Every speaking business should have a content marketing strategy. Most, if not all, of your current and potential clients consume content in some way, whether on social media, websites, blogs, podcasts, or other marketing channels.
Using feedback to inform your content marketing strategy is most effective because the information comes from people who have used your services or engaged with your brand. When they tell you what does and doesn’t work, it comes from their firsthand experience.
So, any adjustments you make to your content marketing strategy based on this feedback will directly impact real customers. These will strengthen your relationships and bring in more business.
Let’s explore how to elevate your marketing techniques and boost client relationships to drive your speaking business’s success through feedback-driven content marketing.
The first step in this process is receiving feedback. You need a way to gather quality feedback from people who have engaged with your speaking business. This part should be manageable for you and even easier for the people leaving the feedback.
How you collect feedback is one of the main factors in getting great feedback. You could either collect it anywhere it’s available or have a few specific places where people can leave feedback, with clear directions on how to do so.
The latter will be a lot easier for you to manage and for your clients to do. For example, you could collect feedback via email surveys, on a landing page connected to your website, and through Google and Yelp reviews after a speaking engagement.
Tell people exactly what to do in the email containing the survey when you send them. When you promote your landing page for feedback, ensure that the link you share is working and that the information you’re asking for is clear. Do the same with your Google and Yelp review pages.
When people know where and how to leave feedback, they’re more likely to follow through.
Most people need a push or an incentive before they tell you about their experience. The incentive you offer people for giving you feedback doesn’t have to be expensive or a grand gesture. However, it does need to be valuable to your clients.
For instance, you could offer a discount on tickets to your next speaking engagement in their city. You could also give them a few entries in your raffle for a free one-on-one session with you to improve their public speaking skills.
Analyze what you know about your clients to ensure you’re choosing incentives that entice them.
Now, it’s time to process and accept feedback so that you can grow your marketing and content for your speaking business.
It’s natural to be defensive, especially when receiving negative or constructive feedback from someone. But that can stop you from absorbing the person’s message. You may be at risk of overlooking valuable insights that can help your business if you apply them.
To truly process and accept the feedback you get, you first need to take your emotions out of it. Your speaking business is your baby. You’ve taken it from speaking for an audience of one to 10 to 100 and beyond. You’ve put your heart and soul into it. That’s why it’s hard not to take it personally when someone points out what’s wrong with it.
However, you can’t fix what you don’t know about. So, put up an emotional buffer so you can take feedback without seeing it as criticism. What this person shares is meant to help you. Go into the conversation with an open mind and pause before you respond so you don’t do so emotionally.
If you don’t understand the feedback you’re receiving from someone, don’t just blow by it. Instead, try to understand it with clarifying follow-up questions. That extra effort could result in insights that take your content marketing strategy to the next level.
For example, let’s say you get feedback from someone who visited your blog occasionally. They leave a comment on the latest post about how to get the most out of a speaking engagement as an attendee. You acknowledge their feedback and ask further questions. It then appears they love the information but wish it wasn’t so hard to get through.
This feedback would prompt you to make more digestible content, incorporating visual content and breaking up text with subheadings and bullet point lists. As a result, this adjustment leads to more organic traffic to your blog, sign-ups to your email list, and seats sold at your next speaking engagement.
The content marketing work doesn’t stop at receiving and processing feedback. The next and maybe most important step is applying that feedback constructively.
First, as you process the feedback you get on social media, after your speaking events, and through your email newsletter, make notes about the main points. Answer these two questions for all of the feedback you’re analyzing:
What is this person telling you about your content?
Can you gather a solution for the issues they’re having?
After that, out of the solutions you’ve gathered, which ones can you implement right now and which must be reserved for the future?
Create a step-by-step plan for implementing both solutions, but prioritize the most important one you can do now.
For example, let’s say you’ve been making notes about feedback in your social media comments on the videos of your speaking engagements. Your followers say they love these videos but want to see how you get ready for your events, too.
From there, you can start doing “get ready with me” and behind-the-scenes videos to show how your speaking engagements come together. This gives your audience more of the content they want on social media. As a result, you’ll boost engagement on your social media videos, attract new followers, and grow your reach on these platforms.
Implement the feedback you get as quickly as possible to start seeing better results in your content marketing strategy.
Content marketing should be a core component of your overarching marketing strategy for your speaking business. So many of your client relationships will start because they came across a quality piece of content.
Feedback from current and potential clients can also help you elevate your content marketing strategy so it continues to have a positive impact on your clients and business results.
Popular Categories