What Does Trusting God with Marketing Look Like?

I have a confession to make.

I’ve always been a wimp when it comes to trusting God with marketing.

You probably are, too. Most of us suffer from this illness. We sit back and say:

I trust God to grow my ministry.

How is that wimpy, you say? Well, let me illustrate by telling you a story.

I started my main marriage and parenting blog in March of 2008. I decided it was time to get on the blogging bandwagon if I wanted to build a platform for my writing in the area of marriage. And so I began to blog. Pretty soon I was getting around 200 readers a day. But then, about two years into blogging, I hit 400 readers a day. And I couldn’t budge it. Occasionally I’d get a big surge where I hit 700 readers, but that was it.

At the beginning of November, I attended a marketing conference with my agent. I asked, “how many readers do publishers want for a blog? What should our traffic be if we want our blog to be considered a good platform?” And the answer came back, “1000 a day. Or 30,000 a month.“

30,000 a month? That was huge! I was excited when I hit 12,000. And I had a book coming out in March (The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex). I wanted to get up to that point by March. But how could I do that? That’s more than doubling my traffic in just three months, when I had spent years trying to get my traffic going. I had guest posted. I had left comments at other people’s blogs. I had participated in link ups. And nothing.

But I decided to try something radical. I decided to pray for actual numbers. So I said,

God, I need 30,000 people by the end of February. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I pray that you will bring me that traffic.

In December I was discovered by reddit, a bookmarking site. I had 60,000 visitors in December.

But that was a fluke, I thought. I’ll never hit anything like that again!

Here’s my traffic since then:

Now, if you’re trying to simply get speaking engagements, you absolutely do not need 1000 people on your website a day. I needed it because I was trying to build a platform to sell a book, and that’s something different.

But here’s what I learned, and this is what I really want to impress on people: Sometimes we mistake the wimpy for the godly.

For instance, which is more godly to say?

I put my marketing entirely in your hands, God. I know you have my ministry in Your hands, and so I trust you.

Or,

God, I believe you have brought me to this place. I believe that You want me to grow my ministry. So I pray that you will bring people to me, and that you will give me opportunities to reach more and more. I pray that I will have (3 retreats this year, 2 paying engagements, a book contract, whatever it may be for you), and if that’s not Your will, reveal it to me soon, because I want to spend the time that you have given me in the best way for Your kingdom.

You see, I prayed the first prayer for years. But what I was really doing was giving God an out. I was saying, “If you want me to grow, I will, but if You don’t, I won’t.” It wasn’t a prayer of faith; it was a cop out.

And when we pray like that, I think we’re less likely to actively market ourselves, because we figure that God should do it for us. And if God doesn’t, then it wasn’t meant to be. But what if it was meant to be, but God needed you to wrestle through, and trust Him, and step forward?

I think it demonstrates far more trust in God if we step forward in faith in our ministry, believing that God has brought us to this point, than if we hide in the back, and say, “God will make it happen if He wants it to.”

This is not a “name it and claim it” thing I mean, because I don’t believe in “name it and claim it”. But I do believe that if God has called you to something, He wants you to do it. He wants you to be a full participant. He wants you to believe in that calling. And if He hasn’t called you, then it’s good to wrestle that through and figure that out anyway.

Lately I’ve been so busy with the release of my book that I haven’t posted very much, and I’m sorry about that. I’m hoping to get back to things soon. But I thought that I would leave you with these things that have been spilling around my head, and ask you: what do you think? What does trusting God with marketing mean to you?

Use Your Words: When Your Speaking Ministry Stresses You Out

Today on Use Your Words we talked stress. Usually I give  you some pep talk about marketing, or planning a talk, but I thought it was important to touch on something all of us deal with, but rarely talk about: how draining ministry is. And speaking ministry has its own unique stresses!

Every Tuesday I host a BlogTalkRadio show for 30 minutes, and you can listen live at noon EST. But if you didn’t make it, you can always listen to the shows after the fact. This week’s is right here.

To summarize, though, what are the sources of some stress?

1. Engagements with High Costs and Few Benefits

Picture this: you’re just starting out, and you’re so happy to receive any engagement that comes your way! You want to spak. You want to build word of mouth.

So when an offer comes, you jump at it. Then you realize that it involves driving six hours, billeting at someone’s house, speaking the next day, and driving home.

You drive. You’re exhausted. You arrive at the billet’s house and you have to be nice and make small talk, even though you’d rather just sleep. When you get to the engagement, only 30 women are there, and they’re not the kind who are likely to lead to a lot of word of mouth. At the end of the night, they give  you $50 and a potted plant.

