Carol Cox: All of us could use a marketing boost right
about now. Here.
Why your signature talk is the missing piece
of your marketing strategy.
On this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. More and more women are making an
impact by starting businesses,
running for office, and speaking up for what
matters. With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur,
and speaker, I interview and coach purpose
driven women to shape their brands,
grow their companies, and become recognized
as influencers in their field.
This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your
Brand podcast. I'm your host,
Carol Cox, joined today by our lead speaking
coach, Diane Diaz. Hi,
Diane.
Diane Diaz: Hi, Carol.
Carol Cox: This is a new two part series that we're
doing to kick off the New Year part one.
This episode is on the missing piece of your
marketing strategy, which is your signature
talk. And we're going to tell you exactly why
your signature talk is the foundation for
your marketing, especially if you've been
feeling like your marketing has not been
hitting as well as it used to.
There's a lot of changes that are going on in
the marketplace. And so your signature talk
is that missing piece.
And then the next episode,
part two, we're going to talk about when you
are delivering your presentations,
whether in person or virtual.
Why they may not be converting for lead
generation. So we know that a bunch of you
like us, we do a lot of speaking to attract
leads and clients to our business.
You you are too.
There are certain things to do to make it
more likely that people are going to want to
work with you, and so we're going to cover
that in part two.
Now, Diane, you and I,
we have been obviously speakers and coaches
for a long time.
We've also been marketers and worked in
branding for pretty much our entire careers.
And so I know for a lot of entrepreneurs and
small business owners,
they are the experts in the work that they do
with their clients. And unless there are
marketers themselves as far as their
background, they probably don't like
marketing that much. Or I know,
like a lot of people are like,
oh, more marketing that I have to do.
But here is why speaking is so effective,
because you probably have heard of that know
like trust factor that is essential for
someone to want to consider working with you
and being a public speaker.
100 X's the speed that know like trust
factor. So Diane, let's kick off this episode
by talking about a speaking engagement that
you did in the first part of the year to a
local women's business group.
And we were really pleasantly surprised by
the results that we got and the number of
clients who signed up to work with us that
very same day.
Diane Diaz: Yes, yes. When we're thinking about that,
your signature talk is your marketing.
That's exactly what that was. Now,
that was a lead generation talk.
Specifically, it was an unpaid talk.
They asked me to come speak on personal
branding and unpaid, which that's I'm happy
to do that. But I approached it as a lead
generation talk because I knew our ideal
client was in the audience.
Right? Lots of them. About 60 women,
many of our ideal clients.
And so I designed the talk to plant those
sales seeds, walk them down the path to want
to work with us. And we ended up getting
three clients right off the bat from the
offer that I made in a very non salesy way.
Right. I think you mentioned,
Carol, that a lot of people may not like
marketing because it's just like,
oh, I got to market myself.
I think that might be because we look at it
as sales and we feel like,
oh, it's kind of icky and we don't like to do
that. Imagine if your talk sells you for you,
right? It sells your services for you without
you having to, quote unquote,
sell. And that's what marketing is,
right? It's you're making that you're
building that know like trust factor because
now you're standing in front of them or
virtual. But in this case,
I was standing in front of them. They see me,
they hear the stories.
They hear my message.
They have activities.
They participate in the talk they're
building. I'm building a rapport with them,
and I'm building trust.
And what I'm sharing with them is resonating.
So they're like, yes, yes, that's that seems
accurate. That seems accurate.
And then when I have the offer now,
they want to be part of it because I have not
only sold my message, but I've built trust
that I, I am talking about something in a
credible way. So they want to be part of
that.
Carol Cox: Diane, what you just said there about that,
they participate. I think this is so key.
So we think about marketing strategy as a
whole. And here speaking your brand, we have
a number of different marketing channels that
we use. So obviously this podcast is one of
our top marketing channels as far as
visibility and exposure and getting listeners
to learn more about what we do and,
and how they can work with us and building
that know like trust factor.
So we have the podcast,
we have the Speaking Your Brand YouTube
channel. If you haven't yet subscribed, you
can go over to the link in the show notes and
subscribe. That's one of the goals for this
year where we're building more of the YouTube
channel. We use LinkedIn.
