Marketing and PR Rules for Public Speakers

Public speaking and marketing are two different disciplines so they must have different principles, right?

Not so fast! I've just finished reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and I see many similarities between the principles of these two critical communication methods.

David lists among the 'old rules' of marketing: 1) it's really advertising and 2) it has to appeal to the masses. Sales teams who put all their product information, their corporate image, and their spin into a deck of slides and call this a sales presentation are following these old rules. This so-called presentation is advertising to the masses. Same show to every audience, over and over.

New Marketing rules include: 1) People want authenticity, not spin and 2) People want participation--that is, they want to see themselves in the content you're conveying. Let these new rules guide your presentation and you'll get your audience to engage with you and respond to your call-to-action.

A community bank asked me to help their market managers for both deposits and loans take a giant leap forward

in their presentation skills. They mailed me their slide deck--16 slides chock full of text. Worse than the lack of visuals is that there is nothing in the deck to make their target clients (closely held businesses, professional services firms and associations) think any of it was about them.

In only one hour of brainstorming they came up with dozens of ideas for photos they could take themselves--photos of their customers pursuing their own work because of the services they received from the bank. Each  time a prospective doctor, accountant, home builder or child-focused association agrees to meet with these bank officers, they will be able to draw from their own photo library the pictures that will show the real benefits of being a customer of this bank.

How do you apply the new rules of marketing to your public speaking? Share your ideas through our comment line below.

I'll be writing more about the convergence between public speaking and marketing and PR in the Internet world. You can keep up with these posts by becoming a subscriber to this blog.

Comments

[David Meerman Scott]

Susan, You are so right. But I never really thought that the new rules apply directly to speaking. Thanks for pointing that out.

Since the book has come out, I've been getting an average of one speaking gig invite per day. I accept about one paid gig a month and except for some book sales, speaking is my only revenue source.

I see tons of bad speakers. And you're right - most are trying to sell from the podium.

Thanks for reading my book and writing about it here.

Best

David