Public speaking is, by its nature, a tool to convey information on a particular issue.  Successful public speakers are revered by their audience for their knowledge base, broad appeal, and professional stature.  Any CEO at a podium before an audience with clout is going to have instant credibility.  What better platform is there to promote a product or service?  You have a room full of people listening to your every word, ready to participate, and willing to act.  The best speakers will engage the audience with an interesting personal anecdote and demonstrate a clear mastery of their topic.  The speaker will utilize the platform to talk about their corporation or individual products and service offerings.  Of course, public speaking is the perfect opportunity to ensure the ongoing success of your corporation to the masses! Whether it is on the spot or it is the next time the audience member sees the product online or in a store; you now have a consumer that has a connection to you and most importantly, these individuals are invested in your brand.

The recommendation is not that you begin speaking to local high schools (great for community service, but not for brand enhancement—unless your Facebook or My Space), it is however, that you turn your attention to trade shows in your industry.  If you are a CEO speaking to a group of sales people from various companies that can all be potential distributors/resellers of your product, then your dream scenario is staring you in the face. You cannot create a “softer” sales environment.  A captivated audience of decisions makers who can immediately purchase mass quantities of your product is the ideal situation.  If that doesn’t get you excited; and if you can’t generate sales from that, then perhaps its time to think of another career.

Many times, CEOs will allow fear to stop them from speaking.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.”  In the business world, fear will give your competition a distinct advantage over you.  So, I ask: how bad do you want it?  Personally, I use to hate public speaking, and at Ascendant Strategy, we have several clients that had to make the adjustment.  But, I am a witness that it can be done and when you think about the new revenue channel it creates while drastically decreasing your marketing expenses, your willingness to speak will receive a jolt, as well.  That is right, speaking equals lower overhead on marketing and more sales leads, more revenue, and ultimately it is one of the building blocks to develop a brand.

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So, how do you build brand equity and increase revenue from speaking?  Here are some specific steps:

Step one:

Research potential organizations, conferences, and other events that would provide you with more exposure to the most potential customers for your business, then develop a contact database for them that includes mailing address, phone numbers, and key contacts.  You should pay particular attention to trade shows.  For most industries these are gold mines for the speaker.  Additionally, professional associations such as the American Marketing Association and the Society for Human Resources can be invaluable by providing direct or second hand contacts to buyers.  Finally, do not underestimate the relevance of the college circuit.

Step two:

Develop two speaking topics that relate to the service industry you are in and one additional topic that may be more outside your service industry, but you are passionate about and have experience with.  For instance, the CEO of a company in the financial services industry may select topics such as “Investment Strategies That Work in Any Economy,” “The 7 Secrets to Financial Freedom,” and “Leading During Crisis.”  Your titles should be interesting and you should have a brief blurb describing each topic.

Step three:

Next, develop your personal bio and make sure it highlights your brand “tag line,” and speaks to your background.  You must also ensure that your bio is relevant to your speaking subject matter.  You should also include media, accomplishments, and personality traits that differentiate you from others.

Step four:

Create marketing materials!  At Ascendant Strategy (www.ascendantstrategy.net) we have a division of our company in house for all our graphics and web design work.    In this internet era, it is also essential for you to develop a website.  While you can choose to carve out a section of your corporate website to drive people to, a personal website is extremely important.  Never use templates, but rather find designers that are high-end designers that know code well and can customize your site to fit all aspects of who you are.

Step five: 

Develop your marketing plan and execute it.  This may seem very cliché, but it is critical.  After all, consistent marketing efforts yield results.  Keep sending the hardcopy mailings and you may also consider visiting organizations where you could potentially speak.  The face to face interaction will give you a strategic advantage.

Step Six:

Maintain your database with copious notes on every conversation.  At Ascendant Strategy (www.ascendantstrategy.net) we use ACT, www.act.com as our database software. ACT has some excellent features that allow you to be able to take detailed notes on every call, rank opportunities, and create a sales process.  ACT is an excellent tool and can be used online by multiple users.  It can be a bit cumbersome in the amount of CPU memory it takes, but if you have a high performance computer it is worth it!

