Do you know how long it takes you to build trust with your audience? 

How many messages go back and forth before you’ve truly built a relationship online? 

I’m guessing the answer is quite some time. 

But imagine if you could stand right in front of your ideal audience for just 1 hour, and build as much trust as you do in months of LinkedIn messages? 

What if you could position yourself as an expert and generate numerous leads all in the space of 1 presentation? 

Speaking with Brett from the Modern-Day Marketer, we unpicked how you can use speaking as a marketing strategy, and here’s the best bits. 

Every 12 weeks, you make a plan by following the OTTER framework, which is as follows: 

There's some shocking research that suggests that 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% in their second year, and 50% fail after five years.*  

5 years in, having just had my most successful year yet, I’m sharing some marketing lessons to help you work towards those similar milestones.  

The first might surprise you … 

When trying out any new marketing strategy, it’s essential that you focus in on why it Is you’re doing it, and what you’re hoping to achieve. 

Don’t say to yourself: 

Instead, think: 

Your oTTER may look something like this:

When you’re trying out something new, you want it to achieve results. 

In the marketing world we’re overwhelmed with training and things we want to learn – you could end up 12 weeks into training and yet to take even a step closer to where you want to be. 

When you have clear objectives for what you want to achieve, your training and the time you’re dedicating to learning and development is much more intentional. 

You can dedicate one 12-week period to working towards a few objectives, rather than trying to tackle it all at once. 

When I used to train for rowing races, I had to train my strength, fitness, flexibility, mindset and nutrition, but I never did it all at once! 

It’s the same with your marketing, you can’t tackle all the skillsets at once – mastering TikTok, Facebook, SEO, blogs and speaking is not possible if you’re doing it all on your own. 

Using the OTTER, you can focus on the right things at the right time, and not be overwhelmed and left exactly where you started. 

As with anything, getting started is the hardest part. With speaking, the first step is to listen. 

If you don’t listen to your customers, you don’t understand what language they use, the tone of voice that they use, how they’re describing their problems, how they’re talking about the goals and their vision. 

You’re marketing from a place of assumption, and that’s just too risky. 

So, start listening, start connecting the dots, and use that as your starting point to say what you want to say, by paying attention to the people you want to speak to.  

If you’re like me, you can start by finding personal links with people – whether that’s rowing, cycling, the grand prix, or the fact that we wear the same Garmin watch! 

It’s about focussing on progress, not perfection, and you have to start somewhere. 

If you want to hear the full story on how I leverage speaking as a marketing superpower – catch the full podcast here.