5 Website Tweaks to Make it Easy for People to Hire You for Your Next Speaking Gig
Whether someone is looking to hire you as a speaker or to hire you to do work for them, one of the first places they'll go is your website.
When they land on your website, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to hire you.
I've seen far too many speaker websites that don't include enough information for people to make a decision about taking the next step and contacting you to speak.
Then when there’s not enough information?
The person who was interested in hiring your clicks away never to darken your door again.
Let's make it easy for people to hire you to speak with these 5 website tweaks.
Prefer to listen?
Table of Contents
#1 What’s your topic?
The first aspect, which is going to sound Captain Obvious in a second, tell people what you speak about on your website.
I've been to a lot of speaker's websites where once I land on the page, and I have no idea what the person speaks on.
The site tells me how motivating and inspiring they are, what an awesome speaker they are, and how talented they are as a speaker. This makes for a great audience experience, but it’s all gravy.
As a person who wants to hire you, I want to know what the heck you speak on.
What is your message? What are the results? What problem does it solve?
For the love of God, do not do a menu of five to ten topics. There was a time in speaking where speakers read a book and then they could speak on that topic. That is an outdated model.
When a person wants to hire a speaker, they're looking to hire a consultant who solves a problem.
Limit the amount of topics on your website, or talk descriptions on your website, to three. I'm not at an all you can eat buffet. I don't want to know everything you can speak on.
I want to see your expertise demonstrated, and that makes it easier for me to say “Yes” to hiring you.
#2 Show me the speaker
Let me see you speak.
Stop it with the over produced, over hyped movie trailers known as sizzle reels. People spend thousands of dollars on sizzle reels that are slick and well produced, but they do not accomplish the one goal a meeting planner is looking for.
Meeting planners want to see you speak, and they want to see it quickly because they don't have a lot of time to sit around and watch a movie trailer.
You're not Star Wars, you're a speaker.
Highlight yourself on stage and give the person who is interested in hiring you the best taste of the experience of having you as a speaker.
They just want to know that you can get on stage and string words together and that the audience responds well. They don't want to see a hyped out trailer.
#3 Can you hear me now?
The third way to make it easy for people to hire you is put your phone number or email on your speaking page.
Don't make people hunt to figure out how to contact you. Put it on your website.
I understand. I'm the type of person, I don't want my phone number on my website, but I do make it very easy to contact me through my contact form or to find my email address.
People are not going to hunt and figure out how to contact you. Make it clear and make it easy and put it on your website.
[Tweet “Make it easy for people to hire you to speak with these 5 website tweaks”]
#4 Say no to forms
Don't make me fill out an application.
Meeting planners are super busy people.
They are not going to want to fill out a form about their event and how many people are going to be there and what their budget is going to be.
If they want to hire you, make it easy for them to contact you. Don't put another barrier in the way.
It's far more personal and relationship building if you have a conversation with the person to find out all of those details that you would put in an application form.
Don't make them fill out a form. Just let them contact you.
#5 In praise of…
Finally, throw in a testimonial or two of people who have experienced or have hired you as speakers.
The mistake I see with testimonials is that they're all in the same vein of, “So and so is such an awesome speaker. I really enjoyed it.”
While those are nice and they're warm & fuzzy and they show that people really liked you, organizations, associations, corporations want to know about the results that you produce.
Your testimonials should really focus on what people took away from your talk, what they implemented, what they're taking action on, what results they're seeing from hearing you speak.
That's going to make it easy for me to say, “Oh wow. They've gotten results for other places. They're going to get results for me as well.”
There are a lot of funny, entertaining, amazing speakers that a person could hire. What I want to know is why you are the one for my event, and your testimonials are the proof in the pudding.
Rebel speakers, make it easy for people to hire you to speak.
The first stop is going to be your website, so make sure you have your message clearly articulated on your site.
Give them a taste of what it's like to experience you as a speaker. Make it super easy peasy to contact you and give them some proof that you are the speaker for them. This is the way to increase your in-bound inquiries.
If you're looking to hire someone to help you with your messaging and with your marketing message around speaking, I would love to talk to you in a Speak for Impact strategy session, where we'll define what your biggest obstacle is to accomplishing your speaking goals, create a plan for it, and talk a little bit about how I can help you with your speaking.
Go to drmichellemazur.com/speak. Go now, and make it easy for people to hire you. Make those changes on your website and highlight why you're the speaker for them.
