The mistake almost every conference speaker makes

Most conference speakers turn their session into a sales pitch. Brendan Farnand, co-founder and Chief Evangelist at Knak, has spoken at Adobe Summit, Salesforce Connections, and the MarTech Conference. He explains why a full product pitch on stage falls flat, and how to make your talk relevant enough that the audience leaves with something they can actually use at their organization. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro, and today I'm talking with Brendan Ferdinand, the co-founder and chief evangelist at NAC. Brendan spent the past year talking with more than 100 enterprise marketing teams, including OpenAI, Google, Stripe, and AT&T, to understand where AI helps, where it breaks, and what separates companies experimenting with AI from the ones that are actually shipping better marketing. And today Brendan's going to explain how marketing campaigns should function in the AI era. You've spoken at Adobe Summit, Salesforce Connections, the Martech Conference, some pretty notable speaking opportunities. What's the one mistake that you've seen that conference speakers make that they can avoid?

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  Yeah, um, too many dad jokes, probably.

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  No such thing.

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  Right. You're right. There's that's you're talking to the wrong guy about that. But yeah, I know. I think the worst thing that I see and and look, I've I've I've I've been guilty of it is is definitely, you know, doing a full on sales pitch in front of your audience. I think that can be cringey at best. And I I try to avoid doing that. I really work when I, you know, get up on stage. I want to make sure that whatever I'm saying or whatever my guest speaker is saying as well is is really relevant to people. And they can actually bring something back with them, you know, that is useful to their organization.

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  I think that's like my biggest focus now. So yeah, I think the worst part is, you know, you walk out of a of a conference session going like, oh, my gosh, they're just pitching their their their tool from top to bottom. And I was just watching their roadmap presentation all the time. That's no fun.

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  Knock, knock.

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  Who's who's there?

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  Interrupting cow.

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  Interrupting.

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  Moo. There's no such thing as too many dad jokes.

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  Oh, no.

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  There you go. All right. That wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Brendan Ferdinand, the co-founder and chief evangelist at KNAK for joining us. If you'd like to contact Brendan, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com. Or you could visit his company's website, which is KNAK.com, K-N-A-K.com. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or visit us on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed every week. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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  Thanks for listening to the MarTech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iHearEverything.com.