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PERSONAL NOTE: Although I started my marketing speaking and consulting business in 2001, my work has focused almost exclusively on making professional speakers successful since 2003. For the last 7 years, that's what gets me flying out of bed each morning (sometimes at 5am!) and it's what brings me the biggest professional joy on a daily basis. Enough about me - let's talk about YOU...
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If YOU are a professional speaker, coach, consultant, author, or thought-leading solopreneur, your marketing and business development prayers may be only a few days away from being answered...
Whoa... Stop the tape! That paragraph sounded like a lot of hype and malarkey, didn't it?
It did to me, too - except that for YEARS, my secret dream was to find a "Magic Service" that would take marketing, prospecting, and booking tasks (and all the gruntwork too!) OFF my plate and let me refocus 99% of my time and energy on working with my amazing clients and speaking to the groups I love.
- Was it a Virtual Assistant firm? That helped - but no
- Was it my Webmaster? Great for tech - not for this
- Was it my Sales Coach? Love the guy, but he wasn't gonna do my work for me
- Was it my Mastermind Group? Super for accountability - the work was still on me
- Was it my own Marketing Consultant (yup I've hired 'em too) - wonderful insights but zero implementation help
- Was it my Intern? She's awesome for prescriptive tasks, but not the marketing brains + marketing brawn "Magic Service" I was envisioning
- Was it recruiting and training my own Marketing Manager? Over the years, I tried - but it was hit or miss. Faith came from the printing industry and was great at selling printing - not speakers. Pete was a radio guy - and smart, hardworking, and persistent. But this wasn't radio. And Glenda - well, don't ask about Glenda. As she tells it, she couldn't book me because I "wasn't already famous" and "nobody knows my name" (Guess whose job it was for them to GET to know my name!!)
So where did that leave me? I had three options:
- I could wait to get rich and famous on my own and then maybe - just maybe - work with one of a few "elite" speaker agencies like Holli Catchpole's SpeakersOffice. (As of now, unless you're willing to change your first name to Nido, Jim, or Desi, Holli's roster is full up.)
- I could wait to get rich and famous on my own and then perhaps some wonderful speaker's bureaus would become interested in booking me once I was already booking 30-40 gigs a year under my own steam at fees between $7,500 and $10k per speech
- As a marketing speaker as well as a marketing coach to some of the best and brightest NSA speakers and other experts who speak professionally, I could create the "Magic Service" that I myself wanted to use.
(Music - Lights - Drums): NEW "Done For You" Marketing Services and NEW Speaker Booking Service debut in May 2010...
Part I: Done for You Marketing Services
This idea has been percolating - and our team has been strategizing together on how to best launch these services for you since January of 2009, so this is definitely not some random collection of subcontractors that other consultants may trot out from time to time.
I've worked individually with each member of our team and they have proven themselves time after time on multiple client projects ranging from a few hundred dollars to design your killer business card to $10,000+ for creating your complete online and offline marketing platform, print materials, video, social media, and a host of monthly ongoing "done-for-you" services.
Part II: Speaker Booking Service
The most exciting part - for which we're almost at capacity even before the launch - is the new Speaker Booking Service...
Because of the devastating 2008-2009 downsizings and layoffs in the world of speaker's bureaus, event management companies, trade and professional associations, and meeting planning firms, there's an unprecedented glut of amazing talent out there who...
- Know the meetings industry inside-out
- Can articulate the value proposition of hiring strong professional speakers
- Will hit the ground running already well-practiced with between 70-80% of what they need to know, say, and do to get the interest of decision-makers and open long-lasting relationships (and between you and me, we'll teach them the other 20-30% of what they'll need to book YOU specifically!)
- Don't need to be "shown the ropes" in the speaking industry because they've already been actively working in it - either on the buying side or the selling side or both
- Will get to know you and your thought leadership platform in detail so they can represent you as your dedicated marketing and sales rep with no overhead, no recruiting hassles, and no turnover headaches
- Will stick around because YOU don't need to feed them 40 hours of work per week - we will!
- Will get better the more you use them because you will get a dedicated agent with whom you book a block of outbound marketing hours. Our booking staff becomes your booking staff
- Will become more affordable the more you use them because as you buy bigger blocks of time, your hourly rate will go down. If you become a high-volume client, it's possible that based on our work together, your hourly fees eventually disappear in exchange for a higher commission rate on booked business. (Totally your call, but the service is designed to maximize the value for you either way)
Finally, the kicker is - with these two new services, you get BOTH the brains AND the brawn. You may not want consulting from me right now and you might just want some "done-for-you" services such as the booking service...
You STILL get my input as your "marketing quarterback." As you work with our team of speaker booking agents, graphic designers, web designers, social media specialists, ghostwriters, and the rest of my team, I'm watching the process, helping guide your decisions, and serving as "creative director" to the team and "marketing advisor" to YOU.
Frankly, it's amazing to me that nothing like this hybrid marketing strategy plus done-for-you services firm existed to help make professional speakers, consultants, and thought-leading solopreneurs successful. But it's here now!
I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. If you're equally pumped about this and/or want to learn more, call me at 610-716-5984 or drop me an email at david@doitmarketing.com and we'll talk about which of these services might help YOU become more visible, more marketable, more bookable - and more successful!!!
Keep your eye on the Done For You Marketing Services page over the next few weeks as we roll out the details and initial service offerings so you can see all the "marketing jobs" we'll be able to take off your plate.
marketing tidbit came across my desk from Joan Stewart, aka the Publicity Hound: 
As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, many of my clients have neither the budget nor the business model to justify a big advertising budget, much less advertising on TV... BUT a while back there was a Home Depot television commercial that brilliantly demonstrated an understanding of HOW their customers (and yours) make purchasing decisions. 
From Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express: 
You could pay a marketing coach or ad agency or brand consultant BIG bucks to create (or recreate) your brand. A word of advice: DON'T!
When you lose a game, you have to learn."