Speakers & Coaches: 3 Creative Ways To Put Your Business Card To Work

Like all small business owners, speakers and coaches must find unique ways to market their business and reach their target audience. Speaking and coaching professionals have an additional marketing challenge as well. They’re not only marketing their businesses – they’re actually marketing themselves. Marketing yourself as a speaker or coach means creating a platform, identifying a niche market, and turning yourself into a brand. That can make speaker marketing especially challenging – and wonderfully creative.

In the startup phase, you probably created digital marketing collateral like a website, social media presence, blog, and online speaking portfolio. Now that you’re ready to really put yourself out there to reach meeting planners, event planners, and other individuals and groups looking for speakers in your genre, you’ll need some serious print marketing collateral. Start with these three ways to use your business card to increase awareness of your platform:

1. Traditional Business Cards: Many opportunities to speak and coach can be found through networking. The key to making networking effective is threefold – having a well-defined platform, networking with the right groups, and having a memorable business card that doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. Instead of networking only with the people who would benefit from your keynote speeches, network with strategic partners. They’re people like meeting planners, event planners, service groups, community leaders, corporations, etc. – who regularly meet with large groups of your target audience.
2. Custom Collectible Cards: Use a traditional business card blank to create a custom deck of collectible and tradable cards. Create cards featuring hashtags, inspirational quotes, fun facts, industry trivia, speaking topics, catchphrases, headshots, and humorous card-collection clues. Create mini and full collection series and offer a small promotional item, giveaway, or live or social media recognition for completing a collection. It gives an ongoing glimpse into your speaking or coaching platform and gives your target audience an incentive to follow you online and offline to complete their collection. It sparks awareness of your brand, boosts your credibility, and creates a variety of interactive touchpoints for your audience.
3. Appointment/Follow-Up Cards: Turn the back of your business card into follow-up real estate. Use that blank line to promote pop-up workshops and impromptu group gatherings. Add a compelling call to action and a blank line to the back of your card and use it to offer individual follow-up tips and advice. As a speaker, use your business card to invite your target market to your next keynote. As a coach, use your card to remind your target market about upcoming group and private coaching sessions. You can also use it to ask leading questions and request the answers via email – instant follow-up gold. When it comes to coach and speaker marketing, follow-up is everything.

Try these traditional and contemporary business cards uses. Personalize your card by adding a photo to increase name and face recognition among your audience. Add your URL and social media icons but leave enough white space to make your car readable. Speaker marketing and coach marketing mean using traditional and innovative marketing strategies to increase awareness of your brand and exposure to your target market.