Develop a Compelling Tagline
The speaking market is highly competitive and the only way to make your mark as a sought-after professional speaker is to offer stand out value.
The whole idea in marketing yourself as a speaker is to make yourself and your material so compelling that people beat a path to your doorway.
Difficult? Sure – but it can be done. It’s well worth the time. And it’s ultimately much more effective than the ‘push’ approach to marketing which often sends the buyer running in the opposite direction.
Marketing is nothing more or less than a strategy – it is communicating the value of what you have to offer to those who can benefit from it.
And the buyer is often not as price-driven as you think. He or she will pay whatever it takes if they’re convinced of the value of your services.
In fact, low fees can work against you.
The first step is to position yourself not only as an expert but as THE expert. You do this by developing a personal logo or tagline that defines your branding and sets you apart from your competition. Your logo will be your branding umbrella in the sense that your topics need to be consistent with it.
Your logo needs to focus on what your strength is as a speaker. Make it memorable so that people remember who you are and what you stand for.
To make it memorable, you need to use powerful yet simple words. What you don’t want is to make anyone have to stop and think about what you mean.
Buying decisions are initially made from the impulse part of the brain and they’re then justified by the logical part. If you don’t attract your prospective buyer’s impulse part, you may well lose them forever. For this reasons, metaphors can be powerful.
Which speakers do you admire most? What are their taglines? What do they stand for? What sums up your mission precisely in just a few words? What has your best keywords in it?
It’s worth spending time on your tagline – it’s your mini advertisement that can go out into the world over and over again. It will become a category or a branding statement that you dominate.
Use it in your email signature as well as when you submit articles to directories. Also incorporate it – perhaps as a top banner – in your one page promo sheet.
