Keynote Speaker > Keynote speaker resources > Crafting Your Distinctive Positioning as a Professional Speaker
Crafting Your Distinctive Positioning as a Professional Speaker
In the competitive arena of professional speaking, deep subject matter expertise is table stakes. To stand out from the pack, you need to establish a positioning that is uniquely yours. It need to showcase the strong, unique value you deliver and hooks people with a clear promise of transformation.
Whether you’re just launching your speaking career or you’re a veteran wanting to redefine your brand, developing a distinctive and compelling positioning is essential. Invest the effort to get hyper-focused on your niche expertise, key audiences, and how you can guide them to their desired outcomes in a way no one else can. This can opens doors to the most coveted stages and prestigious client opportunities. This is your rallying cry to the world, setting the foundation for real impact.
Define Your Niche
The first step to developing a compelling positioning is getting crystal clear on your niche: the specific area where you have deep expertise to share, that literally speaks to what you have to offer the world. To uncover this niche, take some time for brutal self-assessment. What topics or industries do you have real-world experience and hard-won knowledge in? Look for the common threads that tie together your education, career paths, published works, certifications, etc.
Maybe your niche is data-driven marketing strategies. Or implementing lean management principles. Or resilience and personal growth learned from overcoming adversity. Whatever it is, your niche should align with your genuine strengths and passions. It’s the foundation to build an positioning that is authentic to who you are.
Understand Your Ideal Audience
With your niche identified, now you need to get laser-focused on your ideal audience. Who exactly are you trying to inform, inspire or influence through your speaking engagements? Get hyper-specific here – their job roles, demographics, key challenges and goals, background knowledge levels, personal/professional situations, etc.
To deepen your understanding, immerse yourself in their world. Follow the blogs, podcasts and publications they pay attention to. Join their online communities. Attend the conferences and meetups where they gather. Let their perspectives, pain points and needs really sink in. The more you know your desired audience inside and out, the more powerfully you can shape your messaging to them.
Craft Your Positioning Statement
Armed with clarity on your niche expertise and ideal audience insights, you’re now ready to articulate your positioning statement. This should be a concise, compelling statement that:
- Specifies the value you deliver
- Defines who you deliver it to
- Hints at what makes your approach unique
For example: “I equip mid-career tech leaders to cultivate unshakeable resilience by applying the mental toughness practices of elite athletes.” Or “My data storytelling frameworks help marketing analysts win over C-suite decision makers.”
Your statement should be free of jargon and hype. It should roll off the tongue for easy recall and repetition. Most importantly, it must ring unmistakably true to your authentic strengths and passions. This positions you as the solution their specific audience needs.
Test and Refine Your Positioning
With your draft positioning statement in hand, it’s time get real-world feedback. Share it with a sample of your target audience members and note their responses. Does it grab their attention? Does it clearly communicate the value you’d deliver to them? Incorporate their direct feedback to tighten and refine the wording.
Also, create some practical test applications like speaker one-sheets, conference pitches or website copy built around the positioning. See how well it holds up under real scrutiny. Adjust as needed to patch any holes or disconnects.
Consistency is Key
As you solidify your positioning, make sure you maintain consistency across all speaker branding and content – your materials, website, one-liners, talks, etc. Repetition is crucial for your positioning to sink in and reinforce itself in audiences’ minds.
However, rigidity is the enemy. Recognize that your positioning will inevitably need to evolve over time as your expertise deepens and audience needs shift. Build in periodic reassessment of your positioning to keep it razor-sharp and relevant. Actively seek out new learning opportunities, feedback sources, and ways to stay immersed in your niche. A distinctive positioning isn’t a static end-goal, but a continuous journey of refinement.
