How to Get More Out of Your Keynote Speaker: Before, During, and After Your Event

Having a speaker at an event is a worthwhile investment: a great keynote speaker can boost attendance, among other things. However, if you want to engage someone who attracts the right target audience or creates buzz, you will have to pay a reasonable fee. Ultimately, the point of any meeting with a speaker is to provide value to the audience. You can maximize the return on investment for your speaker, and consequently justify their fee, by ensuring that they do more than get up and talk for an hour.

If a speaker is willing to appear at the sponsor’s booths during post-speech networking time, or at other more ‘social’ opportunities, potential sponsors might be willing to up their financial participation if options like these are included in the sponsorship packages. Depending on the speaker’s reputation, there is a lot of value in being ‘awesome by association’, which any sponsor would want to be able to leverage.

Unless it’s a closed or private event, a good speaker likely has an impressive audience already that they can promote your event to, through social media and their own site. Be sure to create a unique hashtag for your event and give it to the speakers to use in their promotion. In addition, you can leverage their participation in your own internal and external promotion. For example, do a short Facebook live event with the speaker prior to the event and use it for promotion; share it with the speaker so that they too can re-share it with their own audience.

 

Find out what they are willing to provide to extend the engagement they have with the audience. Will their content be customized to your audience? Do they interact with the audience during their speech? What about Q&A sessions afterward? Can you set up a spot to do another Facebook live or other recorded video to have your speaker give a recap of his or her program and then an action challenge. Ask the audience to post their comments or commitments on your social page.

Ideally, you will meet in advance with your speakers and acquaint them with what your audience is going to be expecting and what they need from them, as a speaker. For example, while a keynote speaker will likely be talking more from a bigger picture, inspirational perspective, a seminar leader might get into the nitty gritty details of a certain aspect of the event focus. Make sure they are clear about your expectations and that it’s all outlined in your contract.

 

If you’re paying for them to travel to the meeting, and accommodations too, you should try and include in the contract a few other things that bring value to your event. For example, perhaps they would be open to moderating a breakout panel discussion, after they speak, to get some more direct engagement with the audience, or a more detailed discussion of key points made. Another possibility is requesting that they host a breakout on their particular area of expertise, during the event. Or ask them to act as emcee for an evening social that is tied to the event. There are a lot of ways that the cache of a talented speaker can be leveraged to everyone’s advantage.

If the speaker is willing to provide branded copies of their presentation to the attendees, it will drive traffic to their site, which is good for them, and up the value, the audience receives, which is good for your event. Find out what takeaways, if any, they will provide. If the speaker has a book, one option, to give more depth to the event and provide more value to the audience, is to work out a deal to provide copies of the book to each attendee. Further, request that the speaker be available to sign copies and answer questions after the event. This extends their message and impact on the audience: the closer proximity for audience members allows for questions and more personal engagement.

 

Can your speaker host a follow-up webinar or conference call to have your audience members share what they have done or ask additional questions? This extends the learning past the event.

 

As I mentioned earlier, the speaker can promote your event to their audience beforehand but they can also extend the value by continuing to engage AFTER the event, on social media. Using the same hashtag for the event, let the audience know they can keep the conversation going and ask additional questions on social channels with the hashtag. This is a good way for follow-ups and questions to be addressed.

When all is said and done, the days of a speaker swooping in, making their speech and sneaking out the side door, having had no contact with their audience and no follow-up, are more or less over. Look for ways to maximize their value and you’ll get a return on your investment that will be felt for a long time to come.

 

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