How to Define the Powerful Message You’ll Share

My friend Samantha loved the idea of speaking. She wanted to grow her makeup and beauty business but she wasn’t sure how to get started with speaking. She knew that speaking would get her in front of people that needed her product and give her visibility. So, she hired a mentor to help her with that. The first thing her mentor told her was to focus on defining her message first. The powerful message that you’ll share with your audience.

Every speaker needs a keynote message. But building this message can be tricky. Samantha had a lot of questions for her mentor. She wanted to know where do you start? What do you say? How much should you talk about yourself? These are important questions she wanted to know and here are a few answers that was told to her that no matter what kind of business you have it pertains to anyone.

Determine Who Your Audience Is

Before you can begin crafting a message that connects with your listeners, you need to get clear on who you serve. Who is it that you’re passionate about reaching? Who is your product or service for? In other words, who is your niche.

For Samantha, she knew her audience would mainly be women in their twenties to fifties. But she drilled down even further by choosing to focus on mothers. That means when Samantha started looking for events where she could speak, she focused on ones that catered to her community (busy moms) and women.

Get Clear on Their Problems

The next step in defining your message is focusing on the problems your audience faces. Try to make a list of the top 10-20 problems that your community regularly brings up to you to start. This may be a mix of big and small issues.

Samantha’s list included issues her audience complained about like: dark circles under their eyes, lipstick that didn’t stay all day, make-up that wore off before the day was over, finding the right shade of make-up, and foundation that appeared cakey or cracked. Of course there was a lot more issues but these are the issues that she decided to tackle first.

Be The Expert and Offer the Solutions

Now that you’ve had a chance to consider what problems plague your community, think about how you can offer them the solution. Chances are, you’re already offering the solution even if you don’t realize it.

Maybe your audience complains about the lack of information about writing copy for Facebook ad (just using Facebook ads as an example). But you have a free opt-in report on this topic. You can mention this solution in your presentation.

Show Off Your Results

As you offer solutions, be sure to share proof that what you’re teaching really works. Using the above example, you’d want to share the story of a woman who earned an extra $10K thanks to following your copywriting tips.

But keep in mind that results don’t have to be monetary. Samantha shared a message from a client who found she was more confident and felt more in charge of her life now that she knew her makeup looked great. She knew exactly what to do to solve her problems with make-up that she was having before. This is considered a testimonial. Using testimonials makes you more credible when a compliment comes from someone else. People will believe what someone else says before they will believe you. It’s called social proof.

Share What Makes You Different and Stand Out

At this point, you’ve got the audience excited. They know there’s a solution out there for the problem they have. But how you handle this next part of the process is very important. You want to make sure your listeners see that you’re the solution to their problems. If not, they may go and do business with one of your competitors.

Samantha pointed out her makeup brand was different because it wasn’t tested on animals and was entirely vegan, containing no animal by products. So no harsh chemicals were used in her make-up which made it great for those who had sensitive skin and were into all natural products. This made her stand out in the audience’s mind and gave them an extra reason to try her business over someone else’s.

As you work through the steps above, you’ll get many ideas about what you can speak on. Be sure to keep a notebook handy so you can write down your thoughts and use them as you craft your speech.

Want to know how to get paid to speak? Find out when you download your free workbook!