Friday, June 15
Motivational Speaker Branding in 4 Steps
You have a name for your business and have even determined your focus or niche. Great!
Now, how do you let others know about you? How do you market your products and services to your chosen audience in a way that they will understand and relate to?
It all comes down to something called branding. Here is a simple 4-step process for defining your brand.
So, what exactly is a brand? A brand can be thought of as a set of perceptions a prospective (or existing) client gets when they hear the name of your coaching practice or see the logo you will be designing to represent it.
The important thing to remember here is that it's not the same as the actual products or services you sell. Instead, it's a feeling a person has.
STEP #1: Solidifying Your Target Market
As you did when you launched your business, start by identifying your target market. Who are they specifically? What demographics can you identify about them? What's their age? Gender? Race? Marital status? Income level? Where do they live? Work?
Then try and go one step further to see if you can identify some lifestyle characteristics for them as well. Where do these people hang out? What do they like to read? What movies do they enjoy? What restaurants do they eat at? What associations do they belong to?
All of these factors can tell you even more about your target audience such as what's important enough to them that they will spend both time and money on it.
Can you use this information to sell your products and services in a unique or interesting way? Take some time to think about it.
If you are struggling with this exercise and just can't seem to come up with anything, try focusing on the individuals you have coached in the past or are coaching now. Are they your ideal client? If so, why? What characteristics are you drawn to that make them an ideal client for you? If they aren't your ideal client, that's OK too. Thinking about why they might not be ideal can lead to some insights too.
STEP #2: What?
Once you have your target market defined as specifically as possible, consider the key message(s) you'd like them to remember when they hear the name of your business or see your logo. What word or words do you want them to instantly recall? When thinking about a company such as Harley-Davidson, it's pretty easy to identify a couple of words that represent this brand, such as freedom or independence.
STEP #3: How?
Descriptive words (like the ones you may have come up with in step #2) typically have a feeling or emotion associated with them and these feelings or emotions can be captured through the use of symbols, images or even the colors you select.
Again, thinking back to Harley-Davidson, the colors they chose are black and orange. Black conveys a sense of power, strength and independence, and the orange is a unique color orange (some say the specific mix is a trade secret). Color is just one way that Harley-Davidson stirs up what they want its riders to feel when they are cruising down the highway on a motorcycle made by the company.
How do you want your prospective clients to feel when they see the name or logo associated with your business? Think about how symbols, images and colors can convey those emotions and feelings for you.
STEP #4: Put it all together
Now comes the fun part! Working with a graphic designer (try someplace like elance.com), pull everything together - the key message(s), symbols, images, colors, feelings and emotions - into a logo for your business.
Once you have some ideas drawn up, test them out on your clients, friends, or R & D Team. What impressions do they get when they see your logo? How does it make them feel? Would they hire you based on what they see?
Depending on feedback you receive, make any necessary changes and keep testing until you are satisfied with the results.
Using this basic 4-step process, you can create a powerful brand that will be easy to recognize and remember, excites you when you are talking about it to prospective clients and will virtually sell itself as it conveys the feelings and emotions you want it to.
Tip: If it excites you, and excites your potential clients, you have a winner!
Good luck and I am looking forward to seeing your unique brand on the Internet soon!
Now, how do you let others know about you? How do you market your products and services to your chosen audience in a way that they will understand and relate to?
It all comes down to something called branding. Here is a simple 4-step process for defining your brand.
So, what exactly is a brand? A brand can be thought of as a set of perceptions a prospective (or existing) client gets when they hear the name of your coaching practice or see the logo you will be designing to represent it.
The important thing to remember here is that it's not the same as the actual products or services you sell. Instead, it's a feeling a person has.
STEP #1: Solidifying Your Target Market
As you did when you launched your business, start by identifying your target market. Who are they specifically? What demographics can you identify about them? What's their age? Gender? Race? Marital status? Income level? Where do they live? Work?
Then try and go one step further to see if you can identify some lifestyle characteristics for them as well. Where do these people hang out? What do they like to read? What movies do they enjoy? What restaurants do they eat at? What associations do they belong to?
All of these factors can tell you even more about your target audience such as what's important enough to them that they will spend both time and money on it.
Can you use this information to sell your products and services in a unique or interesting way? Take some time to think about it.
If you are struggling with this exercise and just can't seem to come up with anything, try focusing on the individuals you have coached in the past or are coaching now. Are they your ideal client? If so, why? What characteristics are you drawn to that make them an ideal client for you? If they aren't your ideal client, that's OK too. Thinking about why they might not be ideal can lead to some insights too.
STEP #2: What?
Once you have your target market defined as specifically as possible, consider the key message(s) you'd like them to remember when they hear the name of your business or see your logo. What word or words do you want them to instantly recall? When thinking about a company such as Harley-Davidson, it's pretty easy to identify a couple of words that represent this brand, such as freedom or independence.
