On 16 July I delivered my talk My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer for around 45 members of Totton South U3A in the town's Masonic Hall. It was a successful talk and was followed by a good question and answer session.
My thanks to Dr John Dracass for the lift from Southampton Central and back to Totton station afterwards.
In Totton, I picked up a copy of a local weekly magazine and noticed that its classified section had a section for Speakers. A few were using this to advertise their titles.
I hope they got some bookings (it certainly doesn't cost a great deal to appear in there) but I am not sure that press ads are generally the most cost-effective way for speakers to get bookings. I have had mixed results over the years.
An ad in the national magazine of one of the women's organisations I speak to brought immediate results with some very enjoyable bookings in far-flung locations but what I found was that, unlike with mail order advertising where the response can grow the more often ad appears and the readers get used to it, diminishing returns immediately set in after this first advert for my speaking services!
Another classified ad in a rather posh national magazine didn't bring any enquiries but a 'windfall gain' was that the telephone conversation when I booked it with their classified advertising department resulted in an amusing anecdote which I incorporated into my talks for several years afterwards!
I advertised myself as a speaker, speechwriter and public speaking trainer in many issues of the national magazine of one of the service organisations I speak to and I doubt if I even broke even.
But, over fifteen years, plenty of bookings have come from auditions, the web and mailshots - which are even more effective when they include genuine, unsolicited testimonials, such as this one from Totton South U3A's website:
"We were pleased to welcome Nick R Thomas who gave us a very professional and amusing talk about the trials and tribulations he has experienced while writing for BBC radio and television comedy shows. It was most interesting to hear about the vagaries of the recording studio and how comedy writing is used in various shows. He had us all laughing at his very funny anecdotes and in particular at a sketch he had written about Boris Yeltsin for the now sadly discontinued 'News Huddlines'".
Or from this email from Speaker Coordinator Merrilyn Dracass:
"Thank you very much for your most entertaining talk yesterday at the Totton
South U3A. It was interesting to have some behind the scenes
information about programme making on the BBC... Everyone enjoyed your talk and it was good to hear so much laughter in
these rather difficult times".
But a huge number of bookings come from the recommendations and repeat bookings that result from delivering successful presentations.Public Speaking Tip #338: Whatever means of advertising you use to attract bookings as a public speaker, you will find that the most effective way is to deliver a speech or talk that goes so well that you are booked again by that organisation and recommended to others. This means that you are actually being paid to advertise yourself! Good, isn't it?