If you follow these six steps. you will launch your speaking career–the revenue from speaking should be a great addition to your business or you can keep the money for yourself.  Additionally, you will be introduced to a new world of customers and direct sales.  Finally, these customers will spread the word about you, which will likely lead to more speaking engagements and more revenue.

One of our clients wanted to expand his real estate development practice, so we successfully created a tour where he spoke for private investors, city officials, and community activists.  The engagements with private investors led to interest in the company and local projects, city officials proposed projects and opportunities for our client to build and rehab real estate developments at pennies on the dollar, and speaking to the community activists led to support for all local initiatives.  This is CEO branding and this is what a speaking career can generate!  As a result of speaking, our client has generated millions of dollars in new business.  In fact, nearly half of my firm’s new business has come as a result of speaking.  Do you still have your doubts?  If all of this sounds intimidating, you can always seek professional help, our firm specializes in CEO branding.

Kim Reed is a Partner at Ascendant Strategy (www.ascendantstrategy.net) a world leader in CEO branding, the new corporate branding.  Ms. Reed can be contacted at info@ascendantstrategy.net or 1.800.838.8152.  Ms. Reed will be happy to answer your questions about the new corporate branding technique.

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Marketing is the key to developing a successful brand. To ensure the continuing popularity of your product or service it is necessary to establish a strong and loyal client base. One of the most effective ways of creating that public consciousness is to market your corporate identity creating a strong dynamic in which the corporate name and product are intellectually synonymous and instantly identifiable.

This type of marketing is known as corporate branding. It is a strategy that has helped to firmly entrench a number of corporations and their products into the public consciousness. The association of the product with the corporate identity is so strong that most consumers and even industry insiders do not realize they are referring to the corporation title when they talk about the product.

Skidoo, Kleenex and Tampax are just a small sampling of companies that have established a very successful corporate branding strategy. It is common knowledge that a Skidoo is a snowmobile, Kleenex is facial tissue and that Tampax is a tampon but in the consciousness and language of the marketplace, these brand monikers have taken the place of the actual names of these products.

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The beauty of a successful corporate branding campaign is that once established for one product, it can extend its influence over the expanding company catalogue. The buying public, confident with the quality of your original service or product, will extend that confidence to your additional product lines. The design of your company logo, made familiar through that original marketing campaign, will be a welcome and familiar sign already established in the consumer consciousness. That logo represents a unified brand presence in the marketplace and as such is an extremely efficient and effective way to stay in the forefront of consumer awareness.

Corporate branding can work in all areas of advertising media. A qualified and creative marketing campaign designer will find ways to create a presence in the marketplace that encompasses all those mediums. The distinctive and easily recognizable corporate logo is a given. In addition, this type of marketing approach can include audio and visual themes to consolidate the unified brand presence. Spokespersons, thematic advertising or mascots have all been used to strengthen an industry position. The Disney Corporation has effectively used this marketing practice to sell everything from boat cruises to films. The Disney name and corporate image is associated indelibly in the public mind as the quintessential provider of all that encompasses childhood dreams and fantasies. The savvy and directed design of the Disney marketing strategy has created a permanent place in our contemporary culture. This type of corporate branding is so successful because it feeds off itself and is perpetuated by society as a whole.

The practice of running a unified brand marketing strategy will provide significant savings in the area of advertising overhead. The campaign design is targeting at selling an entire catalogue of product under the brand name reducing the need for extensive individual product marketing. The public is in reality paying for the reputation of the established corporation. When they make a purchase, based on the strength of their familiarity and belief in that corporate image, they are more likely to move out into the extended company catalogue. This is exactly why corporate branding is such a great facilitator of expanding customer bases and increased profitability.

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What is basically a corporate branding?

A corporate branding is a process, which has to be done by every organization. Basically branding suggests your company name, logo to be your brand for your product or service. Basic branding starts with designing an effective logo, web address, visiting cards, letterheads and also if you can spend you can advertise in Television, Media and even organize events, become a sponsor to gain popularity to your brand.

