Professional Speakers and Targeted Marketing

Dr. Gary Arnold's Book
How the Top 1% of Speakers and Coaches Do Internet Marketing
Paperback: ISBN:978-1-57867-041-3; eBook: ISBN:978-1-57867-043-7

Do you believe you have what it takes to become a successful professional speaker? Have you advertised for a speaking event with little or no success in attracting a paying audience? Have advertisers promised you they would increase your business, and then you found the results of the advertising will be tied directly to the amount of money you are willing to spend upfront? Do you believe name recognition as a speaker comes with your success, and your success as a speaker comes with name recognition, creating a catch 22?

Most speakers have limited resources for their marketing so getting the most out of what you spend is important. The best professional speakers spend their time and money on list development and on targeted marketing. Let's focus on targeted marketing. How do you locate a targeted market? It is not as complicated as it might seem if you take the time to think it through logically. For instance, would you spend your advertising dollars on a radio ad during a football game if you were speaking about women's health? Probably not.

Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and journals, direct mail, and telemarketing, all have the potential to reach thousands of people. However, these forms of advertising must be repeated several times to embed name recognition. In addition, these methods are expensive and slow. On the other hand, there are times when used right they can have a reasonable rate of return on your investment. Be sure to consider who will see or hear these ads and determine if you are targeting the audience you intend.

Targeted marketing also focuses on 'picking the fruit on the lower branches'; reaping the rewards of the nearest, easiest market to tap. You may have a presentation you think everyone would want to see or hear. Yet, some may want to hear or see it more than others. Your target audience may have similar problems, wants, or needs. They may belong to a particular group, association or industry. They may live in a particular town or share similar demographics. They may all use a particular product or technique. They may work using similar job skill sets. For example, if financial planning is your speaking arena, you may find speaking about financial independence may be interesting to most people, but more so to a targeted market of people worried about developing their financial security. And the less financial security they have, the more they may want and need to hear what you have to say. Nevertheless, even after uncovering your target audiences perceived needs, you must still uncover whether they are willing and able to pay to hear your presentation and buy your products and services.

Marketing is complex and should not be left to guesswork. Testing to determine if you are reaching your targeted market can be systematically achieved. Testing your marketing campaign means measuring results, while changing one aspect of your marketing champagne, will show you what and who to focus on. The best professional speakers either know how to do this or pay someone else to do it for them.

The Internet and social networking offer those who want to do it for themselves an inexpensive method for targeted marketing. Additionally, the Internet also provides several easy ways to measure for results. Measuring the number of hits or responses can be strategically employed by emailing similar ads with specific ad copy variations, like changing the headline, and seeing which one had the best results. By changing one phrase or component in the same ad, you can focus on what works. In addition, by emailing the same ad to different demographics, you can target your audience, seeing which demographics pull in greater ad responses.