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Home | Featured Articles | 15 Outstanding Marketing Ideas You C . . .
 





15 Outstanding Marketing Ideas You Can Use to Increase Your Income Today!
By Mary McKay
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For speakers, authors, experts, business leaders, activists, top producers and cultural heroes who want to secure paid speaking engagements

1. Become the “voice” for your industry.  You can easily play the role of reporter where your customer base will look to you as the industry expert.  Your voice can be heard on online and offline newsletters, Social Media sites, your website, your blog, etc. The more you stay current in researching happenings in your target market, the more you have increase your brand in your target market. 

2. Create your own online newsletter offering industry information, free tips and strategies or twists on current events.

3. Conduct and record interviews relevant and helpful to your target market.  You can either interview an industry expert or have someone interview you.  With you writing the script, it should be easy to recruit someone in your industry to read the questions to you.  Expert Joel Bauer rents a newsroom and an anchor person to interview him.  It looks like a television stage, but the recording is only for his purposes.

4. Make contact with your prospective buyers.  Collect the contact info of 50 organizations in your target market.  Contact 10 buyers in your target market per day.  Be prepared to immediately follow the calls with an email making reference to your expertise.  More info on that at the end of this list. 

5. Set up accounts on all major Social Media sites such as Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter where you'll have a chance to brand yourself.  These are more valueable than ever now, and the turning point was the presidential election.  Obama built his team with six (6) million fans and it changed the world. 

My Linkedin group decided to form our own group here in Orange County, CA because we're 70 miles from the Greater Los Angeles group.  At a once a month live social networking event last week, 120 Linkedin members stood in circles of 12, each with one minute to introduce themselves and reveal how they could HELP OTHERS.  Notice that it wasn't how they could RECEIVE help, but introducing themselves as to their expertise so that others seeking their expertise may gain something. 

Social networking will add to your client base, direct traffic to you, increase your google rank, and leverage the power of these sites.  It's a great way to build your client attraction value.  It greatly increases your SEO or search engine optimization making it easier for people to find you and realize your prominance (or not).  You can promote your own live webinars or teleclasses on your site.  Create your own group of like-minded people in Linkedin.  Be consistent with any social media groups you create and/or join.  I imagine that there are some meeting planners that go to their favorite social media to find speaking candidates.  It may become true that your absence on any of these sites dates you and outdates the information that you will share.  But don't count on any of these social media sites to have INSTEAD of a business plan.  It is ONLY to supplement your business plan.  It's only one piece of your marketing pie. 

One last point here on Social Media: If you're not already, it's really
important to tell the truth.  There are three reasons:

i. Social media requires 100% transparency
ii. Meeting planners talk
iii. Rebookings and it's relationship to keeping your word

6. Set up your own blog.  If you blog, blog consistently by posting something to your blog at regular intervals. There are currently 112 million bloggers on the Internet.  

7. Consider speaking at events hosted by other speakers.  It's possible that your expertise will lend itself to the purpose of some one else's boot camp. You probably will not receive a speaking fee, but you'll almost always be expected to offer your products – from which the host will take a percentage. 

8. Attend meetings of local organizations:  

Attend local events to network.  If speaking is your primary aim, don't waste your time with organizations whose members do not hire speakers.

Chambers of Commerce – for instance, I have over a dozen cities within a 20 mile radius from where I live.  Chamber members are all from companies that could possibly hire you.  Be sure to have your USP on your business card – the USP that fills a need from which the members can benefit. 

Contact professional associations in your industry.  If you're in financial services, then google financial service associations and get the contact information for all of the chapters in your state.  Consider joining the one that is in your target market. 

Your church or synagog – did you know that there are Christian writers, Christian film, Christian commedians, Christian singers and Christian speakers?  One speaker I've consulted with was diagnosed as a slow learning and he has the Christian market as his target market.  He has three topics, is a Toastmaster and is marketing himself to other organizations as well. 

9. Develop a strategy for using videos.  Place these on your website, on your ezines, on YouTube and Linkein and on your blog.  One weight loss expert records herself talking directly into the camera all over hiking trails in southern CA.  She has hundreds of short videos where she's talking about the value of exercising and becoming fit. Tom Antion has created 279 videos of himself and has distributed them to 40 video hosting sites.  They're 2-3 minutes each and you can make these yourself with a digital camera.  Those all increase his page rank and drive traffic to his site, crystalizing his positioning as an Internet expert.  You can interlink between sites also.

10. Article marketing (articles written about you or by you).  Submit your articles to article directories.  My favorite is www.ezinearticle.com is the best site on which to post your articles.  They even provide instruction for writing articles.

11. Host your own teleclasses.  There are free services as well as paid services.

12. Contact those who host teleclasses and ask to be a guest expert on their teleclasses. 

13. Build affiliate relationships.   For those who understand how to maximize this strategy, it can be enormous revenue.  For instance, if you recommend a free teleseminar to your list, you make an arrangement with the person hosting the class that you receive a percentage of the sale of the products or services purchased at the end of the teleclass for all of the names that came off of your list.  This can be done through your shopping cart.

14. Have an affiliate training call.  They easy to set up, but worthless unless you communicate with your affiliates to build profitable strategies.  In talking with them, you may want to create a strategy to promote an upcoming new product launch or relate helpful information to them making your association increase in value.   

15. Set up an email blast to contact your top 20 customers once a week or twice a month.  Contact them with something newsworthy or of value to the industry.You can conduct various email campaigns for various segments of your list. 

Become Pro-Active on a Daily Basis

Notice that professional speaking is only ONE way to express your intellectual capital. 
Choose one or more of these marketing opportunities right now!  You don't have to do all of them by yourself.  Some can be outsourced and are easy to delegate to high school students, interns, part time virtual assistants and people who moonlight. 

You should  implement and systematize these ideas so that you have specific activities to do on a daily basis.  Any and all efforts to become more pro-active will increase your changes of long term success in building your speaking business!   

Check back for more money making tips in my next article titled "14 More Outstanding Marketing Ideas You Can Use to Increase Your Income Today!".

Mary McKay is a booking strategist for speakers, authors, experts, leaders, top producers, and cultural heroes who want to secure paid speaking engagements. She systematizes the booking process to uniquely position the speaker, optimize the appearance, generate referrals and enable more revenue potential through product sales. Visit www.turnkeyspeaker.com or call 949-429-6646. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     




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·  When Speakers' Bureaus Don't Call (part 1)
·  12 Steps to Systematically Increase Your Paid Speaking Engagements