How to promote your brand using public speaking

By Ahmed al-Akber/Manama

Public speaking is an effective way to get in front of multiple prospects at once and showcase your services.

Provided what you say and how you say it is good, you can quickly establish credibility and trust, almost instantaneously. Its also a great way to give a room filled with the right people an experience of what it might be like to work with you.

Its important to note that public speaking doesn’t necessarily work when trying to promote mass market products. It works best when you are selling a niche product or service in a vertical market such as accounting services for SMEs or wedding planning services. This way you would want to keep in mind where you speak and who your audience is to maximise impact.

Here are some things to keep in mind when using public speaking as a way to promote your brand:

1) Finding opportunities to speak. You would be amazed at how many trade associations, charity meet ups and other networking groups are out there looking for decent speakers with something interesting to say. In my experience many of them in the Middle East struggle to secure speakers for their regular sessions. Simply calling them up or e-mailing them is sometimes all it takes to get your first speaking opportunity booked. Have a 100-200 word outline of your talk prepared to provide further information when asked.

2) Creating opportunities to speak. Another way to do it is to conduct a self-hosted event. Here you book and pay for the location of the event and invite potential prospects to attend. Some five-star hotels and business clubs will even help you secure attendees by inviting people on their database.

3) Be an interesting speaker. No one likes a boring, lecture-style speaker. People have short enough attention spans as it is! You will need to practise your speaking skills and constantly work on how to do it better. Practising at Toastmasters is a good start – you can learn to speak in an environment where the audience wants you to perform better and will give you feedback on how to do that.

4) Focus on providing value. No one likes to attend a speech where they are being sold to. Remember, the goal is to position yourself as a leader in your field. De-emphasise what you sell and emphasise providing interesting, valuable information on a topic that relates to your speciality but is also of great interest to the audience.

5) Have a call to action. Here’s where you can convert some members of the audience into prospects and paying clients. Offer a way to keep in touch, or even better, continue the dialogue on a one-to-one basis. You can achieve this by offering hand-outs with even more valuable information or have the audience sign up to your newsletter so they keep getting value from you on a regular basis. If you are in professional services, you could take this one step further by offering a free 30 minute consultation to all audience members that bring you their business cards. If you are selling a product, offer a free trial.

6) Post a video of your speech on YouTube. This is where you can widen the reach that speaking has by recording your speeches and posting them on YouTube. This is a strong credibility-builder and a must if you take public speaking seriously.

While the initial setup, invitations, and delivery can be time consuming, they do take progressively less time to prepare for and you’ll find that in no time you’ll be a better speaker. And very soon after that, you’ll be one with a lot more paying clients.

♦ Ahmed al-Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies to improve their marketing and sales results by offering more effective ways attracting customers and significantly better products and services. Ahmed has worked internationally in marketing, sales, and strategic planning at companies such as the Coca-Cola Company, Philip Morris International and Dell. Questions or comments can be sent to Ahmed on [email protected]