As any marketing guru, like Bill Bronchick, will tell you, making a splash with your marketing presentation is all about your ability to sell the presentation and product. In other words, when giving a marketing presentation, a big part of the success of the presentation depends on your ability, and the willingness to market yourself. This means that you should consider your confidence as part of the presentation, in fact, it might be the most important part of the presentation. Here are a few tips to make sure that you can market yourself and your next presentation effectively.

1. Do Your Homework

Nothing can make up for being well prepared. Make sure you leave yourself plenty of time to plan out your talk, prepare your props, slides, or materials, and practice your pitch. This is not a matter of style. Some people need only a brief outline to give a presentation, while some need extensive pre-written notes. This is not about which kind of person you are. Both kinds can be equally successful. This is about knowing how much work you must to do be fully prepared.

You may also consider doing a little research on the people in the room if they are new or unfamiliar to you. It’s always a good idea to know the specialties of anyone that you’re pitching to. This can help you create a meaningful presentation and help you target your pitch to the needs of the audience.

2. Don’t Start from Scratch

You can’t turn confidence on and off before and after a presentation. In order to feel truly confident during an important event, you need to take steps to ensure that your confidence is based on reality and that you have worked your hardest and tried your best. These genuine feelings and expressions of confidence cannot be faked, and they can only be gained by building true confidence in your abilities through time.

Real confidence can be built by tracking your goals, taking care of yourself, continuing your education, and questioning your abilities. It cannot, however, but built in a day.

3. A Little Swagger Never Hurt

Although true feelings of confidence in yourself are priceless, there is a time and a place for “faking it until you make it,” according to Bill Bronchick. The time before a presentation is a great time to psych yourself up and get just a little overconfident. Sure, some people might call this arrogance, but if you can’t convince yourself, how can you expect others to believe in you?

The 2015 Toastmasters International World Champion of Public Speaking, Mohammed Qahtani, has some great tips on building a facade of arrogance before your big presentation. One of them is to believe that you are somehow above your audience.

Know Thyself

There is no way you can accomplish the above steps if you don’t have any self-awareness. How could you create swagger and arrogance if you don’t know how you appear to others? How could you prepare adequately if you don’t know your weak points or your strong points? How could you build your genuine confidence if you aren’t able to realistically measure yourself in your field or any other areas of your life?

The key to being confident is knowing yourself, no matter what the truth is, the point is that you can’t improve or compensate for any issues that you may have without a real ability to be introspective and figure out what is working well for you and what isn’t. Without this skill set, it doesn’t matter how great your PowerPoint slides look.