing arsenal. As a small business marketing speaker, I'm often asked if testimonials are important - and if so, why?
Testimonials have the power to achieve a variety of things for your marketing and customer retention programs.
Each time you use a testimonial you need to decide what you are trying to accomplish or what message you are trying to support. For example, they can:
* Overcome buyer skepticism. Use a testimonial to shine light on your credibility, or on the quality of your product or service. This type of testimonial builds trust and overcomes natural barriers. In the example above, the testimonial could have read: "Best product I've tried in this price bracket - and I've tried many. Great value for money, and no shortcuts on quality."
* Overcome objections. Your readers are going to be naturally skeptical of any claims, promises or bold statements. As much as you can back yourself up with facts, a third party experience or opinion will work wonders to overcome unspoken objections in the customer's mind. "It all sounded too good to be true, but when I used the hair straightener, there was more shine and less breakage."
* Simplify or make a point. A customer's personal experience with your product or service will work to persuade your audience like a story does. Complex explanations or abstract applications will make more sense when applied to real life examples. This works well with highly technical products or complex services where the customer doesn't need to understand all the details.
* Break up and maintain interest in long copy. Readers have short attention spans and they will get bored unless you can change up the structure on a regular basis. Quotations and testimonials will break up the tone or voice of the copy, and sound like the customer is reading dialogue, which will keep them engaged. You can also break up paragraphs with a testimonial that supports the point you have just made.
* Target anxieties or doubts. Just like they can overcome skepticism and objections, they can also overcome hidden anxieties or doubts at each stage of the sales process. Anticipate questions like "is this worth my money?", "do I really need this?", "can I trust the guarantee?" and "will they sell my information?", and place testimonials accordingly.
Use testimonials in your marketing efforts and you'll unleash the power of social proof, reduce risk, and induce the "I gotta get me some o' that" factor!
What has been your experience with testimonials? Use the comments area below to share your thoughts...