Key elements of Branding

Branding is essential because it helps you achieve your company long-term goals, you sustain customers/clients, and you create more customers/clients. These are the essentials of basic branding in detail.

Your Company Logo:

Logo is the basic graphical representation of your company ‘s image. A logo can explain about the kind of quality service, quality of the product, time delivery and you can communicate whatever you want your company to be placed in the minds of your prospective buyers/clients for that you need to specially dedicate time to research on your creative logo. An ideal corporate logo should be simple and it will be a great advantage if you can create a logo that reflects your quality of service/product, time, etc. Logo is vital because it will come along with all your business cards, letterheads, and print heads and wherever you advertise your business.

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Website

Previously before a decade website has not been that popular but nowadays it is a very essential element for corporate branding. A website is in fact your remote visiting card where anybody in any part of the world can access your company profile, services, contact address, phone number etc. A proper website should be aesthetic in color, must be simple and easy to navigate and should address all the important things in the home page and finally should be a search engine optimized website.

Business Cards

Business cards are the face of your company, which gives a snippet about your services, website address, contact numbers and address. These above things have to be put on a business visiting card.

Letterhead

Letterhead is used to send invoices to your customer/client, it has to be created professional with good aesthetic colors, you need to put your logo, Name of your company, address of your company, contact numbers and any slogan If necessary.

If a company follows the above essential elements branding would not be a big thing to gain. But remember as you use the slogan of your company you need to stick to those words written in the slogan. Best of luck

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Over the past few years, social media sites have revolutionized the way humans connect with each other. It has changed the way people seek & share information, or research products/goods/services.

Growing at a pace of more than 3 million new members a day and enjoying total membership of around 200 million, today social networking sites has become a wonderful and apparently inevitable force. It has evolved in functionality and grown enough in reputation to make social network marketing as a feasible online marketing tool. In past it was used to optimize a website, but now it evolves more into the corporate branding.

It has even turned out to be the new “word of mouth” mantra in business world and helped many business personnel in promoting products and services online. These days every leading and mid-sized company is considering social media sites as new business marketing tool that can help in corporate branding. Moreover, many business personnel believe that it has the power to make a company’s products and services go viral if businesses are able to grasp the effectiveness of establishing a brand and its online reputation.

Integrating an online marketing plan into corporate branding strategy has moved from being a mere option to an essential attribute for the survival in today’s fast moving marketplace. Every company has realized the importance of social media exposure and moreover looking for different ways to leverage its reach in order to drive great returns.

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Corporate building challenges and social media sites

Find big consumer base- It is very vital to understand that community building is first and the prime key of business branding success. Now with millions of users engaged & connected through social media, a marketer can easily spot the opportunities and exploit the avenues that come with such a huge potential customer base. Besides this, by anchoring social media links on his business website he can engage his customers, create an atmosphere of “community” and begin to develop contacts with new and potential customers that encourage them to come back to site again and again. Company owners can post their profile on the social media sites that are appropriate for their business and where their potential audience can hang out.

Develop an interactive relationship with consumers - Every corporate building exercise actually stands on a relationship build between customer and a client. Any platform that helps in building this exercise can be very beneficial for customer as well as client. As a result, today there are many business networking sites like LinkedIn, Xing etc. that promise to be the best platform for business personnel where they can gather together online and discuss similar topics or share similar business interests. The platform has turned into a great place to create a relationship with consumers and business network that primarily focus particular building brand or corporate credibility.

Effective yet inexpensive ways to market your company – Creating a brand image or a positive corporate image requires lot of hard work and takes time to develop. But in comparison to other traditional methods, social media marketing is one of the most inexpensive ways to market the company or product effectively. In social media sites, marketers can showcase their products, extract opinions of customers and conduct research pretty easily, all these at much lower costs.

Today, internet and business social media have changed the corporate brand game. Many has further dissolved the boundaries of the Web 2.0 to a greater extent. While the recipe of success in leveraging the social media sites to build corporate brands can’t be ignored, it is certainly very important to incorporate social media into corporate brand building plan and branding strategy. It is an excellent way to build brand, encourage brand loyalty, drive website traffic and generate buzz in the market.

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