How To Market Yourself As A Speaker On Other People’s Stages
Learning how to market yourself can net you a lot of speaking engagements. Getting on other people’s stages is an important part of building your speaking business.
What if I told you that there is something you can get a fast start on in the next 30 days? The key is: get in the game and start doing it and make it real.
How To Market Yourself | Be The Speaker You Want To Be
1. Understand the Principle of Adding 10x Value
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They key to getting booked on other people’s stages is adding 10x value to those people. Knowing how to market yourself is a skill you’ll need here.
Their stage is a valuable and profitable asset, and they won’t give it away for free. So what do you have to offer?
If you have a list or have run an event, that’s a great asset to offer up as an exchange, but having a list or a stage is not the sole answer to getting on someone else’s stage.
Find where you can add value to somebody and go do it. Can you make introductions? Put people in their room? What do they need that you can provide?
Most people discount their value by ignoring their gifts, like a fish in water. Sometimes getting on stage means you can share your gift with other people.
This is how you market yourself. Marketing your skills to people means you can add value to someone else’s life.
2. Develop Relationships and Expand Networks
Let’s say you join a meetup group to expand your sphere of influence. You can add value to other participants in the group – connect with them, share, be a contributor by just showing up and adding value being yourself and sharing your gifts.
What do you know that they don’t? What can you help them with?
If you want to get on big stages, you need to develop relationships with stage leaders. Keep adding 10x value. Keep building your relationships.
You may have to give without getting anything in return, but ultimately you will get on stages. Doing this work leads to being in front of big audiences and making more money and serving more people.
Social media also takes a huge role here. A big part of how to market yourself is establishing an online presence.
The digital age brought people from all walks of life online, helping everyone get their message across millions of people worldwide. Maintaining a social media account constantly with good, marketable content can help you forge new connections, clients, and contacts for more speaking engagements.
Take Action Now: Start by honing your gift. Make a list of the gifts you have and the different ways you can add value to people.
Want my free guide to hosting your own profitable live events? Get it here.
3. Know the Stages You Want to Get Booked On
Which are the right stages for you?
Make a list of the people you could serve and the seminar stages you want to get on. Learn your skills and find people who would benefit from them.
You can split your list into two – immediate stages and big stages.
Immediate stages are those with smaller audiences, like a local meetup group where you might speak for free a few times by adding value and letting people experience your gift. You can use these smaller stages as opportunities to make new connections and partnerships and find new speaking opportunities.
Big stages are the fantastic ones you dream of speaking from.
4. Prepare for Big Stages!
Be prepared to negotiate to get on those big stages; if someone says no, what can you do to make them change their mind?
Can you put high-value potential clients in their room for that seminar in exchange for stage time? If they won’t offer you a 90-minute speaking slot, can you get 10-15 minutes?
Prepare for these opportunities by creating your presentations in different lengths and styles so you always have something to offer. It’s also a good idea to work on a couple of topics within your niche because you might be competing with other speakers who are already working on your topic.
Take Action Now: List out the big ten stages you want to be on in the next year. The people who own those stages are the people you want to start building relationships with and adding value to.
5. Hold Your Own Seminar
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Your own seminar room is an asset. The moment you do your first seminar, that’s going to help you get booked on more stages.
It’s one of the fastest, quickest ways on how to market yourself; besides having a huge online presence, that is.
If you hold a seminar with 30-40 people in your audience, that’s an asset. You could invite 2 guest speakers to join you and use your stage to negotiate something of equal value in return – they could give you a speaking slot on their stage or do something of equitable value (introduce you to people, add people to your list, being people into your seminar room, etc).
This is easy to scale up. If you do 3 seminars throughout the year, and have 2 guests at each and get booked on 2 new stages as a result for each seminar you host, you’ll have a speaking slot on 6 stages throughout the year.
Take Action Now:
Set the date for your live event – no maybes, set the date. (If you haven’t run a live event before, check out exactly how to plan and run your first live event by clicking here and downloading my Ultimate Live Event Map.)
Here is an interview I did with Futuristic Academy that can give you a better picture of how to market yourself better:
I hope these tips have helped you understand how to market yourself better. Now call somebody in your network who you know is hosting seminars and invite them to be on your stage. When they accept your invitation, ask if you can be on their stage in return.
How can you effectively market yourself? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
Want my free guide to hosting your own profitable live events? Get it here.
Up Next: Superstar Speakers | How To Make Six Figures At Your Next Seminar
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 3, 2016, and has been updated for accuracy and relevancy.
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