The Short Self-Promotion Business Speech

Continued from the previous page:
Targeting an Audience for Your Business Speech

Researching the Market for Your Business Speech

George:
What sort of research did you do for your marketing plan?

Patricia:
Well I thought that the most important things were to know your community so I did some research on the community and San Antonio at the time was the tenth largest city in the United States. We had a population of about a million. I believe now we’re about one million three and I believe we may have moved up in the standings. This area is actually growing quite a bit because of our moderate and pleasant climate we have a number of retirees.

George:
Right. A lot of military retirees.

Patricia:
Exactly, a lot of military retirees come here because they are familiar with the town from when they had been stationed here, and indeed we have a very large military population. It was larger in those years than it is today.

But since we have such a large community of retirees it’s a great place for an estate planning attorney. Would I did was I tried to focus my attention to the exact segment that I wanted which was your upper to middle income retired or mature segment of the population.

I also did some research on advertising. You may not be aware but lawyers have restrictions on what advertising that they can do and certain rules put out by the State Bar. So I had to research all of that. Most other professions are not going to have those restrictions. But because of the restrictions it is harder to put commercial advertising and that was one of my restrictions in addition to the budgetary considerations.

So I developed my strategy for marketing based upon those particular limitations of not having a big budget and not having complete freedom in advertising and trying to seek out the mature population.
The original goals that I selected were to give speeches to groups and organizations, to develop informational handouts, to write a column in a local newspaper, to obtain appropriate listings in the phone book under the different categories for lawyers and in addition to do some community service. The other thing that I was going to seek was referrals from other professionals.

So the speaking was one arm of the overall program.

George:
Do you find a lot of people out there speaking on the subject you’re speaking on?

Patricia:
Yes it’s a highly competitive market in this area for estate planning attorneys and many attorneys advertise their speeches. They get quarter page or eighth page ads in the newspaper and advertise their speaking. Every attorney in town is a potential competition for me. But I have found that they are not as successful at it as I am.

George:
Why would that be?

Patricia:
Well I’m not entirely sure. I think part of it is that I relate to people very well in this type of an environment that I’m comfortable with it and that I don’t have a hard sell. I just present information as simply and easily as I can.

Next page: Writing and Developing Your Business Speech