Using a Speech to Promote a Product or Service-Use Public Speaking as Marketing

Doug Staneart  |  03/13/20
last updated

Using a Speech to Promote a Product or Service

This is part three of our posts on How to Use Public Speaking in Your Career. In this session, we are going to show you a few simple ways to use public speaking to promote or market your new product or service. In fact, using a speech to promote a product or service is one of the most effective ways to conduct marketing campaigns for both large and small businesses alike.

Using a Speech to Promote a Product or Service

There are a number of different ways to use a presentation or speech to promote a product or service. We will cover each of these briefly in this post.

  1. Promoting a Product or Service in Personal Meetings and Sales Calls.
  2. In-Person Marketing Meetings and Seminars.
  3. Webinars to Both Educate the Public and Promote Your Product or Service.
  4. Paid or Guest Spots on Webinars or Podcasts.
  5. Use Videos to Promote Your Product or Service.

Below are a few ideas for each of these categories.

Promoting a Product or Service in Personal Meetings and Sales Calls.

The most common type of speech to market a product or service is a sales call or sales presentation. Although this one has been around since commerce began, it is quickly becoming a lost art. As a result, those who can do this well, are now, highly sought-after in the business world.

Salespeople get a bad rap. Movies typically depict salespeople as dishonest and immoral. However, if a salesperson is dishonest, he or she may survive for a little while, but bad behavior will quickly catch up with the person. Good salespeople, though, are trusted confidants. They are problem-solvers and educators. So, if you are giving presentations to individuals or small groups as a way to promote your product, the goal is to educate your audience. Help them solve a problem, and they will buy the solution. Your speech shouldn’t be about you or your product. It should be about the problem(s) your potential buyers are experiencing and how to solve these problems.

In decades past, if you needed a new suit, you went down to the local department store. The salesperson in the store was an expert on suits. The salesperson would be able to educate potential clients on the qualities of each style of suit, what was currently in fashion, and how to care and accessorize each suit.

Salespeople Used to Educate Us. Now Google Does That role in stores is now gone (for the most part). For big-ticket, quality products like electronics, cars, houses, etc. in times past, we relied on highly educated sales professionals to educate the buyer and to help buyers solve problems. Today, we rely on Google, social media, and other online platforms to educate us. Online marketing is huge, but…

That leaves a tremendous opportunity for people and companies who understand this need. For instance, although we have a popular podcast, a YouTube channel, and a ton of social media pages, we still get most of our business from people who have a question, and who can’t get that question answered anywhere else. When someone calls our 800 number (800-975-6151) they are connected with an instructor who actually teaches our classes. We don’t have a room full of telemarketers who are reading off a script. We have professional educators who can answer any question that a potential customer might have. As a result, we are filling a need that almost all of our competitors have neglected.

Sales presentations whether one-on-one or one-to-a-group are becoming a lost art, but they’re a great business model. If you get really good at doing them, you will help your customers make better decisions. And the best results will increase your income.

If you are looking for a step-by-step process to create a good sales presentation along with examples, visit this post. You may also be intrested in our post about how to design Bid Presentations. It also has a Great Sales Presentation Outline.

In-Person Seminars and Conferences

Prior to the video streaming era, in-person seminars were one of the easiest ways to maximize your promotional time. Instead of setting up a series of individual one-on-one sales meetings, you could invite prospective customers to a live seminar. These seminars were often either free or for a nominal fee to encourage audience members to come.

Back when I first started teaching leadership seminars, we promoted a 12-week series of training sessions. Since the class was both a significant investment of both time and income, we typically offered an “introduction” session a week before the series started. We would allow people who were interested in the class, but who hadn’t yet registered, to come and preview the course.

In-Person Seminars and Conferences

It worked really well. The preview session reduced the risk of making a bad buying decision because the prospective customer could actually see and experience part of the class in advance.

If you are over the age of 35, you may remember the financial planners offering the “free how to retire” seminar at the local Holiday Inn. This was a way for the financial planner to show a group of people how skilled he/she was at helping couples plan for their retirement. By offering part of his/her expertise for free to the public, the financial planner was often able to convert some of those attendees to customers. The sales managers from many companies, big and small, used to invest a tremendous amount of money on TV and radio ads to promote these seminars with the same end goal.

Today, though, getting a group of people to a seminar is much simpler. With websites like MeetUp and EventBrite, a company can create a seminar or conference with little or no investment.

Here is an example:

A local dentist can create a seminar called, “How to Whiten Your Teeth Three Shades in Less than Six Weeks.” (I just made that up. I’m not sure if that is actually possible, but you see how that might get someone’s attention.) The dentist promotes this seminar to every patient who comes in for a month. The dentist might tell his patients that the seminar is $29 per person, but if they bring a friend that is not already a patient, both of them can get in for free. Or, perhaps we could tell attendees that if they post the event to their Facebook page, they could get free admission. Regardless, we make the fee nominal but give attendees ways to come to the event for a discount or for free.

