How to Choose the Right Speaking Opportunities to Grow Your Brand and Generate Leads
Liam Sandford
Liam Sandford is a public speaking coach, marketing leader, and 2x Best Selling Author, including the book Effortless Public Speaking. He helps introverted professionals and leaders take control of public speaking anxiety and use speaking to market themselves, build influence, and communicate with impact.
Choosing the right speaking opportunities is one of the most powerful ways to grow your brand, attract qualified leads, and build long term authority in your industry. But not every event or platform delivers the same results. To generate measurable impact, you need to focus on where your target audience spends time, which formats convert best, and how each form of public speaking fits into your overall marketing strategy.
Why Choosing the Right Speaking Opportunities Matters
Public speaking builds trust and visibility, but if you appear in the wrong places, you won’t get the outcomes that you are looking for. Every stage, event, and platform has its own audience and conversion potential. By aligning your speaking opportunities with your audience’s habits and your brand goals, you can turn each public speaking appearance into a predictable growth channel.
The right speaking opportunities do more than boost awareness. They generate leads, strengthen positioning in target industries, and create long lasting connections with your audience.
Event Speaking Opportunities: Building Authority in the Right Rooms
Live events and industry conferences are prime opportunities to showcase your expertise and position yourself as a thought leader. But the value of speaking is not just about standing on stage it is about being in the right room with the right audience. Choosing events where your target market, decision makers, or ideal clients are already gathered maximizes your visibility, influence, and potential for generating high quality leads. Every presentation, panel, or workshop becomes a chance to establish credibility, start meaningful conversations, and grow your brand in markets that matter most.
Focus on the Events Your Audience Attends
Before applying to speak, consider where your target audience actually goes for learning and inspiration. If you are targeting decision makers in B2B industries, conferences, trade shows, and industry summits are often the best places to engage. If your focus is B2C, local business events or brand sponsored panels may be more effective.
Start by researching event attendee demographics. Who attends? What topics get the most engagement? Who have previous speakers at the event been? Are your competitors attending? Look for alignment between the event theme and your area of expertise. Speaking to a room full of your potential customers is always more valuable than speaking to a general audience.
Evaluate Event Quality and Audience Fit
Not all events are equal. High profile conferences often provide strong credibility but limited speaking slots. Smaller niche events, on the other hand, can offer more meaningful conversations and higher conversion potential.
Consider:
Who is hosting the event (a trusted brand, media outlet, or trade association)
The average audience size and seniority level
Whether speaking slots are educational or promotional
Opportunities to capture leads or drive attendees to your landing pages
Speaking at well aligned events strengthens brand perception and opens doors to future opportunities within your target market.
Tie Event Speaking to Your ABM or Industry Strategy
If you follow an Account Based Marketing (ABM) model, event speaking can help you enter new industries or engage decision makers directly. Choose events that attract your target accounts or verticals. This allows you to connect with buyers early, build trust through value driven insights, and create conversations that feed directly into your sales pipeline.
Social Media Speaking: Using Digital Platforms to Grow Your Brand
Social media is your opportunity to reach the world at the click of a button. Using public speaking via video content on platforms where your target audience spends their time, you can build authority, increase visibility, and generate qualified leads. Choosing the right platform requires understanding where your audience engages, what content formats they prefer, and how your expertise can solve their challenges. Every post, live session, or video becomes an opportunity that reinforces your brand and drives measurable growth.
Identify Where Your Audience Spends Time Online
Before you decide where to focus, research which social platforms your audience actually uses. A B2B tech founder will likely engage on LinkedIn or YouTube, while a lifestyle brand’s audience may be more active on Instagram or TikTok.
Each platform offers a different kind of visibility. LinkedIn builds credibility through professional content, YouTube drives SEO and long form engagement, while Instagram and TikTok amplify short form storytelling that connects emotionally with audiences.
Your goal is to meet your audience where they already are, not where you prefer to post. For more information on this, check out the Ultimate Guide to Public Speaking in Marketing.
Choose the Right Speaking Format for Each Platform
LinkedIn: Go live with short expert sessions or join events. Share clips from your presentations and tag event organizers for social proof.
YouTube: Create bespoke videos for YouTube as well as repurposing your full presentations, keynote clips, or interviews. Ensure you are optimizing every video on YouTube for SEO purposes. This will help your discovery on YouTube, traditional search engines and in AI search results.
Instagram or TikTok: Create bespoke short form content that hooks and maintains attention, otherwise you will struggle to convert from these platforms. You can also share bite sized insights, behind the scenes moments, or audience Q&As from your event presentations.
