Public Speaking: Cheap & Effective Cold Lead Generation

Generating leads can be difficult, time consuming, expensive, and exhausting.

Or, it can be simple, invigorating, and very affordable.

One of many possible strategies for obtaining the latter instead of the former is to:

• Deliver a presentation...

• ...in front of a crowd somebody else assembled.

In just 11 words, I've given you the marketing plan that has built numerous seven-figure businesses. It works for everything from enterprise SaaS products to professional services.

One large public accounting firm in the western United States, has grown a nine-figure division serving just the construction industry, primarily driven by doing this one thing — delivering educational presentations to the staff of large construction companies.

When I was in private practice, I started teaching webinars to tax debtors in late 2013 to generate leads. In 2014, I expanded that to teaching continuing education ethics courses to other Enrolled Agents (IRS-licensed tax professionals) in order to drive referrals from those EAs.

Public speaking, in it's various forms, is one of the most powerful marketing tactics at your disposal. There are several things that explain why it works so well.

First, when you offer an educational presentation on a topic, the people that are interested in that topic will self-select to be there. That immediately increases the likelihood that they’ll also be in the market for your services.

Second, presentations are a type of one-to-many selling. It’s simply a more efficient way to prospect for business, compared to doing one-on-one selling. Compare it to telemarketing, as a lead generation endeavor. You can cold call all day, but you’re doing it one by one. One person or business at a time. Contrast that with public speaking, where you can have dozens or even hundreds of people in the room at once.

Third, there is an instant credibility boost that comes with being a speaker. In our society, there is an inherent bit of respect that we give to anybody that has written a book or delivered a presentation. Being the person at the front of the room, even virtually on Zoom, gives you instant status as the expert, the authority. It may not always be earned, but this authority positioning is something we inherently assign to speakers in most arenas.

You can have zero out of pocket marketing cost.

Fourth, there are countless opportunities to speak in front of people that are brought together by somebody else. If you run an event yourself, which I’ve done hundreds of times, you have the responsibility for doing the marketing to gather the audience together. But there are other companies and organizations that have already brought the audience together. For example, the local IBEW chapter has already assembled the local electricians. Your local Board of Realtors has already gathered together most of the real estate agents. Your Chamber of Commerce has already done the dirty work of getting many small business owners together. They even run events themselves, and all you have to do is show up and present. That’s presentation marketing at it’s best!

In fact, I’ll belabor this fourth point a bit more. Since you should really be growing your company by focusing on serving specific, well-defined customer avatars, public speaking to organizations and companies provides an automatic way of doing this.

For example, if your ideal customer is real estate investors, you should be doing speaking presentation to local groups of real estate investors. Well, guess what? Your local Real Estate Investor Association (REIA) has already assembled these folks. You can find your local REIA via simple Google or MeetUp search. These groups usually welcome speakers. Some may ask for a fee or a cut of sales, others won’t.

Nearly every industry and profession has trade associations. These trade associations run conventions, webinars, and other events. They’re always looking for speakers.

Consider any industry or profession where it’s normal for them to gather together in a room. Some example reasons why some people gather together regularly:

• Technology demonstrations.

• Board meetings.

• Continuing education classes.

• Sales meetings.

• Seminars, workshops, and conferences.

Financial planners and insurance agents in private practice have been using educational marketing presentations since the 1950s. It was highly effective back then, and it still is today. Real estate agents have been doing new homebuyer seminars for decades, with great success. Mortgage brokers have been delivering financing presentations for decades, because it delivers results.

Bottom line: This works.

At first glance, this may look like a marketing tactic that doesn’t scale well, but nothing could be further from the truth. As your company grows, you simply dedicate a portion of your growing sales staff to being on the road, speaking at live events. If you have a technology product, incorporate a demonstration into these public appearances.

Embrace public speaking as a marketing tool, and integrate it into your lead generation matrix today. It’s one of the cheapest, most effective, and most targeted marketing methods you’ll ever use.

Action Steps

Consider taking the following steps to implement this marketing tactic:

1. Identify the specific associations, trade groups, and other organizations that your target market belongs to.

2. Determine what kind of events, both online and in-person, that these organizations hold. Look at past agendas to get a feel for what topics are presented.

3. Identify whether or not your ideal B2B and B2G customers holds their own internal events. Many types of businesses have small, internal meetings of various types.

4. Brainstorm a short list of relevant educational topics for that group. Ideally, you want to create only one or two presentations that you can train your sales staff on to take on the road, and repeat that presentation over and over.

5. Contact the organization via both email and telephone to inquire about speaking. Use company websites, Google, LinkedIn, etc. to determine the right person to reach. If you have the budget, don’t hesitate to pay to present as an exhibitor. If you’re bootstrapping, find smaller events that are hungrier for speakers.