The goal is to get a room full of potential new customers from your target market and win them over with your skill as a dentist. The topic of your speech must also be something that captures your audience’s attention, of course. With a room full of your target audience, all you have to do is give a persuasive speech by expertly delivering your key points and providing valuable information.

By the way, according to a Bizzabo, a company that specializes in event marketing, in-person seminars and conferences are one of the big trends in recent years. Big companies like Apple started the trend with their huge product roll-outs to Apple enthusiasts. However, other huge companies have followed the trend as well. Last year, I was invited to speak at Transitions Academy. This is a conference where eye doctors, lens manufacturers, and salespeople come to learn about trends in the industry (and about Transitions Lenses). I had a blast speaking there, and the attendees gave positive feedback on the event as well.

Webinars to Both Educate the Public and Promote Your Product or Service.

Companies have realized that they can replace the missing education part of the sales process with webinars. However, webinars are a little tricky. If you make them too “salesy,” you will turn off your audience.

Especially in web-based products and services, webinars have become the go-to education and sales channel (According to Go-To-Meeting… No pun intended.) They claim that 73% of the top marketers in the world believe that webinars are the best way to market, today. If you recall, since the education function of a sales professional has practically been eliminated in most industries, webinars are a great way both educate the potential customer and move them through a sales process.

Just as a warning, leading webinars and leading in-person speeches are TOTALLY different skills. Just because you are good at one, doesn’t mean that you will be good at the other. For instance, when I lead an in-person meeting, I typically use few and simple visual aids, because my goal is to build the trust of the audience in me. In a webinar, your visuals are critical to keeping the audience tuned in to the presentation. So, when I speak for 30 minutes in person, I might use three or four slides. But when I lead a webinar, I might go through as many as 20 slides in the same time period.

For details on How to Design a Good Informational Webinar, click here.

Paid or Guest Spots on Podcasts/Webinars

If you want to really get good at using a speech to promote a product, start a Podcast. However, this is a real-time commitment. If you want to test the waters, promote yourself as a guest on someone else’s podcast or webinar. It does take a little homework to get one of these guest spots, but there is a tremendous opportunity if you are willing to do the work. An easy way that doesn’t take much effort is to just Google [Your Industry] with the word “podcast”.

I tried to pick a really obscure subject matter just to show that Google will find anything. I found an article called 12 weird jobs you’ll be surprised to know exist published by Business Insider. One of the weird jobs is a “Professional Bridesmaid.” If this was your career, you’d likely type “wedding podcast” into Google. When I did, I got Top 10 Wedding Podcasts.

You’re likely to think, “Oh sure, Doug, weddings — of course there are a bunch of podcasts about weddings.” Okay, another obscure career is “Snake Milking.” I Googled “Snake Podcast” and I found Best Reptile Podcasts. If you happen to be in either of these industries, I suspect that many of the podcast hosts for these programs would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to have you on as a guest!

Once you know who the host is, you can often easily find the person’s website, fill out a “contact us” form, and wait for a callback.

If you want to move faster on a guest slot, many companies have lists that they will market to and be the host of an impromptu webinar, teleconference or podcast. You can use the same process as we just talked about, but offer a fee to the host. He/she will likely move you to the top of the list.

Videos

The final genre for using a speech to promote a product or service is video. I won’t be able to cover everything that you will need to know in order to show the value of video when promoting your product or service. However, let’s cover a few basics.

    1. Practice with Instagram Stories

The live video social media and “stories” are fantastic ways to begin to practice making marketing videos, but they have a short shelf-life. (They go away after 24 hours or so.) So, while you are learning, you won’t be leaving embarrassing videos of yourself all over the internet. (See my embarrassing early video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja_BEMmpcUo). It’s also a good idea to use these kinds of social media platforms to test your main points on the public. This will help give you a reference point for which topics you should put more effort into.

    1. Get Some Help

The best investment that I ever made for The Leader’s Institute ® is hiring a full-time video expert. You don’t have to invest in a full-time person, though. You can contract out most video jobs very easily. Hiring the right people can get you solid advice on filming, lighting, and sound as well.

    1. Don’t Post to YouTube Until It is Perfect

YouTube is hard work to break into, so you only want to put your absolute best stuff on that platform. Use Vimeo, Facebook, or Instagram for anything that looks less professional.

We will be talking a lot about video (especially live video) on future podcasts, so stay tuned and subscribe to the podcast!

You are Your Best Marketing Strategy

In today’s world, there are a tremendous number of ways to share your expertise with others to market your product or service. Using a speech to promote a product is just one of many. But always realize, that you are your best marketing. A fancy proposal, a flash ad, or an expensive business card will not do nearly as much to promote your product or service as you share your expertise with a potential customer!

author Doug Staneart
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Doug Staneart is the CEO of The Leader's Institute. LLC and founder of the Fearless Presentations class. He is author of Fearless Presentations, Mastering Presentations, and 28 Ways to Influence People.

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