We have the email newsletter.
Obviously we have the website,
we have referral partners that we work with
and other people that we know in either our
local community or online community that we
collaborate with. So all of those are
different marketing channels,
but we very actively use public speaking as
that as well. And here's the reason why we
find it to be so effective.
And don't forget, in part two of this series,
we're going to come back to how to drop those
sales seeds into your presentations so it
doesn't feel salesy so that it feels
authentic and comfortable for you and for the
audience. So those tips are going to be
coming in part two. But if we think about
this idea of marketing,
I know that I have seen and I'm sure you have
seen, that it's harder and harder to get
visibility online.
There's more content, there's more content
creators. There's more content on social
media, on podcasts, on YouTube.
So the reach you may have had a few years
ago, you probably don't have now.
The algorithms change all the time.
It's hard to keep up with and figure out what
are these different channels want.
What types of posts do they want?
But here is why public speaking is so
critical. You have a captive audience,
especially in person.
They are sitting there.
They're paying attention to you.
They're probably not on their phones. It
would be kind of rude if they were in person
on their phones. Virtual was a whole
different thing. Right,
right. But still, you have a relatively
captive audience, even virtual,
because they're even if they're only half
listening to you, at least they're listening
to you. But you have this captive audience
and they're actively participating.
Now, contrast that with online activities,
which are passive, where people are passively
scrolling, they're passively consuming.
You're just one of literally tens,
dozens, maybe hundreds of things that they've
seen in a very short period of time during
the day. As a public speaker,
you are there for 15, 20,
30 minutes, even an hour building like Diane,
like you said, that rapport and that trust
with them. And so that's where you go beyond
that surface level visibility,
which is what you get from the algorithms.
You should still do those things because you
need to have that online visibility as well.
But think about how you're going to fit
speaking into your marketing strategy for
this year, because I think you'll find that
you're going to get a lot more results and a
lot more results more quickly than you even
do online.
Diane Diaz: Yes. And I think to add to that,
I think another thing that is happening when
you are speaking in person that you can't
replicate virtually or even,
you know, in social media and things, is that
the people in the room listening to you see
the other people in the room listening to
you, they see them nodding.
So like, oh yeah, she's buying in,
he's buying in.
Then they're like, oh we're all.
Yeah. Mhm. Right. And it's like confirmation
that you are on the right track.
Right. And so we see that other people in the
room raising their hands or participating or
it's like we're all buying into the same
message. So it reinforces our decision our
good decision to sit there and listen to your
message.
Carol Cox: Oh, it's like the mirror neurons.
Diane Diaz: Yes yes yes, yes.
It's the reason why if I see someone cry,
bam, I will cry. I don't even have to know
why you're crying, right?
Carol Cox: Yes. Or laugh. Or people start laughing and
then you start laughing. All of that? Yes.
And so right there.
See? So you're getting you as the speaker.
The audience is seeing that other people are
resonating so that that then they're more
likely to see you as someone that they can
trust. But then also as the speaker in the
front of the room or on the stage,
you have built in authority and credibility
just by virtue of being there,
which, again, is a lot harder to establish
online when you're just one of many,
many things that people are looking at.
Yes. Okay. So hopefully we have convinced you
that speaking is an essential ingredient for
your marketing strategy so that you get
results more quickly for what you're doing.
Here's though, what what happens a lot of
times when you get a speaking invitation.
So hopefully you're going out there and to
your local community, local groups,
and maybe you're pitching yourself for
conferences and events and then you get
selected or someone invites you to speak.
Maybe you have a presentation that you use in
the past so you kind of dust it off.
Maybe it's been a little while and you're
like, okay, I'll change the title slide to
the current date, and maybe I'll change my
headshot photos, a little old photo in and
I'll and I'll change a couple of things and
that's it. And maybe the slide deck is from a
while ago. And you know,
design trends change.
Like what audiences want change.
So you definitely want that to be up to date.
Or maybe you don't really have a current
presentation or a current slide deck.
So you kind of just put something together at
the last minute, or maybe you wing it or and
that's also contributes to a lot of nerves
that people get because they're not feeling
comfortable in their message and they don't
feel as prepared for it.
And they really I think a lot of times that
is that they'll treat their presentation as
an afterthought instead of a core essential
element, not only of their marketing
strategy, but of their business strategy and
really getting people to understand who you
are as a person, but as a business owner,
what matters to you, but then by extension,
what matters to the audience and how you have
that connection together?
Diane Diaz: Yes.
Carol Cox: So we think about a signature talk.
Now you can have more than one topic that you
speak about, so don't hear signature talk and
feel like we're trying to box you in into
only one thing that you're allowed to talk
about, and that's it for the next year or
two. You cannot talk about anything else.
That's not what a signature talk is.
A signature talk, instead,
is how we map out what your thought
leadership message is,
what your core message is,
how that relates to the audience,
why it matters to them.
Because you need to get buy in from the
audience. We integrate your stories,
your client examples into that as well as
your framework. Anything else that's
important to you and the work that you do,
and that's important to the audience. So that
is what happens when we create,
when we map out your signature talk.
And then you can repurpose that for different
events, different audiences,
different lengths of time.
But your core message is central to what you
do. And that's why it becomes part of your
marketing strategy.
And I think, Diane, this is what surprised me
the most when we first started working with
our clients. And we have our signature Talk
Canvas framework with the three acts,
and we map out everything using the post-it
notes. And then I would I remember this was
probably back in maybe 2018,
and I would do this process, and I had a
client come back to me after that initial VIP
day where we did that, and she said to me,
oh, I took what we worked on for the talk and
all the post-it notes,
and I wrote a five part email nurture
sequence, and I took part of it,
and I added it to the different parts of my
website, and I created some social media
posts from it, and I was like,
oh, well, of course I was like a doll moment.
Like, of course that that is who you are.
And that's your marketing message.
Even though it's presented as a signature
talk, it really is the foundation for
everything that you're doing.
Diane Diaz: Yeah, it's really like a signature message,
right? It's like you're creating the
signature message that is a talk,
but then it becomes all these other things.
And I know, you know, when when I work with
clients, often they'll say,
well, now how do I what do I do with this?
Beyond this, I'm like, well,
you can expand on this and make a workshop
that you sell for pay,
right? You can condense it down to three
points, and you could be on a panel where you
could share that, you could be interviewed on
a podcast and pull from that.
You can create social media posts,
you could create an online course.
There's so many things that you can do.
And like you said, repurpose it for different
audiences. Find what the angle is that that
audience is going to care about,
and then swap out stories that are meaningful
for them. Swap out examples,
swap out audience engagement,
techniques. So you make it a different talk,
but it's not a whole completely different
talk. You're just repurposing what you've
already created. So you become known as the
person who talks about XYZ topic,
but then it's tailored to each audience.
Carol Cox: Yes. Now, and if you're listening to us talk
about this and it's and we make it sound
really easy. Now remember,
we've been doing this with speaking your
brand for ten years, working with clients.
And obviously we've been presenting for much
longer than that.
So we are like the Simone Biles.
Yeah. Speaking coaches because we make it
look easy. And we know that just like she
makes it look easy when she does all of her
twists and turns. And we know that it is not
easy at all.
So if you're listening to this and you're
like, okay, yeah, sure sounds easy, just
switch out audience activities and just
switch out stories and repurpose it and
change the length. We understand that.
So this is why when you work with us in our
Thought Leader Academy,
which is our online program,
not only do you get that VIP day where we
take all everything that's in your brain,
all your ideas and stories and all everything
that feels clear to you,
yet confusing at the same time.
We take all that, we map it out to your
entire signature message.
Again, that's the foundation for your talk,
as well as the other marketing assets that
you can use it for.
But then we teach you throughout the program
how to repurpose it, how to change it out for
different audiences, how to how to change the
emphasis on stories or different parts of
your framework depending on who you're
talking to. So not only are you getting the
deliverable of your signature message and the
different assets that you're creating,
but you're learning the framework so that you
can use it going forward for anything else
that you're working on?
Diane Diaz: Yes. Yeah, I think that's the beauty of it.
And then once, once a client actually then
takes it and repurposes it,
they're like, ah, yes.
And we've had numerous clients say to us
later on like, oh, you know,
they worked with us, you know, a year ago.
And they're like, oh, I actually use that
outline. And I used that to take the content
and turn it into talk for this or to create a
download that I was working on.
Carol Cox: Yes, exactly.
And so then because you'll get the entire
talk, so we give you photos of the board with
all the post-it notes mapped out on it, and
then you have an outline document that you
fill in. And then we teach you the framework
through the the zoom, the group zoom calls
that we have in our online learning hub.
So you are very well positioned to be able to
learn how we do this, so that you can do it
for yourself so that you're continuing to get
the ROI from the experience that you have by
working with us. All right.
So let's do a quick recap,
Diane. And then we're going to set up, uh,
part two. Yes.
Okay. So marketing strategy your your
signature talk and thinking about public
speaking is an essential aspect of your
marketing strategy going forward.
Like we said in the beginning, it is really
how you're going to build that rapport and
that trust with your audiences so that you
can get more leads and clients and more
opportunities, more speaking opportunities,
board opportunities, opportunities with
associations that you may want to get
involved in. Being a public speaker really
gives you that credibility and that
authority, so that you can apply for these
other opportunities as well.
And so when you think about sitting down to
work on your signature message,
think about not only what it is that you do
within your business, so the services that
you offer, but what is the problem that
you're solving for your clients?
So by extension, what is the problem that
you're solving for your audience?
What does your audience want?
So like what is it that they want?
What are their goals related to what it is
that you do in your business.
So for example here was speaking your brand.
If you're listening to this,
your goal is probably that you want to have a
bigger impact. Maybe you enjoy public
speaking. You want to be on bigger stages.
Maybe you're just getting started with public
speaking. So you're trying to figure out how
to navigate the speaking world,
how to pitch yourself,
how to create a talk that's compelling.
So those are the goals that you have.
Maybe some of the challenges that you're
trying to figure out is where to pitch,
how to pitch, how to create that talk.
Should you focus on a keynote talk or a lead
generation talk? How can you do both?
So you have all these different questions in
your mind. And then so those are the
challenges that you see.
And then the challenges that we see that you
may not see because this is not your space,
is that so often our clients and it gets
stuck in what we call the expert trap.
So you train to your audiences instead of
providing them with thought,
leadership, motivation and inspiration
because that's what's going to get them to
act. Either act on your overall message,
but then also act to hire you for whatever it
is that you're going to help them with.
So think about the problem that you solve,
what your audience wants,
what it is that's that they think is getting
in their way, what challenges they have. But
what do you see as the real problem that they
may not recognize yet?
But you see it because you're the expert in
this space, and you can help them to get past
that real problem, to get to the goals that
they have. So that's your your marketing
message. And again, if that sounded a little
bit confusing, that's why you need us.
We help to clarify that for you because again
it's hard to do it for yourself.
It's even hard for us to do it for ourselves.
That's why I've had business coaches over the
years and people I've hired to help with
marketing, because you need that outside
perspective on there.
So that's your that's your homework.
Those are your to do's for this episode.
And of course, if you would like to work with
us, we would be more than happy to do so.
The best thing to do is go to speaking your
brand. You can schedule a consultation call
with us. We can talk about what your goals
are, and then we can talk about how we can
work together, the different programs that we
have, whether it's our online program,
the Thought Leader Academy,
doing a standalone VIP day,
or even attending one of our one day
in-person speaking workshops that we hold in
Orlando, Florida, a couple of times a year.
So now don't forget we have part two coming
up in this series where we're going to dive
more into how to make sure that your
presentations are landing for lead generation
so that you are getting clients from the
speaking that you're doing.
Diane, thank you so much for joining me
today.
Diane Diaz: Thanks, Carol.
Carol Cox: Until next time.
Thanks for listening.