STEP #3: How?
Descriptive words (like the ones you may have come up with in step #2) typically have a feeling or emotion associated with them and these feelings or emotions can be captured through the use of symbols, images or even the colors you select.
Again, thinking back to Harley-Davidson, the colors they chose are black and orange. Black conveys a sense of power, strength and independence, and the orange is a unique color orange (some say the specific mix is a trade secret). Color is just one way that Harley-Davidson stirs up what they want its riders to feel when they are cruising down the highway on a motorcycle made by the company.
How do you want your prospective clients to feel when they see the name or logo associated with your business? Think about how symbols, images and colors can convey those emotions and feelings for you.
STEP #4: Put it all together
Now comes the fun part! Working with a graphic designer (try someplace like elance.com), pull everything together - the key message(s), symbols, images, colors, feelings and emotions - into a logo for your business.
Once you have some ideas drawn up, test them out on your clients, friends, or R & D Team. What impressions do they get when they see your logo? How does it make them feel? Would they hire you based on what they see?
Depending on feedback you receive, make any necessary changes and keep testing until you are satisfied with the results.
Using this basic 4-step process, you can create a powerful brand that will be easy to recognize and remember, excites you when you are talking about it to prospective clients and will virtually sell itself as it conveys the feelings and emotions you want it to.
Tip: If it excites you, and excites your potential clients, you have a winner!
Good luck and I am looking forward to seeing your unique brand on the Internet soon!
Sunday, June 10
How to become a motivational speaker
Quite simply, the only way to become a motivational speaker is to train with someone. To begin with you have to decide what market you want to target. You must choose from a field that includes but is not limited to finance, real estate, investing, religion, teen speakers, sales techniques and many more subjects of interest to companies and groups of people around the globe.
Pick your area of expertise or at least the subject you would like to speak to others about. Then seek out and pursue the best motivational speakers in that arena. Go and hear what they have to say and how they go about getting their message across. Are they keynote speakers or just the warm up guys beforehand? You won’t start out as a keynote speaker until you have some sort of following, some type of record behind you. But if you are gifted and you study and work heard, learn the basics, you have a chance to go to the top as quickly as anybody else does.
Leading motivational speakers often offer classes as well as books and other teaching aides to create new motivational speakers. This may sound strange. Why would a person at the top of his profession offer instruction on how to be a competitor? For the simple reason that the more people who are out there in the world, speaking about his teaching methods and using his motivational speaker training techniques, the more you work the more in demand he will become as a keynote speaker. You have to start somewhere and taking your training as a student of the guys at the top is the quickest way to get yourself hired to speak at someone’s convention.
When a simple seminar or evening of lectures is not enough to achieve desired results, some companies hire extreme motivational speakers to come in and deliver a heavier blow. These people concentrate on one thing and one thing only – making businesses more profitable from the minute the speaker is done speaking. Like all motivational speakers, the extreme speakers also offer extreme motivational speaker training designed to make you one of the foot soldiers who can go out and espouse his methods of generating more sales, or collecting those receivables, or capturing a bigger market share or whatever his particular slant is, to a number of businesses. The market is almost limitless for extreme motivational speakers, the more the merrier, and a good student always help to make a teacher look even better.
One tip - grab my Professional Speaking Bootcamp-in-a-Box and you'll shave years off your learning curve!!
Pick your area of expertise or at least the subject you would like to speak to others about. Then seek out and pursue the best motivational speakers in that arena. Go and hear what they have to say and how they go about getting their message across. Are they keynote speakers or just the warm up guys beforehand? You won’t start out as a keynote speaker until you have some sort of following, some type of record behind you. But if you are gifted and you study and work heard, learn the basics, you have a chance to go to the top as quickly as anybody else does.
Leading motivational speakers often offer classes as well as books and other teaching aides to create new motivational speakers. This may sound strange. Why would a person at the top of his profession offer instruction on how to be a competitor? For the simple reason that the more people who are out there in the world, speaking about his teaching methods and using his motivational speaker training techniques, the more you work the more in demand he will become as a keynote speaker. You have to start somewhere and taking your training as a student of the guys at the top is the quickest way to get yourself hired to speak at someone’s convention.
When a simple seminar or evening of lectures is not enough to achieve desired results, some companies hire extreme motivational speakers to come in and deliver a heavier blow. These people concentrate on one thing and one thing only – making businesses more profitable from the minute the speaker is done speaking. Like all motivational speakers, the extreme speakers also offer extreme motivational speaker training designed to make you one of the foot soldiers who can go out and espouse his methods of generating more sales, or collecting those receivables, or capturing a bigger market share or whatever his particular slant is, to a number of businesses. The market is almost limitless for extreme motivational speakers, the more the merrier, and a good student always help to make a teacher look even better.
One tip - grab my Professional Speaking Bootcamp-in-a-Box and you'll shave years off your learning curve!!
