Speaking is one of the most impactful marketing methods for consultants. There is no other marketing method for consultants that (literally) puts you in front of an audience of your prospects. It’s easy for potential clients to get to know you, like you, and trust you when you are educating them in person.
That said, speaking is time-consuming in the amount of time it takes you to prepare, give your talk, and travel to and from speaking destinations.
As a consultant, how can you make the most of your speaking engagements — turning the prospects in your audience into qualified leads, and eventually more clients?
How can you use your digital presence and website to “squeeze” everything you can out of every speaking engagement that you have?
The Power of Speaking as a Marketing Method for Consultants
If you can speak in front of 20-30 prospects and educate them on the problems and solutions in their business, you are virtually guaranteed to pick up work. David Fields named speaking one of the “5 Marketing Musts” for consultants, and for good reason.
SOURCE: Peter Gruber
Speaking is an instant way to generate massive credibility, social proof, and build a relationship with the members of your audience all at once.
If your talk is helpful and informative, your audience will start to know you, like you, and trust you — the building blocks for winning consulting work.
However, some of your prospects aren’t going to be interested in working with you right away. You’ve drawn their interest, but they’re not ready to hire you just yet.
If you leave out these prospects and only focus only the ones ready to act, you’re missing out on valuable contacts and potential work down the road.
In this article, I’m going to explain how you can create a page on your website to follow-up your speaking engagements and capitalize on all of the “in-betweeners.” This page will bring your potential clients onto your email list, where you can continue to educate nurture them.
One or two people in your audience may be ready to go straight into a strategy session or consultation for a project after hearing you speak — but the majority of the audience won’t be ready for that yet. However, many of them would make good clients down the road. This method will help you keep in touch with those prospects.
When they are looking for advice or a problem solved in their business, this method will help you keep your business on the top of their mind.
By the end of this article, you will…
- Understand how to create the perfect follow-up page for your speaking engagements
- Know how to create a “content upgrade” for your talk, and how to position it on your page
- Learn how to nurture and educate these special leads effectively through your email list and social media platforms like LinkedIn
Creating Your Speaking Engagement Follow-up Page
Create a landing page on your website with no navigation or footer. The URL should be easy to remember, and you should include it at the end of your talk. You can include it at the end of your slides on its own dedicated slide, or simply tell your audience about if you aren’t using slides in your talk. Your follow-up page URL should be easy enough to remember.
SOURCE: Aavishkaar Consulting
So, if you’re a management consultant giving a talk on ‘ag equipment product design’, give the page a URL like this:
yourname.com/ag
This is easy for your attendees to remember off by heart so that when the talk is done (or while they are using their smartphones to take notes), they will know how to get to your landing page.
At the end of your talk, tell them about this URL. “Sell” them on visiting this page. Mention the resource you have waiting for them once they visit this link.
You can also tell your audience that they don’t need to worry about taking notes because you’ll have your own set of notes on this follow-up URL. You can include this set of notes as your content upgrade, which your audience will receive by entering their name, email address, and any other information you request.
Most people in your audience won’t remember your follow-up URL, despite how much they love your talk.
By including a free resource for them (and perhaps giving out a version of your business card with this URL on it), you’ll increase the amount of people who do want to follow-up with you.
Here is how you can structure and design the page:
Give this page 4 sections:
1. Introduction
With the first section, re-introduce yourself so that your reader remembers who you are. You should include a picture of yourself, as well as your job title. If you’ve done a good job with your speaking engagement, the will think “Hey — that’s {Your Name}. His talk on {area of expertise} was great, and I learned a lot“. They’ll want to learn more about what you have to offer on this page.
2. Reminder
In the second section, give them a quick reminder of your presentation. Write out some of the key takeaways that you discussed in your talk so that your reader gets a chance to remember the value that you provide, as well as a reminder of your expertise. This section can also serve as an extra set of notes for those who didn’t take notes during your engagement.
3. Relevance
In the third section, you’re selling them on signing up to your email list. The best way to do that is to write out a bulleted list of the benefits they will get as a result of signing up for your email list. No one wants to “sign-up for your newsletter” — but everyone wants to improve their business, save time, and drive more revenue. Explain to them how your expertise, exclusive to your list, will help them achieve that.
4. Call to Action
End the page with a call-to-action that invites them to sign up to your email list. For a higher conversion rate, use a lead magnet that was relevant to your talk, and send that to the people that sign-up to your list. This can be a short ebook, mini-course, whitepaper, or simply a set of notes that summarized your talk.
Given that these prospects have taken the time to attend your speaking engagement and sat through it, if they do sign up to your list, they have a high level of engagement. They will take more time to read your resources since you’ve established a relationship with them and have built some trust.
Now that these prospects have attended your talk, visited your follow-up page, and signed up to your email list to receive a relevant bonus, you can continue to educate and nurture them until they are ready to hire you for a project. There are no leads more qualified than ones that have jumped through these various “hoops.”
Do’s and Dont’s
DO: Record the talk.
To get the most out of your talk you must have it recorded. There are many ways you can use the recording:
- Send it to those who follow-up so they can review it
- Post it on your website one one of your related landing pages or as social proof
- Use it as a lead magnet or content upgrades to one of your articles on the same subject
- If it’s a long talk or presentation, chop it up into pieces and sell it as a mini-course
- Post it on YouTube so that you can build your credibility and send people to your website
Get creative — you’re putting a lot of work into this talk, so you want to “squeeze” everything you can out of it, for as long as you can. Speaking is incredibly powerful social proof and will help position you as a trusted advisor, and you want your talk to go as many (relevant) places as possible.
DO: Segment this list.
The more targeted you can make your communication, the better.
If your audience is full of prospects, it’s worth the time to segment this list and create a small marketing funnel for this audience.
These prospects are highly qualified — they are aware of their problem or possible gains for their business having sought out your expertise. They have also learned from you. They are what you called “Slowlane” prospects — prospects that want are aware of their problem, and want to know the solution. Your job is to teach them the solution, so that when they are hiring
Your job is to teach them the solution so that when they are ready to make a hiring decision, you become the logical choice — being the one who has educated them on how their problem is solved.
Your speaking engagement leads can fit on your general list, but if you segment this audience and craft a simple email sequence for them, you’ll have a better chance of converting them into clients.
DON’T: Use suspense.
You shouldn’t deliberately hold material or information back with hopes to get more attendees onto your email list. This will leave a bad taste in their mouth, especially if you could have covered it in your talk.
SOURCE: Marketoonist
Instead, think about your follow-up sequence and content upgrade to your talk as an extra bonus for those interested.
Next Steps
Get your designer to create an outline of this page now, so by the next time you give a talk, you can simply fill in the details.
By creating a template of this page, you can re-use it over and over, and quickly set up a follow-up page for every speaking engagement that you have.
The next time you are giving a presentation or talk, use your website to bring your audience on to your email list, where you can educate them, nurture them, and bring them further along your customer journey.
You can’t cover everything in a 45 minute speaking engagement — but you can through your email list and your prospects inbox, over time. Give your audience the opportunity to follow-up with you with no pressure by creating this speaking engagement follow-up page and giving them the opportunity to opt-in to your list.