This week I am in Washington, DC to speak at the 2018 ASBDC Conference. My train the trainer session is all about how business coaches can teach their clients to have an effective marketing strategy. As I have been prepping for this event for the last month, it occurred to me what massive potential there is from this event – not only for me to impact businesses all over the United States through the information I provide, but also impact for my own business.
It also occurs to me that the steps I have taken to prep for this event are very similar to the steps you may need to take if you are prepping for a speaking engagement, trade show, festival, conference, convention, or anything else where you are carving out a space for yourself within a bigger event.
With that in mind, today I want to share with you 5 steps I have taken to prepare for this conference – and 5 steps you can take to prepare for your events!
- Knowing the audience. If you have a business, you already have content, product, and your own brand to represent. But the event you are going to has an overall theme and an overall audience. To create more marketing options for yourself down the road and to get the most from the event you are leveraging, make sure to integrate the audience and theme with your content. I have kept small business COACHES at the forefront of my mind at every step in the planning process to ensure that what I deliver is worthwhile and integrated…and marketable!
- Knowing the purpose. What is your plan for next steps after the event? What call to action can you make? In a perfect world, you are going to make a ton of great new connections at this event, so you want to be prepared for success. Being prepared for success means having a plan for stoking the momentum and not killing it. Once I drafted my content, I did a full revision, thinking about nothing but the next steps for my audience and how to encourage them to take those next steps. This included the material I am sharing, the handouts I deliver, the language I use.
- Prepping the technology. Technical difficulties are the worst. But there is a lot you can do to prevent them. Get to know what equipment you need. Ask what will be available to you. Make sure you have the right tools. Or if not, the right adapters. Bring a back up if you can. The potential you get from your plan A is high. The risk of it failing needs to be low!! With that in mind, I want to give a special shout out to my friends over at Service Solutions. We discussed everything in advance and ran through it. They made recommendations on what I needed. What would have taken me days to research they advised me about in an hour.
- Practice. Whatever it is you are delivering, practice it. Why waste your time at the event? This is a big moment for you, and a little prep can help you get a lot more from it. For me, this included not just practicing my content, but also practicing how I share the next steps. I don’t want to miss out on opportunities to build the strongest connections I can!
- Build relationships and start early. Sure, you will meet a lot of people. But remember, people generally have short attention spans. Come up with a plan to build stronger relationships and override short attention spans! You can build relationships before, during, and after the event. In my case, this has involved emailing conference attendees to introduce myself and my topic – which has already started some great conversations with people who were looking for the material I am going to present. As an introvert, there is an extra bonus for me here, because I know I have some friendly faces in the room even if I haven’t met them yet. I have also used social media to begin sharing my topic and personality. The people who need content like mine now know it is available. Once I am at the event, I will take advantage of the opportunity to connect with the people I meet. And the relationships won’t stop there – because I do plan to follow up. If you want to know more about this topic, read here for targeted tips.
Yes, I am setting up for a specific event, but this process can be replicated across so many industries, so many different types of functions. You can find all kinds of ways to carve space for yourself within the big picture of the event. These five ideas should help get you started!