Consistency matters more than production quality. Focus on value, personality, and helping your audience solve real problems.
Turn Social Media Engagement into Lead Generation
Use clear calls to action in every video or live session. Direct viewers to download a free resource, join your email list, or register for your next talk. Use tracking links such as UTM parameters to see which platforms and videos drive the most leads.
When your content resonates and your CTAs are relevant, social media speaking becomes an ongoing funnel for attracting new prospects and reinforcing brand trust.
Virtual Speaking Opportunities: Expanding Reach Through Digital Channels
Virtual speaking opportunities allow you to reach audiences far beyond physical events and traditional stages. Webinars, online panels, podcast interviews, and digital PR appearances provide a platform to showcase expertise, educate your audience, and generate leads from anywhere in the world. These opportunities are especially powerful for targeting niche markets, entering new industries, or supporting account based marketing strategies. By choosing the right virtual channels and tailoring your message to where your audience is active, you can amplify your brand, build authority, and convert engagement into meaningful business outcomes.
Webinars: Education and Engagement at Scale
Webinars are one of the most efficient virtual speaking opportunities for both awareness and lead generation. They combine live interaction with measurable data and audience insights.
When planning a webinar:
Collaborate with partners or brands that already serve your target audience
Choose a topic that solves a specific pain point
Include live polls and Q&A sessions to keep engagement high
Promote it through email, social media, and retargeting ads to attract quality leads
Record every webinar and repurpose it as evergreen content across all of your platforms for future audiences.
Podcasts: Build Authority and Long Term Visibility
Being a podcast guest is one of the fastest ways to reach new audiences. Podcasts allow you to share in depth stories and insights that demonstrate real expertise.
Look for podcasts with overlapping audiences and strong engagement. Smaller shows can still deliver high ROI if they attract the right listeners.
Prepare thoughtful talking points and provide the host with a trackable link or landing page for their audience. This makes it easy to measure conversions from each appearance.
Online Panels and PR Opportunities
Virtual panels and media interviews are ideal for thought leadership and credibility. They position you alongside industry experts and often reach audiences you might not access otherwise.
Use these opportunities to communicate your key message clearly. Avoid self promotion and focus instead on actionable insights and relevant data that helps the audience. After each panel, share highlights and quotes on your social channels to extend the reach.
Aligning Public Speaking Opportunities With Conversion Goals
Choosing speaking opportunities is not just about visibility or prestige. To maximize impact, every presentation, social media video, or virtual appearance should be aligned with clear conversion goals. Understanding where your target audience spends time, what challenges they face, and how they make decisions allows you to select opportunities that generate qualified leads, drive engagement, and move prospects through your marketing funnel. By aligning your speaking strategy with measurable business outcomes, you turn every opportunity into a powerful tool for growth and brand authority.
Match Opportunities to Your Buyer Journey
Each type of speaking opportunity fits a different stage of the buyer journey.
Events and conferences: Best for top and middle funnel awareness.
Webinars and virtual events: Perfect for middle funnel education and engagement.
Podcasts and social content: Great for long term nurturing and brand recall.
Choose opportunities that align with your objectives whether that is generating new leads, nurturing existing ones, or positioning your brand as a thought leader in a new vertical.
Measure ROI From Every Speaking Channel
Treat every speaking engagement like a campaign. Track key metrics including:
Number of leads captured
Conversion rate from each appearance
Website traffic from UTM links or QR codes
Follower growth and engagement after appearances
Over time, these insights will help you prioritize the platforms and events that deliver the highest ROI.
TL;DR: Choosing the Right Speaking Opportunities to Grow Your Brand
Selecting the right public speaking opportunities means focusing on where your audience actually spends time and how each platform supports your brand growth, lead generation, and conversion goals.
Prioritize events and platforms where your ideal customers or buyer personas are most active
Match speaking formats to your marketing funnel awareness, engagement, or conversion
Use social media videos and webinars as digital stages to build trust and attract leads
Leverage virtual channels like podcasts and panels to expand reach and authority
Track ROI using UTM parameters, CRM data, and engagement metrics to refine your strategy
More From Liam Sandford
Read my book: Effortless Public Speaking. Learn how to speak confidently, reduce stress, and turn public speaking into your competitive advantage. These actionable public speaking tips will help you improve your presentation skills for any audience.
Join the free 5-day email course: Get daily lessons packed with practical strategies to deliver effective presentations and speak confidently. This course is designed to build your public speaking skills step by step. Sign up below: