I talk with a lot of speakers about their marketing efforts and I often share a few simple marketing tasks that can make your life as a speaker easier. This week I thought I’d share three I end up talking about most!

1. Your Follow Up Email – You know exactly what you’re going to pitch when you get on that stage – so why isn’t your follow up email locked and loaded before you head out the door? Once you get home you can add in the contacts (more on that next) and make any final adjustments (a funny joke from the event you want to add in to personalize it?) and hit send!
2. Ask for the List – Any time you speak you should be asking for (requiring) a list of the attendees WITH their email addresses delivered to you the day of the event. I am well aware some organizations aren’t allowed to share – and that’s okay. In that case make sure you’re passing around a sign up form (better yet – an iPad signup form so you don’t have to decipher handwriting when you get back to the office) and reference the follow up email that’s coming so they WANT to receive it.
3. Adjust Your Automation – If you have a standard download on your website and you’re including it in your follow up email to attendees – make sure that you adjust whatever automation sequence is included if you need to.

You are speaking to groups because you want to grow your business by connecting from one to many instead of 1:1 meetings. Why not make sure that you’re following up in a timely manner and communicating with EVERYONE in the room right from the start? Don’t forget to have a handout and a great offer that makes it easy for your audience to say YES to working with you!

Yes, it is.

Last week I signed up for a webinar for a training I needed to complete. The signup form was a Google Form which is okay, but there was no confirmation email or a link for the webinar. So, I figured they’d just send an email to confirm the day before with the login details.

Then the evening before I get a link that says I have signed up for the webinar but I actually just signed up to sign up for the webinar. “Please click here and sign up AGAIN.”

Dude. This is not awesome. Even better? There was only a start time on the webinar originally. And it’s not an hour it’s 90 minutes (WHHHYYYYY???) and I have a client call at the 1 hour mark so I missed the last half hour of the webinar.

And then of COURSE the webinar starts late (Side rant: when you are late for an event or webinar do you expect that everyone will wait for you? I sure don’t, if I’m late I’ll just jump in and catch up – so WHY OH WHY do people do this?!?!)

If you are running a webinar or ANYTHING you need people to sign up for in advance – do yourself a favor and don’t annoy them before you start. Here’s what I recommend:

• Include the start AND end time of your event.
• START ON TIME. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I budgeted the 30/60/90 minutes for your event and we were all told when it starts. I arrived on time and it’s not my fault that someone else had a call go long. They knew they were late and expect to catch up – your lack of planning doesn’t constitute an emergency on my end.
• END on time – yes you can stick around for questions but be respectful of people’s time and what you PROMISED them.
• Don’t be redundant. There was ZERO reason for me to have to register twice for the webinar. And my guess is that about 50% of the people who first registered will not re-register or attend the webinar. You’re losing people when you do this.

We all know I thrive on efficiency and streamlined processes so this rant shouldn’t come as a surprise. This was just a good reminder to me to ensure that I have the most efficient processes in place in my business so that I’m not wasting clients (or prospects) time with redundancies.

What redundancies in your business do you need to review?

If you’re a business owner in the greater Portland area, you’re in luck! This month I am speaking at not one but TWO events in town, join us!

On May 11th I will be speaking at the Portland Conscious Women Entrepreneurs group led by my friend and fabulous business coach, Mary Ann McNulty. The topic is: Plant Seeds Now For Fall Harvest: Understanding Seasons & Cycles in Business. I will be talking about Follow up (big surprise!), it will be a fun and interactive event!

On May 18th I am speaking during International Coaches Week for the Oregon ICF Chapter. This event is open to the public – don’t be shy, it’ll be a lot of fun! I’ll be speaking on 3 Guaranteed Ways to Grow Your Business With Follow Up a topic I think we all know I enjoy speaking on!

It will be a fun month of speaking around Portland! And if you’re a solo practice attorney in Oregon, I’ll be speaking to a group in June for CLE credits, oh boy!

If you can’t make these events, you’ll find me at OEN’s Pub Talk and at eWomenNetwork this month as well. Where are you networking this month?