As a professional speaker, you will be in front of live audiences repeatedly. Whether it’s a free talk at your local Rotary, or a paid keynote in front of thousands of people, you need ways to capture leads so that you can get people onto your email list, send them newsletters, product or event announcements, and so on.
Step1: Prepare your Website
You definitely need a well-organized and attractive website to fit your personality and your business. Even a quick and inexpensive will have the features you need so spend more time and money on having a nice header image and developing quality content, and collect photos and video clips on your website. Stick to the ordinary pages you see on every website: home, about, services, contact and your speaking “portfolio” — this will make it easy to navigate your website. And having your information and video portfolio at their fingertips will make it easy for people to contact you and hire you.
Step 2: Create a prominent Sign-up box
Capture website visitor email addresses onto mailing list software. Much like paper mail, electronic mail isn’t going away soon. Email marketing can be very lucrative, yet people often fail to capture emails on their site. The best way to capture emails is to tempt people with an amazing product in alignment with your overall message that you give away free in exchange for their subscription to your email list. With all the emails everyone gets, it really has to be worthwhile to sign up and all your emails and newsletters in the future need to also deliver great value. If you always offer something with real value that solves a problem, they will sign up and remain subscribed if they’re interested in your topic.
Step 3: Funnel Offline Leads to your Online Lead Capture System
There are several ways to make sure people all end up on your email list. Back-of-the-room sales, paper sign-up lists, business card collection, raffle drawings, QR codes, using your smartphone or tablet as a kiosk to capture leads at your table at an event, etc. And make sure to add your website address and a QR code on everything you print: promotional items, letterheads, business cards, and products. Also be sure and add your website address to your email signature, use it in all press releases you send out to the media, and mentioned it in all your interviews.
Make sure you follow the steps in order, so that you have your “website house” in order before you start to drive your leads there, and pre-schedule emails to go out to your list on a regular basis so that there are no large gaps in delivery.
You can build a high-quality and highly-targeted email list that you keep warm with periodic valuable information and learn more about other ways to monetize your list later.
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