By Cathleen Filmore

1. Define Your Value - Start With Positioning

The first question to ask is what value do you bring?  If the answer is none, it’s time to rethink the proposition. The second question to ask is whether the mission statement you created for your event REALLY conveys the value you bring. Don’t be afraid to make a big promise.  If you call your workshop ‘Present with Power’ you’ll attract people who know they need to improve their presentation skills.  But if you make a bigger promise and call it “Own the Podium” you’ll draw in a much larger group.  Who here doesn’t want to own the podium when they speak?

 2. Build Your List

Nothing is more important than building a strong loyal database that you keep in contact with. You can build lists using your website, social media and by collecting business cards and attendee information when you’re a guest speaker.

 It’s not uncommon for speakers to purchase lists. While it may be necessary to use a purchased list in the beginning, in my experience, organic lists are most effective.

 3. Find a Hungry Crowd

Now that you’ve established your topic, you must decide if there’s a crowd hungry for the value you provide. If so, you need to go where they go so you can find them. I recommend that you write a list that covers:

• Where they hang out
• What associations they belong to
• Individual influencers already in your database

 4. Determine Content and Fee and Create Promotional Material

Content: Now it’s time to create an outline that will be part of your marketing material.  The key questions to ask are 1. How will people benefit from attending?  And 2. What bonuses can you add? Consider if you have a colleague with an equally valuable message they’d be willing to share and how you could work that into to your presentation or your bonuses.

Fees: Most speakers go one of two ways with fees: Either they’re afraid to charge what they’re worth or they start out expecting exorbitant fees!  The trick to escaping this trap is to simply ask yourself how much you’d be willing to pay to attend this seminar. What price would be a deal-breaker for you? 

Promotional material: Your promotional material needs to include the following things:

• A great headline
• A stated problem
• Your unique solution
• Testimonials from other gatherings
• A call to action
• An order form

 5. Test Your Premise

Now it’s time to test your premise!  Once you’ve finalized your promotional message and material, run your idea by a few trusted colleagues for feedback before you launch. Keep an open mind and make sure you incorporate this feedback. By this time, we’re often so close to our presentation that we lose our objectivity so it’s important to pay special attention to the opinions of those around us.

 6. Find the Right Venue

The right venue can help your presentation go from good to great – especially if the venue reflects your brand or shares your values. I use Verity Club because it’s a great venue and positions the event as high end.  Also there’s no financial penalty for cancelling. Hotels can be tricky, as they often charge outrageous fees for catering and equipment and have strict cancellation policies. Another trick is to use venues that are designed for daytime events and meetings. For example, St. Andrew’s Conference Centre is an excellent venue.

 7. Sign up for Cvent.com

Cvent is a free service thtat allows you to send out an RFP to every venue in the city.  I recently targeted downtown hotels for my annual speakers showcase. It saved me hours of time because the request is sent out by simply checking off venue names and the responses are all blocked together on Cvent so you can keep track of who replied and who didn’t.  Cvent will also allow attendees to register using credit cards, and good news:  they only charge $1.00 per registration.

 8. Create a Marketing Plan, a Timeline and a Budget

Your marketing plan should cover how many people you want to attend your event and how you plan to reach them.  Create a comprehensive campaign that uses your current database, social media, flyer distribution and some guerilla marketing. 

 Next consider your timeline.  I recommend you work backwards from your end date and try to have all your registrations in a month before the event. 

 Finally, create a budget; how much will you bring in and how much will you spend to you meet your goals?

 9. Find Affiliates

This is a lucrative and often overlooked marketing tactic. Who do you know who will help you spread the word?  I find that my BNI colleagues are a good place to start, but you can go much further than that.

Surely  you have a colleague you’d be happy to cross-promote?  If your event is sponsored, your sponsors may be happy to help you promote too. Don’t overlook them.

 10. Plan the Agenda!

Always remember to prepare for the unexpected and go for it.  Have a great event! 

Cathleen Filmore owns and runs Speakers Gold Bureau.  A well-known industry expert, Cathleen has spoken at national conferences and delivers Fast Track marketing seminars for speakers. Speakers Gold holds an annual search and contest for North America’s top amateur speaker and can be contacted at www.speakersgold.com. 

By Kevin Maynard

Every small business will eventually be faced with the prospect of entering into an exchange of services.

You’ll ask yourself if you should forgo the revenue opportunity. The answer is usually “Yes”. Here’s why:

While you don’t get cash, you get services you would otherwise pay for. This reduces expenses, and in many cases enables you to take steps to improve your business which you could not otherwise afford.

Your accountant will tell you to record the transactions as revenue on both sides, and to issue credit notes. She is right – this way the amount of business you conduct is still reflected in your overall revenue totals – important for many reasons including figuring out how much work you’ve done for how much money.

The major caveat has to be – are the services offered in return services you need or want?

This is not worth doing just for the goodwill – although goodwill does factor into the decision.

To get around this, I recommend never broaching the idea of contra services unless the other partner has indicated a need for your own. It is rude and potentially sabotages relationships to discuss purchasing services, then suddenly suggesting that you will pay in kind.

“I would be open to discussing exchange of services, if that’s of interest to you.” Stick to this line as your way on introducing the concept. It ensures that both sides are willing, and don’t feel obligated to play along.

Removing that imposed obligation is critical, because it allows you to benefit from a new perceived obligation – an alliance. When a service partner has performed services for you, you will feel obligated to refer them. It’s natural, and you can speak from experience about how well they executed. You don’t get the same perceived obligation in a transaction where money changes hands – think how hard it is to get testimonials from your customers.

The trick to making a barter or contra job work for you is for it to be roughly equitable. Be up front about this for best results. “I normally charge $2500 for this – how does that compare?” If the answer is $2000  or $3000, you are in the ballpark, and this should work fine. Don’t be stingy, but don’t give away too much for free, or you will build hidden resentment.

Finally, also be up front about passing through direct charges for materials, sub-contractors etc. These are not the important parts to making this work – so don’t lose money on them and build value for your own services instead. Even if you aren’t being paid.

Kevin Maynard is a marketing strategist and president of Growth Path Strategic Marketing. To learn more about Kevin,continue to his site here.

By Kim McLaughlin

Developing a social media plan without an issues management plan is like driving a car without insurance. It’s a bad idea.

When we communicate online, particularly through social media networks, we take a risk. This is an unavoidable fact – one that scares off many SMEs from getting online at all. It’s also a fact that sometimes, social media screw ups can tarnish your brand if you’re not 100% prepared.

An issues management plan should account for as many possibilities as your team can think of. Try to think of smaller issues like general criticism or larger issues like complaints that go viral or online spats.

A comprehensive issues management plan should cover the technical steps you’ll take to respond e.g. move the conversation to direct messaging, issue an apology on facebook, etc., and outline the key messages you’ll use to respond.

For example, on February 2nd, Kenneth Cole made a huge faux pas on twitter:

Within a few hours, the tweet had been retweeted around the world and the community was appalled at this flagrant insensitivity to the protests in Egypt. The twitterstorm spilled over to the Kenneth Cole facebook page where people had more room to tell the company what they really thought about Kenneth’s inappropriate comment. Two hours later, Kenneth Cole posted this on Twitter:

“Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment -KC”

Followed by:

Finally, Kenneth’s apology on facebook read:

“I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I’ve dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.” – Kenneth Cole, Chairman and Chief Creative Office

Kenneth’s Cole immediate apology on Twitter was good. Quickly moving the conversation off Twitter and on to Facebook was a great move. But the KC team didn’t think the message through. A true issue management plan would have made sure that the apology did a few things:

1. Separated Kenneth’s stupid comment from the brand with a hearty mea culpa. e.g.: I take full responsibility for my comments and they are not a reflection of the wonderful people who work for Kenneth Cole…etc.
2. Allowed for a stronger apology. e.g. “I apologize to everyone who was offended” sounds weak. He should have apologized to everyone. Period.
3. Omitted the pat-on-the-back reminder of how he’s dedicated his life to…blah blah blah.

It’s interesting that Kenneth Cole’s social media team didn’t post another tweet until February 15th. Taking a little time to regroup perhaps? Let’s hope they came up with some better messaging to protect their brand online.

Now chances are, any mistake you make online won’t generate the kind of attention Kenneth Cole did in February. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be 100% prepared.

