8 Ways to Engage your Audience When Presenting

How do you engage your audience in a presentation? How do you connect with your audience when presenting? What are different ways to engage an audience during a presentation?

Meet the Author: Steve Jacobs
Steve is a partner at Benjamin Ball Associates, leads the writing team and is an outstanding coach and trainer. Steve has more than 25 years’ experience in corporate and financial public relations. He was a founding partner of the strategic comms division of FTI and until recently was head of comms and IR at Breedon Group plc, the UK’s largest quoted independent construction materials group.  Follow Steve on LinkedIn or visit the contact page. 

What Does Connecting With Your Audience Mean?

When it comes to business presentations, we tend to focus on the facts and figures – the hard data that support our message.  While these are important, they’re not the thing that matters most.

Why? Because unless you engage your audience in your presentation, your presentation will fail.

Making an emotional connection with your audience is essential if you want them to remember your presentation and act on it. When you engage your audience, you become a better presenter.

What Happens When You Don’t Engage Your Audience

If you don’t engage your audience during a presentation, you risk losing their attention—and with it, your entire message.

When you fail to connect with them, their minds wander, and they’ll miss the key points. Without interaction—whether through questions, storytelling, or compelling visuals—your presentation will feel dull, making it harder for them to remember what you said.

Worse, if they’re disengaged, they might form a negative impression of you and question your credibility. So avoid the risk of a pitch that falls flat, a team that tunes out, or a conference talk that’s quickly forgotten. The truth is, if you don’t make them care, even your most important ideas won’t land.

Try these tips to better connect with your audience.

How to Engage an Audience When Presenting: why emotion matters

Before we explore how to use emotion in business presentations, it’s important to understand why it matters.  As human beings, we’re wired to respond to things emotionally.  We remember experiences that made us feel something, whether it’s joy, fear, excitement, or anger.  

Emotions also play a crucial role in decision-making – when we make business decisions, we often rely on our gut instinct or intuition.

When you appeal to your audience’s emotions, you create a connection with them that goes beyond the words on your slides.  You’re tapping into their values, beliefs and aspirations, and showing them why your message matters.  

This can make your presentation more memorable, as people are more likely to remember how you made them feel than what you said.  As a result, you become much more persuasive. Let’s see how you can connect with your audience during your presentation.

These are lessons learned from the last 15 years of coaching business executives in presentation skills.

How to Connect With Your Audience when Presenting

Outlined below are some top tips from our coaching team based on what we have observed over the years. Each of these tips will help you with better presentations.

Let’s review each of these audience engagement tools in turn:

1. Know your audience to connect

The first step in engaging an audience is understanding your audience.  What motivates them?  What are their pain points?  What are their values, goals and aspirations? Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, you can tailor your presentation so that it resonates with them emotionally.   

For example, if your audience is relatively young and instinctively concerned about sustainability, you may choose to dedicate some of your talk to your organisation’s impact on the environment.

2. Tell a story to engage your audience

One of the most effective ways to engage your audience is through storytelling.  Stories are powerful because they tap into our emotions and help us relate to the experiences of others.  

When you tell a personal story, you’re giving your audience a glimpse into your world and inviting them to join you on your journey.  It’s also when you’re telling stories that your audience is most attentive.  Learn how to tell great stories by visiting themoth.org.

3. Use images and metaphors

Sometimes your audience will need a little help getting to grips with abstract concepts or complicated facts.  Metaphors, similes and analogies are useful tools for bringing these to life.  

They help to make complex ideas more relatable and make your message more visual.  For example, if your business is a diversified group, you might say, “Our companies are a flotilla, all different, but all sailing together to the same destination.”  Or, describing your latest product, you might say, “If the last generation of our product was a top-end Mercedes, this is a Lamborghini.”

Why Pick Benjamin Ball Associates for Your Presentation Coaching

At Benjamin Ball Associates, we’ve been coaching business people to improve their business communication skills for over 15 years.  Our coaching is fast and effective.  We work with individuals and with companies, one-to-one and in groups.  Call us today to learn more.

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”

Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

Our most popular training courses include:

• Presentation Coaching
• Public Speaking Coaching
• Investor Pitch Support and Coaching

Trusted by some of the most successful companies globally

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

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4. Be authentic and make it personal

Audiences can tell when you’re faking it.  They’re far less likely to connect with you if they sense you’re not being genuine.  To connect with your audience speak from the heart, be passionate, let your own personal conviction and experience carry your presentation. 

You’ll be much more relatable – and people will be much more likely to remember what you say – if you don’t put on an act, but are simply yourself.

5. Show emotive visuals

They say a picture paints a thousand words, so if you want to connect with your audience, take the short cut: show them a powerful, emotional image. 

For example, illustrate the impact of climate change with a photo of an empty mud flat where a lake used to be, a hurricane-devastated town, or a seal swimming through a sea of floating plastic.  And if you need to use graphs and charts, make sure they’re designed so that their message is clear and compelling.

6. Use humour

If you can make your audience smile or laugh, you’ll make an instant emotional connection.  It will help break down barriers and make your message more memorable.  Don’t try telling a string of jokes – professional comedians are professionals for a reason. 

And don’t try too hard: just draw on your experience, tell some amusing stories from your own life, or humorous anecdotes from someone else’s – provided they’re relevant to your audience and reinforce your message. Humour is a powerful way to connect with your audience.

7. Be enthusiastic to connect with your audience

How to attract audience attention? Speak passionately and enthusiastically to show your audience how much you care about what you’re saying.  Use both your voice and body language to convey strongly-felt emotion.  Vary your pace of delivery, use animated gestures, adapt the volume of your voice to the importance of the subject.  Maintain eye contact – looking at a different member of the audience each time you make a point.  And above all, smile!

8. Use rhetorical questions to engage your audience

Rhetorical questions create curiosity and encourage active participation from the audience, making them more engaged in your presentation. By posing thought-provoking questions, you can stimulate their thinking, generate interest, and create a connection between your topic and their personal experiences. This technique helps to captivate your audience’s attention and enhance their overall experience during the presentation.

So, why should you use rhetorical questions to engage your audience? Let me tell you…..

What to do Next to Engage Your Audience?

Building real audience engagement skills takes practise. These are skills that you need to be an effective presenter.

At Benjamin Ball Associates we’ve been helping business executives build these core communication skills for over 15 years. We can help you with public speaking training and presentation coaching. Get in touch today and we’ll help you engage your audiences like never before.

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Why Choose Us:
Transform your pitches and presentations with tailored coaching

We can help you present brilliantly. Thousands of people have benefitted from our tailored in-house coaching and advice – and we can help you too.

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”

Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

For 15+ years we’ve been the trusted choice for leading businesses and executives throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East. We’ll help you improve corporate presentations through presentation coaching, public speaking training and expert advice on pitching to investors.

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Unlock your full potential and take your presentations to the next level.

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

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FAQ: How to Engage an Audience During a Presentation

For expert training, speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com.

Speak to an expert. Get a free consultation