Last updated on March 27th, 2024 at 03:06 pm
The ONE Thing You Can Do To Play Big As a Motivational Speaker
I know you’re used to articles that give you twenty tips to get booked. Good for them. Today, I’m just going to give you one. It’s not a tip; it’s a shift in perspective. And it’s all based on stealing from the people with the big budgets.
Yes, you heard me right.
We’re going to steal, but not in an illegal, unethical way. We will study what the big-budget people do and learn from them. But first, I want to talk about being relevant in your market.
Motivational Keynote Speakers Must Be Relevant In Their Market
Your goal as a motivational speaker (if you want to have the ultimate impact) is to connect with your audience. This isn’t about you. It’s about them. And that means knowing what challenges they face, what they wish for, and what keeps them from having the life they want. Your success as a speaker will depend on how relevant you are in your market.
If you are out there delivering a message that nobody really cares about, it will be hard to get booked. So the goal is to ensure that what they care about and what you speak about matches.
Finding A Way To Connect Your Message To Their Desire
Let’s say that you are a speaker who speaks about how to have a happy marriage if you’re over seventy, but you are finding that there aren’t enough people out there willing to pay for that. You may think there is no place for your message in the speaking industry. While you might be right, you probably don’t realize that you are sitting on content that would relate to other people, too – you’re just not seeing it.
Let’s say that your major point in having a happy marriage over seventy centers around healthy communication. Isn’t this important even if you are under seventy? Isn’t healthy communication important for everybody in the family, not just the husband and wife? And isn’t communication important in the workplace? On a team? In the board room? In leadership?
Much of our content as motivational speakers is relevant in many areas because the principles are so universal. So don’t limit yourself.
So What Are The Messages That Sell?
It doesn’t matter how good you are on stage if your message doesn’t sell. You need to meet their needs, not yours. So you need to find the message they are looking for, learn how to market it to get their attention and make them want to hire YOU over the hundreds of other speakers who are speaking about it. And HERE is where we start to steal ideas from the big budgets.
While you may be working on a small budget, you can still use big-budget tactics.
And here is where we make a shift in our perspective. Here is where we stop trying to figure out how to be relevant and attractive to our buyers and look around to see how others are attractive to their buyers. There are many big budget examples out there, but today I will just mention one for the sake of example – magazine covers.
Be Sure To Know Your Market
Before we examine the magazine industry, it’s important to know your market. Who are you selling to? If you aren’t sure, you have some work to do. As a motivational speaker, you need to know what kind of people (age, gender, geographic location, income level, etc.) would most benefit from your message.
Who is your best audience?
Magazines Spend Big Bucks Trying to Attract Buyers – So Let’s Borrow From Them
Magazines compete to get your attention and to get you to buy their magazine. Magazine covers are brilliant at choosing headlines that speak to your specific need or desire. Women’s health magazines know what short little power statements will get your attention: lose weight fast, do a one-minute workout, or get rid of that muffin top forever. They know the issues that their market is concerned about.
It doesn’t matter how they know.
We can just trust that they did the work and spent the money to figure it out. So, if your market matches women’s health magazines, you can borrow those powerful phrases. You can stay on top of what concerns your market and speak directly about that. The same goes for money magazines, sports magazines, religious magazines, etc.
Find the magazine that fits your market, and you’ve just opened the door to some high-dollar information.
Use it.
Shift Your Perspective To Borrow From the Big Budgets
This isn’t just about magazines. It’s about studying what the big-budget people do to attract and hook their buyers. It’s about watching television commercials to study how they reach their audience. It’s about looking at the ads inside the magazine to see how they relate a product to your desire.
It’s about looking at billboards to see how they use their big budgets to get our attention in a second. It’s about watching politicians and how they speak to the people’s needs and concerns. A tiny shift in perspective can make a big difference in your business!
Related Stories:
Kelly Swanson is an award-winning storyteller, comedian, motivational speaker, Huffington Post Contributor, and cast member of The Fashion Hero television show airing on Amazon Prime. She is also the author of Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale, The Land of If Only, The Story Formula, and The Affirmation Journal for Positive Thinking. She was a featured entertainer for Holland America Cruise Lines, keynote speaker for the International Toastmasters Convention, and has keynoted major conferences and corporate events from coast to coast. She just launched her one-woman show Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale in theaters, and it is being booked all over the country. In July of 2022, she was inducted into the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame.
Note: Articles by Kelly may contain affiliate links and may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on an affiliate link.