You’re discouraged. That was a lot of effort for relatively little reward. Of course, God can bring rewards out of anything, no matter how small, and so you feel guilty for being a little bit resentful. But it was awfully far to drive, and awfully draining.

Do this too much and you will burn out.

Solutions: Do free engagements certainly, but try to do them closer to home. Read about cold-calling local churches. Be strategic about doing workshops at conferences, which are likely to lead to more word of mouth. If you are going to drive far, try to combine several engagements at once. And once you do start to get more engagements, it’s okay to ask for a hotel rather than a billet!

2. You Can’t Admit Your Struggles

My husband and I have been speaking at marriage conferences for six years now, and one of the hard things is that when I’m mad at him, it’s hard to tell anyone or get counsel, because people may think that our marriage is in trouble (even when it’s not). When you’re in ministry, you have to look like you have it altogether, or you may damage your reputation.

That’s exhausting, and spiritually dangerous. Remember all the big name preachers who are caught in scandals? People don’t wake up one day and make a huge mistake out of nowhere. It starts with little things they compromise on, and then it grows. And why do those little things appear? Because they don’t have anyone to talk to about their doubts and struggles, and they don’t have proper accountability.

Churches are working together to get pastors more accountability and anonymous help, but we speakers are a lonely bunch. We don’t have anyone doing that for us.

Solution: Make one of your primary prayer requests that God will send you 3-4 women with whom you can be completely honest. They don’t even need to live in your hometown! Send email prayer requests around, and ask them to hold you accountable.

3. Overbooking Yourself

When a speaking request comes for nine months in the future, you jump at it and say yes. Later you’re asked to speak somewhere else a week later, and you say yes to that, too. But when the week comes around, life has gotten in the way. Your kids are busy. All of a sudden there’s a family wedding you didn’t know about when you took those engagements, and you’re going to be driving all over the place trying to squeeze in shopping for a gift and dress fittings, etc.

The fact is that life does intrude, and we have to be wise.

Solution: Cluster your engagements. Try to do a whole bunch at once, so you’re away from the house for an extended period, but then be home for 6-7 weeks straight. When you speak every weekend, or once a week, your mind is never completely at home. You’re never able to completely relax (or even completely unpack!).

4. Worry When No Engagements Come

You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do, but your calendar isn’t filling up. Is God really calling you to this? What about money? You’re not being paid enough and you wonder whether you should still be doing this.

Solution: Keep up to date with God. Wrestle with your calling. Ask God if it was temporary, or if it’s long term. It is okay to do something for five years, and then God may call you to move on.

I said much more in the recording for Use Your Words, which you can listen to here.

Another resource I know you’ll find helpful is my audio download, How to Get Better Bookings. If you’re sick of driving huge distances for little reward, learn how to build word of mouth to get the kind of engagements you need! It’s available here.

How to Use Photos to Get the Word Out

You’re a Christian women’s speaker. You speak at church events. You do it for the glory of God. So thinking about marketing your speaking ministry sounds weird. Is that really part of ministry?

Yes, it is, because if God has given you a message, you should want to get it out there. And you can only get it out there if people have heard of you and if you capture their attention long enough to get them to suggest you or hire you.

So let’s look at one of the best marketing tools you have: pictures of yourself. You can use pictures in a whole variety of ways to get people’s attention, but to do that, you need one thing first: a professional photograph of yourself, taken by a professional photographer. It should look interesting, should portray you in your best light, and should make you look like you take ministry seriously.

I waited too long to pay for a professional photo. I settled for some that were just awful, and they were embarrassing on my website. One day I was asked to be on the most popular Christian radio show in Canada, and I sent them my photo to put up on their website before the fact. The host gently told me the photo wasn’t up to snuff–and honestly, it wasn’t that bad. It just obviously wasn’t a professional photograph. So don’t settle for your sister taking a picture of your smiling face. Ask someone who knows what they’re doing!

I finally paid for a photo shoot, and now I have 15 different pictures I can use at different times, and it’s so freeing!

Of course, it’s almost time for some new ones, because my hair keeps changing, but that’s one of the dangers of being a woman.

So get a professional photograph. And then here’s what you do with pictures:

1. Put them prominently on your website

Use a variety of pictures, if possible, on each page. People like visual things. Embed one picture into your header on your website so that it’s on every page, but you can add different pictures of yourself on other pages. They don’t all have to be super quality; as long as one really good one is in the header, you can include action or candid shots on the other. But include lots, to make it seem as if you’re very busy. The busier you seem, the more people will want to hire you!

2. Take pictures every time you speak

Whenever you  speak, ask someone in the audience to take pictures. Hand them your camera, show them what to do, and tell them to shoot away! And ask them to take a ton, because I find that usually only 10% are usable. So get them to take lots so you have lots of choice.

