5 Awesome Reasons Why Public Speaking Is Great Marketing
Public speaking doesn’t come naturally to most people. However, when you get around to doing it, a lot begins to happen to you as an entrepreneur.
If you’ve been noticing, the new way to do marketing is to teach, educate, inspire, and nurture. Consultative selling, for instance, is the new selling with layers like social selling preceding this consultative approach.
When you are in the consulting mode, the need to educate, coach, and train your clients becomes paramount. Mark Collier puts it up straight: teaching creates value, gives you a competitive edge, helps you earn trust and loyalty, and lets the world know how passionate you are about what you do.
While there are many ways to get into the “teaching and consulting” mode, here are reasons why you should play with the idea of getting heard, in flesh.
Easily defy the moment of truth
You know that point where a client or customer waits battling with the decision as to whether or not he should reach out for the wallet? The point when she has to decide between this product and that or choose your service over another competing one?
Blog posts are passive. Even if you shed some blood and write passionately, it’s still digital print. No one sees the feverish excitement and passion as yet.
Social media posts barely have a few minutes to make an impact. In fact, Pamela Vaughan of HubSpot writes that social posts have about less than a few hours. No one knows what’s happening to your email marketing messages yet.
Instead, pour out all of that experience, passion, and knowledge out in person and check for the impact you’ll make.
It’s something else altogether. It’s the best way to defy the moment of truth.
Build trust, the easy way
While it’s hard to get the ball rolling leading up to the actual event where you’d be sharing what you know, it’s easy to build trust. It’s the easiest way there is. Public speaking is a trust building exercise.
Customers get to see you in person, they get to hear your point of view in real time, they get to ask you questions, and they can actually see that you are for real.
It’s selling without selling
You don’t really sell brands, products or services. You are actually selling yourself all the time. But selling, per se, has taken a beating thanks to the fact that an average customer is exposed to tons of marketing messages every single day.
Take the case of an average London commuter. According to Owen Gibson of The Guardian, she is exposed to over 130 adverts that feature more than 80 different products and services. That’s until she reaches her workplace.
From then on, it’s a constant barrage of emails, social updates, ads, and some more ads.
If given a choice, no one would want this. However, put a layer of education, training, or teaching and you’ll draw your potential prospects in. You don’t even have to sell.
How is that for a change?
Solve problems first
Depending on your business niche, the topic chosen for your public speaking event, seminar, or even a webinar dictates the kind of audience you are addressing. This audience is likely to have a problem they’d like to see solved. Plus, they are willing to attend the event with the expectation that you’ll share a few insights that can solve their problem.
It’s another thing that you have a product or service that can help solve their problem even better.
However, if you put the entire focus on the “insights, tips, and demonstration” level, you show a willingness to solve problems and not sell.
That distributes power equally between you and the customer. She now has a choice whether or not to utilize your services or invest in your product. Meanwhile, you have the power to influence and let customers make their own decisions.
I call that clean marketing. It’s also a generous thing to do.
Public speaking gets you great, qualified leads
No one would have attended your event if it weren’t for the fact that you’d solve their problems for them. This means that every single attendee is a potential prospect for your product or service.
You’d speak, share insights, give away tips, and inspire people. Not everyone who attends your event is going to buy right away. Maybe they never would. However, every attendee is a qualified lead. There are no false positives in this kind of marketing.
How about that for some awesome marketing? Do you use public speaking or events for marketing purposes? Tell us about it.
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