If you’ve decided to implement an online strategy, it’s time to pull out the old-school issues management binder and write your step-by-step plan and key messages for dealing with anything that can happen on social media.

Kim McLaughlin is a social media strategist and owner of Lyra Communications. To find out more about Kim,continue to her website.

By Kevin Maynard

I’ve got bad news for consultants:

Studies show that the average person is willing to spend up to $20k buying a product online, but that same person will shy away from ordering a service online worth $200!

So how can consultants tap into the lucrative market of online sales?

The solution is simple: Productize your services.

Productizing services seems counter-intuitive. Rather than offering your clients more options, you offer less. But the results are extremely attractive.

What IS Productizing?

Productizing is taking a service and clearly defining the deliverables, cost, and value. For example, instead of charging $360 per hour to write a will, a lawyer may offer an “estate package” that includes a will for $2500. Your client needn’t worry about how much time is involved or getting involved in an open ended commitment. As a result, your client is more willing to buy because they know what to expect from you.

Productizing lets you manage your client’s expectations and risks at the same time.

So productizing is clearly good for the client, but what about you the consultant?

Many consultants don’t realize that productizing helps them too because it clearly defines the required effort. You can protect yourself from margin devouring scope creep with a few limiting clauses (e.g. limit of one revision, etc.). This helps you protect and predict profitability.

Productized services even work to enhance your reputation as an expert. When you productize, you clearly show knowledge of what most clients need, and have a packaged solution ready to go. (Don't let the fact that you have a package dissuade you from charging a customization fee - customers generally understand that you pay more to go outside the box.)

And while productizing can't be used all the time, outlining what you typically provide clients can be a telling exercise. I recently did this for two different clients, and broke down their smorgasbord custom offerings into 8-10 separate groups each.

By addressing a single need for each of their clients, these two clients generated repeat business when they addressed their clients’ additional needs. In previous years, they'd have tried to address everything with a single program, and become a one-hit wonder.

Managing client expectations, encouraging better understanding of the service, reinforcing expertise, and stimulating customer retention. Productizing your services will transform you from a one-hit wonder into a long term superstar.

Kevin Maynard is a marketing strategist and president of Growth Path Strategic Marketing. To learn more about Kevin, continue to his site here.

Writing for the web and for print are totally different for three main reasons:

Reason One: Web culture and real-life business culture are different. We have different expectations about how a business will interact online than we do in a real life. The online world is more casual so your copy must welcome the conversation!

Reason Two: People don’t read online. They skim. If you write your website the way you’d write your brochure, you’ll lose your visitor. It’s not your fault – it’s just harder to read on a screen.

Reason Three: Unlike readers holding a printed page (I love those people), online readers aren’t committed. They have less patience and will quickly bounce off your page if they’re not constantly engaged.

Of course my best advice to you is don’t stress – hire a professional!! But if you insist on going it alone,if you’re determined, then let me share a few tricks that only the top copywriters know.

 Ten tips that will help you write better online copy:

1.  Don’t tell your reader what your product or service is, tell them what it will DO for them.
2. Don’t write about your company or product, write about your client. Remember that the most powerful word in English is YOU.
3. Long words don’t sell. Not even to CEOs. Use easy earthy words that you use when talking to friends.
4. Your copy should evoke emotion. You have to make your client feel something if you want them to buy.
5. People don’t read online, they skim, so make sure every fourth word is a keyword. Keywords help your reader understand your copy better.
6. One idea per paragraph. Even if your paragraph is one sentence, that’s okay. Two ideas is complex and you’ll lose your reader.
7. Be specific about the benefits of your product. Rather than ‘this will save you money” how about “ this saved Kim $2,300 per month in headache medication!”
8. Avoid clichés. For example “we offer strategic office solutions…” Wow. So does everybody else!
9. Word economy: Don’t use ten words when three will do. For example: Our office is situated in Toronto, Ontario. How about “We’re in Toronto.”
10. Use headlines wisely. Headlines hook your reader, guide them through the process and keep them engaged. Headlines must be persuasive, interesting and give your reader a taste of what’s to come.

Kim McLaughlin is a copywriter, social media strategist and owner of Lyra Communications. To find out more about Kim, continue to her website.