And make sure you get pictures when you’re just chatting with people after the talk, or sitting at a table with people at a dinner. People like the action shots and not just the shots of you at the podium.

3. Put them up on Facebook

Even if they’re not great, after each engagement, post pictures to Facebook, both to your page and to your profile. This is easy to do by uploading them to your page and then tagging yourself in them using your profile account, and then they show  up in both news feeds.

If they’re not great, I often upload them to Facebook and my blog and then delete them from my camera card, because I don’t need to save everything. But putting them up as often as possible reminds people: Hey! She speaks! And that may sound silly, but often people forget (especially your friends). Remind them, and they’re more likely to recommend you.

4. Wear different outfits as much as possible

This may sound a little too image-conscious, but I try to not repeat the same outfit very often, or at least within the last 2-3 speaking engagements. That way I have pictures of myself speaking in different clothes, which reinforce the fact: Hey! She’s doing LOTS of speaking! If you always speak in the same clothes, then the pictures can look as if they were taken on the same day, and people don’t have the same impression that you speak lots.

Give them the idea that you speak lots, and they will think of you as being in demand and want to hire you more.

5. Use pictures for video

You can make a video of your ministry without actual video. As long as  you have an .mp3 of you speaking, you can combine that with still photos and create a short promo video. Candy Troutman, one of my students, made one here. So never underestimate the power of what you can do with photos!

6. Send out newsletters

You should be sending out a monthly newsletter to those on your email list. Include speaking photos from the last month in that newsletter–or at least photos from engagements that perhaps you haven’t highlighted yet. Again, let people remember, “she speaks A LOT”, and then they’re more likely to ask you to speak for them.

Note that you can’t do many of these things if you don’t take pictures. So be sure to take as many as you can everytime you speak, and you’ll find your ministry growing!

Speaker Bureaus: Yay or Nay?

Ann Dunagan asked a question in the comments about whether or not having a speaking bureau representing you is a good idea. She writes:

I have a specific question for you. Do you think it’s important, or beneficial, to have a speaker management service to secure a broader or wider range of future speaking engagements? Do you know if the majority of Christian speaker services operate on a commission basis, and do you think a speaker management service could help to “get the word out” regarding a particular speaker to a broader audience?

So let’s deal with this piece by piece. First:

Do you think it’s important, or beneficial, to have a speaker management service to secure a broader or wider range of future speaking engagements?

Just because a speaker bureau represents you doesn’t mean it will actually get YOU engagements. Chances are they represent many speakers, and there are some that they will tout more than others simply because of personal relationships, or because they already know this speaker is good and delivers a quality program.

In addition, the biggest speaker bureaus won’t take you on unless you already have some established credibility. They don’t like being thought of a “training grounds”. They’re there to connect the best speakers with the right audiences. So it’s unlikely that a bureau will take you until you’ve already achieved professional status.

Some bureaus, though, are organized by speaker trainers to begin with. CLASS, Carol Kent, and Proverbs 31 Ministries come to mind here. You go through their training, and they select those candidates that they think showed the most professionalism and giftedness to represent. This may not be a bad route to go, because you can often develop a personal relationship with the bureau since you attend their training anyway.

Remember, though, that most speakers (myself included) get along without a bureau just fine. Agencies can lend credibility and bump you up to the next fee level, but you also have to prove yourself worthy of these engagements before they’ll book you for them. It’s sort of a chicken and egg conundrum.

In short, if you want to try it, look carefully at what they offer and what the terms are. Talk to other people who are represented by them. And then by all means, send a demo tape. But do I think it’s necessary? Absolutely not.

Next part of the question: Do you know if the majority of Christian speaker services operate on a commission basis?

Yep. They sure do. I think the industry standard is about 15%, but it could be higher than that. You also need to be very sure about competition clauses, because some bureaus refuse you the right to book yourself. If you sign on with them, they have to do all bookings. So if you get a request that comes through you personally, you are obligated under contract to put it through them, and give them the commission.

Last part: Do you think a speaker management service could help to “get the word out” regarding a particular speaker to a broader audience?

Not really. I think a speaker management service can get the word out to those who come to their site already. But they don’t tend to advertise for particular speakers.

On the other hand, it is not really hard to market yourself, especially on the internet. Start a blog on women’s ministries, with lots of tips, and women’s ministry leaders will come to your site. Start an ezine and start collecting names of women’s ministry leaders. Participate in blogs and forums about women’s ministry. Twitter. Join Facebook groups about women’s ministry. The possibilities are endless.

I get about 25 new email addresses added to my lists everyday from the internet marketing I do, and that’s something I’ve only really started in the last few weeks. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s already been growing exponentially. And if you think about it, that’s 750 new email addresses a month. That’s a lot of people I can send quality information to, who then keep hearing my name and are reminded about me.

Can a speaker’s bureau replicate that? I don’t think so.

The other thing to realize is that speaker’s bureaus are very good at getting national engagements. Few are regional, though you may be able to search for regional speakers. But it’s very likely that if you go through a bureau, and you’re successful (which is no guarantee), you will spend your life on planes. I’m not really willing to do that yet, since my children are still at home. I prefer to speak within a five hour drive of home. But that’s okay, because there’s millions of people in that radius, and lots of possible venues. It is easier for me to market myself deeply in this region than it is for a national speakers’ bureau to do this.

If you want a national audience, it may be the way to go. If you want to build your name regionally first, you’re probably better going alone.

I hope that helps! What do the rest of you think? Are any of you with a speakers’ bureau?

So….How Do I Get Bookings?

If you want to be a speaker, this is the proverbial question.

You’ve honed up your speaking skills. You’ve carefully crafted a talk that inspires change. But now where do you give that talk?

Several organizations are often eager to have speakers, foremost among them Stonecroft Christian Women’s Clubs and MOPS groups. If you’re male, and you want to speak, I would personally start at men’s prayer breakfasts.

These organizations don’t really pay. You’re lucky if you get $50. But what you do get is exposure.

So I encourage you to seek out the MOPS groups (Mothers of Preschoolers) or the Christian Women’s Clubs in your area. MOPS are obviously looking for parenting & marriage topics; Christian Women’s Clubs are looking for testimonies with a salvation message. If you attend a few meetings you’ll get a feel for it, and then you can approach the organizer.

In some communities these clubs may not work. There could be barriers to entry, or they just may not be open to outside speakers as easily. But the idea is the same: locate some groups that meet regularly but don’t have a large budget for speakers. Churches or summer camps are also good for this sort of thing, especially around the holidays, when many host outreaches or special events.

What you don’t want to do, though, is to give an amazing talk, and then still have no bookings. So here is how to turn these smaller engagements into future larger engagements.

1. Make Sure They Know How To Contact You

This isn’t as hard as it sounds. Printing business cards is fairly inexpensive, and can often be done for about $50 with black and white cards. You can seek out local printers for this, or even online printers like vista. Have your email and your phone number, and a tagline that clearly states what you do: “Pointing Women to Christ”, “Speaking with Passion”, or whatever.

If you don’t want to invest the $50, another option is to have a draw during the event for some sort of prize. You can make up a beautiful gift basket that looks expensive but isn’t by buying a basket from a thrift store, and filling it with color coordinated bathroom items, or notebooks, pens, a tin of coffee, or whatever. Shop at your dollar store and see what you can come up with. Wrap with cellophane, tie a large bow, and it will look like it cost you $50, although you can easily fill a basket for $20. The key is color coordination!

Once you’ve done that, hand out paper for people to enter your draw. Ask for their name, their church (if they have one), and then have a line on there for “Do you know of other organizations looking for speakers?” And ask them to list them, with a contact name, if possible. Many women are happy to list their women’s ministry at their church. You may also get other leads.

Finally, ask them for their own email addresses if they want to hear about your future speaking engagements. DON’T SKIP THIS STEP! Sometimes someone may hear you speak, love you, but have no idea how to get in touch with you again. If you collect their email addresses and send out a newsletter once a month, with inspirational sayings and your itinerary, they can just reply to it. Now they have your contact information!

Fold the pieces of paper and pull one for the basket!

To distribute the ballots, the easiest thing is to lay them on chairs before the event begins. If the organizers are reluctant to have you do this, you can always ask for a table that you can stand behind with your basket and several of the papers across it, with pens. Certainly some will complete the ballots!

2. Record your talk

Now people can get a hold of you, and you have some leads. But you won’t be able to turn those leads into real, paying engagements unless people have a chance to hear you. So as you’re doing these early talks, record them. Often churches have this capability, but if not, a digital recorder is under $100 and is quite easy to use.

You can then edit your audio (more on that in a future blog post) to make yourself sound as professional and polished as possible.

If you have the chance to be videotaped, even better! You can post clips on YouTube of your talks, and then direct people there. You don’t even have to have your own website at this point!

Here, for instance, is how I put up a clip of a talk I gave, clearly telling people how to contact me. You can also just have an email address at the end if you don’t have a website yet. But blogs are free, so at least start one of those!

