In-Person Marketing: Public Speaking
Public Speaking is a valuable local marketing tool. This post focuses on speaking itself and the next is about how to organise public speaking as a marketing activity.
My main advice is practice speaking and listen to others speak. You can learn a lot by listening, even to poor speakers. You need opportunities to find your voice and become confident in your ability to hold your audience’s attention. Despite what people say about audiences with the attention span of a gnat, the truth is a good speaker can capture and hold their attention for long periods.
One important aspect of any compelling public speech is the use of stories. If possible you should have a keynote or origin story, which is a story about you. Its aim is to build rapport with your audience. I won’t dwell on this here but refer you to earlier posts about the use of story.
Rhetoric is the process of speaking in public and involves several skills you need to bring together. It isn’t easy but it is easier than it sounds!
Arguing
You may on occasion share a platform with someone with a message to some degree opposed to yours. However, when you are the sole speaker you still need to hone your arguing skills.
Your argument is the strategy you use to engage your audience and keep them with you. It may include telling a few stories and illustrating the point you want to make. The argument should culminate in a call to action. This means those persuaded by your speech can follow-up by taking some action.
The awareness ladder is one way you can structure your argument, starting where your audience is and carrying them forward to the point where they are ready respond. There are of course other ways of structuring an argument.
Proving
Proving something may be part of your argument. It can be central to your argument or else it may be a minor element.
For proof you need to marshal hard evidence and soft evidence as well as ensuring your narrative makes sense and actually proves what you claim it proves.
I recently attended a debate about the European referendum. The Brexiter made two mistakes; despite being the most engaging speaker, his account did not stack up. He claimed the European Union plans to create a single European state, which is not the subject of the referendum and then he went on to show that as 28 countries would have to vote in favour of such a state, it is almost impossible. First, the chances are the UK would not support such a change as many pro-Europeans would not be in favour of it. This is not the subject of the referendum, the pro-European speaker actually said he would not support a European state if that was the question for a referendum! His second mistake was his proof (if we assume each state is 50% likely to join, the chances of agreement is one half raised to the power of 28) actually favours the “remain in Europe” argument. After all, if a European State were on the agenda it is very unlikely to get the support it needs. We can stay in Europe confident that we won’t be somehow turned into a single state.
So, make sure your proof proves what you claim it proves because if it doesn’t, it will favour the other side.
Inventing
The speaker at the European debate had invented what to him was a compelling argument. He was a good speaker, let down by his own material.
By all means be inventive. If I were speaking in the same debate, I would argue against the holding of a referendum at all! I don’t believe the referendums, organised in recent years, have been democratic. They are divisive and narrow down the debate to a binary decision that in no way mirrors political reality.
If I developed that argument, solely my own as I haven’t seen or read anything like it elsewhere (such arguments are beginning to appear, eg Irvine Welsh), I am confident I’d hold my audience’s attention. I know this because I broached the topic in a two-minute speech recently and the response was positive, people wanted to hear more (which does not mean they agree with me).
Your invention can be in the argument you choose, the way you structure it and the stories you use to support it.
Memorising
Memorising relevant passages can be effective. The chances of you stumbling means the audience will be with you and cheer you on.
However, that is not the main meaning of this point. Memorising means getting away from your notes. You remember the flow of your argument and put it into your own words.
This is impressive albeit difficult to do. Especially in a long talk, it is easy to get off the point or forget the order of the argument.
But memorising frees your eyes to make contact with your audience, so that you can gauge how the talk is going down.
Delivery
And this brings us to how you deliver your message. How you stand, what you wear, your tone of voice and the words you use to communicate.
This is an enormous topic and the value of training in public speaking is you receive feedback about how you are coming across and what you can do to improve it.
Figures of speech
Finally, figures of speech are what is normally understood as rhetoric although a small part of what you do when you deliver a speech.
They often involve some form of repetition. If you can vary the rhythm of your speech and include memorable turns of phrase, it will impress people. You can’t rely on these techniques alone because on their own they don’t add up to an effective speech. However, they can be used to spice up a speech and are effective when used to support the other elements in your rhetoric.
This is a fairly standard list of the elements of rhetoric. What do you find to be the most important consideration when you are speaking to market something?