Let me help you improve the success of your next public presentation. It doesn't matter whether you will be speaking to an audience with you in a room or to a remote audience via webinar or webcast. It doesn't matter what your topic is. It doesn't matter whether you are presenting alone or with others. In fact, this tip doesn’t even involve your presentation style and speaking skills.
You can leave your audience more satisfied with your presentation, your competence, your personal and organizational trustworthiness. The big secret is to REDUCE the number of people who want to come listen to you. Yes, you read that correctly. Planning for presentation success starts early, in the promotion and marketing phase. And it starts with a conscious effort to create a topic description that is specific enough to make some people say… "Nahhh, that’s not for me."
Sounds very negative, doesn't it? But the flip side is that the people who read your description and WANT to attend are primed, prepped, and eager to hear exactly the things you want to talk about. You let your potential audience self-select to get you the best possible target demographics for your speech, your class, your demo, your marketing pitch.
Your presentation description should make specific promises to the individual reading the copy. Tell them precisely what they will hear. You want to include and involve them in each bullet point:
- Learn how to…
- Discover ways to…
- Find out the secrets of…
- You will understand…
- Benefit from…
Then when you construct your presentation, you have an easy plan of attack. You simply run down your list, making very clear and explicit references to the things that were promised in your promotional materials. At the end of your presentation, your audience has no choice but to feel that you delivered on exactly what you promised. And that’s the kind of person and company they want to do business with.
Most descriptions take the opposite approach. They are abstract, generic, vague, and uninvolving, along the lines of: "This presentation will discuss industry trends."
That kind of writing hurts you in several ways. First, it discounts the role of the audience. The presentation is going to talk about something, whether they are present or not. There isn’t much incentive for them to register or walk into the room.
Worse, it lets the audience interpret the topic description any way they want. Some people will have expectations of seeing specific facts and figures, while others will expect overviews and high level interpretations. Some people expect tips and advice, while others want to make their own decisions from presented data. Some expect you to focus on historical trends, while others expect a focus on future predictions. No matter what you end up presenting, a portion of your audience is dissatisfied, saying "This isn't what I was promised." Of course they really weren't promised anything in particular, but their perception and interpretation of your description set their expectations.
In most companies and public events, the people involved in marketing are completely separated from those making the presentations. That means each side needs to make an extra effort to reach out to the other at the earliest possible stage to properly set expectations and make sure they are fulfilled later. That little bit of promotional copy written two months before the presentation seems trivial, but it turns out to have a large impact on the satisfaction surveys and feedback forms that come back after the presentation.