I hope that helps you get started. More ideas soon, but in the meantime, I want to start expanding my blog roll. Do you have a blog specifically for speakers or authors? Let me know, or leave it in the comments!

I’m going to answer some specific questions in upcoming posts, including one on how I started, and one on speaking bureaus. So come back soon! And if you want to be kept informed when I have more resources available, or when a particularly good post is up, just sign up here!

What Does “Giving a Talk” Entail?

Sheila praying at a talk

If you dream of being a speaker, or even if you’ve already been asked to speak, you know that at some point you have to prepare a talk.

So let’s begin by discussing what it means to “give a talk” in the first place. Over the next few days we’ll talk about how to get those speaking engagements, how to organize your talk, and more. But let’s get some details out of the way first.

In my opinion, a talk is an inspirational message that you deliver for the purpose of helping people transform their lives.

Get that?

You don’t give a talk to teach, though you may end up teaching. You don’t give a talk to promote yourself, though you may end up doing so. You don’t give a talk to share your wisdom, or your dreams, or your intellectual capabilities.

You give a talk to inspire someone to transform some aspect of their lives.

My goal, as a writer and a speaker, is to see lives changed. And I use both the spoken word and the written word to do that. To do so I have to connect with my audience; I have to share from my heart and my background; I have to pray; I have to share Scripture. But the point of my talk is not any of those things.

A talk must lead people somewhere, or else all they will say at the end was, “that was very informative” or “that was very enjoyable”. If there’s not something that going to change afterwards, then all that you provided was some momentary entertainment or some brain candy.

I think that’s what differentiates “talks” from “sermons”. I know that pastors have as their goal to change lives, but let’s face it. The way most pastors preach that is not what is happening.

Most pastors have seven points, or four points, or five points that all start with P, or all rhyme, or all have to do with some type of vegetation, or whatever trick they’re using at the time. They use these tricks to try to help you remember facts, because most pastors are trained to teach.

But we can know all the facts in the world and not do anything about it. A talk has to have as its goal that people will, at the end, know what change they should make, know how to make it, and feel encouraged and motivated to do so. Does it really matter if they totally understand the end times prophecies in Daniel, or if they can explain to you what grace means from the book of Romans, if they don’t do anything about it?

I am not saying that there is something wrong with speaking on Romans. Not at all! We do need to focus our talks around Scripture.

But we don’t do so just to transmit knowledge. We do so to transmit knowledge so that they will make a change.

And that’s why talks tend to be more emotional than sermons. They need to include anecdotes so people can relate. They tend to appeal to a wide range of emotions, from humour to sadness to empathy. As we connect, we reach the heart, and not only the head. And thus people are more likely to be changed.

Before you plan a talk, before you start a speaking career, before you start looking for engagements, ask yourself this question: what is it that I am uniquely called to help people transform? What is the one area where God has spoken to me that I can share with others so they can change something? What is your primary focus of transformation?

I started thinking along these lines about speaking when Family Life Canada, whom I speak for at times, gave me the book Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication. It really changed the way I saw speaking.

A speaker is not a pastor. We are supposed to be more personal, more anecdotal, and more motivational. I highly recommend this book if you want to start thinking along these lines. I’ll be putting it up on my new resource page tonight, and if any of you have other resources that you want to recommend, leave them in the comments and I’ll add them!

In the meantime, what transformational change are you called to talk about? I talk about how to give up the idea of happiness and focus on God being enough–in your marriage, in your life, in your parenting. When we do that, happiness follows. But it can never be our goal. All my talks, across the different groups I speak on, focus on that. What about you?

Why This Blog?

Sheila Wray Gregoire

I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire.

I speak.

Do you?

I didn’t always. I started off writing articles, and eventually books. But I’ve always loved making people laugh, and I love communicating God’s truth.

But when I started speaking it was tough. I didn’t have a mentor, and I didn’t have any clue where to find speaking engagements, how much to charge, how to write a good talk, how to market myself, and more.

Now I speak 4-8 times a month to audiences from 50-1000. And I love it!

But there aren’t enough of me. And there aren’t enough other really good speakers, either. There need to be, because our churches, and our culture, need to hear good, biblical messages that can help transform their lives, families, and communities.

So I hope this blog can become a place where I can share what I’ve learned, and where you can add some of your own ideas and comments. Let’s make this a community, where we can trade knowledge, grow from each other, and inspire each other!

In the next few days I’ll have posts up on how to get started, how to figure out how much to charge, great places to launch your speaking ministry, and more! So bookmark me now and visit back often, or subscribe via RSS! I’m going to provide some great tips that I wish people had shared with me way back when. And you can get them here, for free!

Thanks for joining me!