How to Find the Best Keynote Speaker for Your Event

How to Find the Best Keynote Speaker for Your Event

It’s important to hire a keynote speaker that will fit the overall theme of your event. Check out this guide to help you find the perfect speaker.

Pretty, young business woman giving a presentation in a conference/meeting setting (shallow DOF; color toned image)

A good keynote speaker can be the making of your event, setting a relevant and inspiring tone.

Working in event planning means knowing how to engage your guests, workforce, or market from the start of the day to the close. When you’re planning to hire a keynote speaker, precise consideration should go into who you choose. There’s no point in hiring just anybody, especially when finding the right keynote speaker will do wonders for the success of any business event.

Though finding someone who is absolutely on-brand may seem impossible, the best keynote speaker for your event is out there.

If you’re stumped as to how to find and hire the optimal motivational speaker for your event, there’s no need to worry: This article will tell you exactly what you need to do.

Getting That Perfect Fit Matters

The keynote speaker of an event establishes the mission of the entire occasion. Though they might only talk for an hour or so, they should give your guests a taste of what is to come and make them eager to hear more.

You want to hire someone who will engage your audience and make them feel excited about what’s to come.

A speaker that can achieve this will set your event up for success, making it an enjoyable experience for guests in the moment and stay with them long after they leave. The person you choose shouldn’t just be the first big-name you find or even the person with the most experience.

They have to be someone relevant, exciting, and personally invested in their speech and your mission.

No matter how adaptable the principles of success may be, there’s not much point in having a finance expert do the keynote speech at your expo for children’s entertainers. Your audience will lose interest. They’ve come looking for something relevant – so your speaker needs to prove to them that they’re going to get what they came for.

It’s arguable that your hour-long keynote speech could be the most important hour of your whole event. It’s where you will either lose people or get them fully on board with what they’re about to experience.

So make sure you’re thinking carefully about your keynote speaker and what they will offer to your audience. If they don’t provide that perfect fit, it’s time to look for someone else.

How to Choose Your Keynote Speaker

First things first: you have to consider your theme. This is the most important way to tie your chosen speaker into your event.

If you’re running a business event, whoever you choose must be able to make their speech relevant to the theme of business. For a sporting ceremony, you need to hire someone who’s actually been out on the field. It might sound obvious, but so many events fall down because the keynote speech wasn’t relevant enough to interest and engage attendees.

Make sure that you know what you need your keynote speaker to touch on before you hire them. This will save time and trouble in the long-run, and allow them to tailor their speech to your specific event.

Know Your Audience

One of the best things you can do to help you choose your motivational speaker is to think about who will be attending your event.

When you know the general demographic of your audience, you should choose somebody they will relate to. If most of your guests are young entrepreneurial women, they might connect well with what a successful businesswoman has to say in her speech. If your event is geared towards promoting access to a certain industry, your audience will relate to a speaker whose story is about overcoming obstacles.

Picking the best keynote speaker for your event is all about knowing the people who will be listening.

Choose a Type of Speaker

Which sort of story is going to resonate with the theme of your event? Are you looking for an athlete, a thought leader, or a survivor of a great tragedy? Knowing the kind of story you need will help you to choose your speaker.

If you pick right, your keynote speaker will be able to tap into the emotional instincts of your audience. They will know what motivates them, their desires, or what will drive them to invest their time and energy into your event.

Find Someone Adaptable

The ideal keynote speaker will take their story and find a way to tell it that maximizes its effect at your particular event. A good adaptable speaker will know how to speak for different audiences, and which parts of what they have to say will resonate most with the audience.

Be sure that the keynote speaker you hire has the best interests of your event at heart. You want them to be as invested in your success as people will be in their stories.

Use an Expert Agency to Hire the Best Keynote Speaker for You

The benefits of using an agency to find a high-quality keynote speaker cannot be emphasized enough. They will take all of the difficult parts of hiring a speaker off your hands, and your event will reap the rewards.  They will also be objective in their recommendations and know which keynote speakers are best for your event.

An agency will assess every area of your requirements and find the best keynote speaker for you. It’s the ideal way to get someone within your budget whose speech will be exactly what your audience wants. They will even take care of the logistical side of things, organizing the equipment and travel for your speaker’s appearance.

Try to Book Early

By getting your speaker sorted early on, you free yourself up to focus on other areas of event planning. Your event is guaranteed to go down well, with every aspect well designed.

An agency can help you to book a speaker far in advance, so don’t worry about whether it’s too soon to get in touch with them or not. You can even do a preliminary search using what you already know about the kind of speaker you’re looking for.

Hire a Great Motivational Speaker and Watch Your Event Succeed

Your keynote speaker really is the heart of your event. Make sure you get it right, and you can be confident that all of your event planning will pay off.

There’s no time like the present to ensure your success. Get in touch with keynote speaker agency The Mollie Plotkin Group today and book the perfect keynote speaker for your upcoming event!

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