When I am copywriting for coaches and authors, I always stress the importance of strong, consistent message development.
That’s because when you’re promoting your book or information program, you want your messaging to be very consistent in voice and style across all your marketing channels. 
However, during the message development process, it can be easy to forget that the most affordable and accessible tool in your marketing toolkit is your ability to speak!
You can talk about your book or program to anyone, any time, everywhere you go. Take advantage of this!
And, if you drive a lot of traffic to your well-developed media contact page (see last week’s post), you should be able to line up numerous radio, magazine, TV, and podcast interviews.
Be consistent with your speaking points
Whether you’re schmoozing at a local chamber of commerce event, or being interviewed on a podcast with thousands of listeners, you want to be consistent in how you speak about your book or program.
Speaking is a big part of your marketing mix, so it’s important you create an outline of speaking points that align with the other marketing materials you’re writing.
Once again, repetition builds reputation, and every word you say about your product fuels this fire. And of course, if you’ve published a book or program, you should talk about it. A LOT!
Take control of interviews
I’ve been running my own copywriting and consulting business for 17 years. But, earlier in my life I had full-time jobs, which meant I had to do job interviews.
Prior to every interview, I would decide on three or four marketable points I was going to communicate about myself …no matter what questions I was asked!
This is not an original strategy. We’ve all seen politicians do this countless time. Ask them a question, and they talk about whatever they want to talk about.
Take this same approach when you do interviews for your book or program. No matter what you’re asked, communicate your central marketing messages, and make sure they are in alignment with your written promotional pieces.
KEY: Remember, people who interview you are not going to know much about your book or program. So, they’re going to be thrilled if you can take command and drive the interview, because it makes their job easier.
The easiest way to do this is to create an outline of speaking points based on your written marketing materials.
Most of the interviews you do for your book or info product will be conducted over the phone or through Skype. This makes it easy to keep your speaking points at you finger tips and refer to them during your interview.
Crafting speaking points is easy
Having prepared speaking points makes it much easier for you to shape the tone and direction of your interviews. After you’ve written several marketing pieces for your book or program, creating an outline of your speaking points is a breeze.
Simply pull the primary marketing messages you’ve written throughout your Core Message Platform, and shape them into an outline.
Your speaking points are an internal marketing document, which means you’re the only who is going to see it. So, you can format it anyway you want. There is no right or wrong way.
For your reference, here is an example of speaking points I created for Mark Moses, international bestselling author of the business book, Make Big Happen. (I highly recommend this book!)
Mark’s full set of speaking points is four pages. For the sake of brevity, I am only sharing a brief sample, but this will still give you a good idea of how you can organize your speaking points.
Media interview speaking points example
Make Big Happen – Mark Moses
OVERVIEW
Make Big Happen drives home the simple point that you have the power to choose the life you want and live it to the fullest.
- This book is all about how to lead, live, work, and give BIG!
- The first 100-story building wasn’t built by someone with a 50-story imagination. It was built by someone who thought big, believed big, and acted big.
- The same could be said for the first person who built a BILLION-dollar company. They thought much bigger than someone with a million-dollar imagination.
- This is a highly-actionable book in which I show readers exactly how to MAKE BIG HAPPEN in their role as a leader or CEO—and in their lives away from work with friends and family.
- Readers will learn to develop and EXECUTE specific measurable activities that get them the results they really want.
- It’s not just about planning and talking about activities. I put a big emphasis on how to follow through and EXECUTE these activities.
- I also teach readers how to measure and keep score of their results. This is really a key point, because this is where a lot of leaders fall short.
The FOUR QUESTIONS
Life doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, one very important thing I’ve learned repeatedly throughout my career is that there is incredible power in simplicity.
- In Make Big Happen I identify four simple but powerful questions that every leader must explore to achieve extraordinary success—in business, and in life. These four questions are…
- What do you want?
- What do you have to do?
- What could get in the way?
- How do you hold yourself accountable?
- Throughout the book, I use stories and examples from my career to detail how these questions form the foundation of every thriving business and life.
- I show readers how answering these questions the right way with certainty leads to achieving exceptional results in all areas of life.
- I also share real-world stories about leaders, entrepreneurs and CEO’s who’ve put these questions to work for them, and then achieved outrageous results that include HUGE liquidity events.
QUESTION #1 – What do you want?
The first thing I ask readers to do is to define what success looks like for them. Whether it’s one year from now, or three years from now.
- If they wake up one morning three years from now and they’re elated, and they just can’t wait to get out of bed because they’re so excited they’ve achieved success…I want to know what that success looks like.
- This success doesn’t have to be something huge, gaudy or lavish. It can be whatever the reader’s idea of success is.
- The key point is the importance of having CLARITY and CERTAINTY about what success is for you, and what it is YOU want.
- I also convey the importance of establishing one or two HOTs in life or in business. I say one or two because, again, the key is to keep it simple. (Maybe share story of Steve Jobs narrowing down Apple’s HOTs agenda)
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Will this post help you write media speaking points you can keep at your fingertips during media interviews? Please leave a comment and let me know!
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