How do you capture your audience?

At some point in your marketing career, you will be asked to speak to a large audience group and you will become slightly panicked. However, all is not lost. If you follow some simple steps, you can have the audience in the palm of your hand before you know it.

Try to envision the following:

You’ve just been introduced, the crowd is clapping, and you’re heading up to the podium. For hours, they’ve been PowerPointed to death, and now it’s nearly lunch. You’ve only got a moment to make an impression – how do you capture your audience?

Be specific sooner.

No one is rooting for you to fail. Keep the audience informed and entertained. But sometimes we make it almost impossible for them by going into corporate speak. The smarter we are and the more we think we know and the less likely we are to start with something relevant, actionable, and interesting. It’s always surprising to me that more people who are the face of their company don’t speak like human beings. Bottom line, get to your point quickly, but don’t alienate your audience in the process of doing so.

Make a connection.

It’s hard for people to process numbers outside our day-to-day experience – trillions of dollars, or nanoseconds, or light years. Instead, make it relevant to the human experience and have some fun with your comparisons. One possible example is saying something like “Use our reputation management service and you’ll see the effect faster than a Porsche can go from 0-90.”

Watch what works.

The audience may surprise you by what they respond to. We often don’t know what resonates. When I first started speaking, I’d say something offhand and people cracked up – but I didn’t think it was an important point, and I’d be startled. But what you think is important or funny is a lot less important than what the audience thinks. If you’re consistently getting a response, either positive or negative, learn from it and adapt.

Stick to three points.

Our mind can’t hold more than three points, – so don’t push your luck by citing endless reams of data. Instead, be clear on your overall theme and create sub-groupings of key points, and your audience will be far more likely to enjoy and remember your talk.