Marketing and Promotional Designs for Keynote Speakers
For anyone who’s given a keynote presention, you’ll know that preparing your talk is a huge task in itself and could take weeks, or months of preparation work.
But many speakers don’t think about capitalising on the marketing opportunities before, during and after their presentation - or they leave it too late.
Not my client though! With a keynote presentation coming up at our local business chamber breakfast, Bev from Mentor2Mentorwas working months in advance to get clear on her brand messaging with the Storybrand framework, and redesigning her website around it.
Bev also asked me to design some marketing and promotional peices ready to have at her keynote, so attendees could walk away with something tangible that displayed the same brand message and visual cues they will be seeing in her presentation.
Because her web team had already designed the website, I made sure to keep the main design elements through her printed marketing for brand consistency, and then enhance them to suit each specific piece.
Effective Marketing and Promotional Items for Keynote Speakers
1. Business Card
It’s an oldie, but still a goodie. Most people think they’re outdated, but I still love to carry business cards around with me wherever I go. You never know when you’ll be talking to someone who needs your services.
Bev’s old business card was quite basic and standard, with text on a white background. But in her new design, I played on the bold colours in her existing logo, along with the curves in the icon, and designed a card that would visually stand out in a pile of other cards.
It’s easy to overwhelm people with too much unnecessary information, but by displaying only the essential contact information, the text can be larger and easier to read.
The back of the card displays the Storybrand message of what problem their clients are suffering, how Mentor2Mentor can help, and an easy call to action.
2. Flyer or Postcard
A single sheet flyer or postcard is an economical marketing piece that allows more room to identify with your ideal customer and give more details on how you can help.
For this postcard, I designed the key Storybrand messages into bold colour blocks, styled to be conversational speech bubbles - referencing Mentor2Mentor’s core value of bring business owners together for real life conversations. And again, the use of the bold colours here will become yet another visual cue for the Mentor2Mentor brand.
A ‘take-home’ piece like a postcard or flyer is essential for keynote speakers. It helps people remember the key points in the presentation, and makes it easy for them to take action and connect after the busyness of the event has passed.
BONUS POINTS if there’s some type of lead magnet or freebie available when scanning the QR code, so that you can build your email list and identify the amount of interest at a particular speaking engagement.
3. Banner
A banner can be used at your speaking event, and anywhere else you’e like to market your business.
Pull up banners, or rollup banners, are becomming increasingly popular. They are reasonably affordable to print, and are able to be reporposed for many speaking occasions.
When designed consistenly in line with other marketing and promotional pieces, a banner is another layer to reinforce a brand’s visual message during the keynote talk.
Also, there will no doubt be photos taken at the speaking event to be shared on social media, so having your visual branding on display will create further opportunities to market to those who are not at the event.
DESIGN TIP - make sure your contact information is displayed towards the TOP of the banner where people can actually see it. Most people put it right at the bottom but it can’t be seen from the back of the room, or on photos.
So next time you’re planning your next speaking event, think about the various ways you can strengthen your brand and make it easy for people to take action, with marketing and promotional design pieces.
These things take time to do well, but once they’re set up you’ll have some foundational brand pieces ready to go anytime you need them.
Get in touch if you need help designing some marketing collateral for your next speaking gig.
