To write a teaser pitch deck, entrepreneurs must carefully balance brevity and impact, creating a narrative that captures attention and leaves a lasting impression.
To write a teaser pitch deck that resonates with your audience, you must understand your audience.
Tailor your message to resonate with the specific interests, preferences, and expectations of potential investors. Research their investment portfolio, previous investments, and areas of expertise to align your pitch with their interests.
A targeted approach increases the chances of grabbing their attention from the start.
Emphasize Clarity in the Executive Summary
The executive summary is the teaser’s focal point, and clarity is paramount.
In a few concise sentences, clearly articulate your company’s mission, unique value proposition, and the problem it solves. Investors should grasp the essence of your venture effortlessly.
Avoid industry jargon or overly technical language—simplicity and clarity are your allies.
Showcase a Compelling Market Opportunity
Paint a vivid picture of the market opportunity your venture addresses.
Clearly define the target market, emphasize its growth potential, and highlight relevant trends. Investors want to see that you have a deep understanding of the market dynamics and can capitalize on emerging opportunities.
Moreover, use compelling data points and insights to support your claims.
Define the Problem and Present the Solution
Craft a succinct narrative around the problem your product or service solves.
Articulate the pain points your target audience faces, setting the stage for introducing your innovative solution. Focus on the uniqueness and effectiveness of your product, highlighting its potential to address the identified problem in a way that competitors don’t.
Showcase Traction and Milestones
Investors are drawn to ventures with a proven track record. Thus, showcase key milestones and achievements.
Highlight user growth, customer acquisitions, partnerships, or any other notable accomplishments that validate your venture’s potential. Tangible evidence of traction builds credibility and instills confidence in investors.
Introduce Your Stellar Team
Investors invest in people as much as they invest in ideas.
Introduce your team with concise and relevant bios, emphasizing their expertise and experience. Showcase how the team’s skills align with the challenges your venture faces. A strong, capable team is a reassuring factor for potential investors, demonstrating that your venture is well-positioned for success.
Craft an Engaging Narrative
Storytelling is a powerful tool for capturing and retaining attention. Use it to write a pitch deck that captures your audience’s attention.
Develop a narrative that communicates facts and creates an emotional connection. Share the journey of your venture, emphasizing key turning points, challenges, and triumphs.
A compelling story adds a memorable and relatable dimension to your pitch.
Pay Attention to Design and Visual Elements
The visual appeal of your teaser pitch deck is a silent influencer.
Choose a clean, professional layout, incorporating engaging visuals and graphics. Consistent branding, with colors and fonts aligned with your company’s image, adds a polished touch.
A well-designed deck enhances readability and leaves a positive impression.
For better or for worse, 2020 has been a year of great change. The COVID-19 pandemic flipped the entire world on its head, drastically changing how we live our daily lives. One of the most significant changes has been the global shift to more remote work setups. While the adjustment was drastic for most offices, many employees welcomed the opportunity. After all, working from home is more comfortable than being confined in an office all day.
After several months of remote work, however, the reality of the situation has set in. People are feeling burnt out. What was once an exciting working experience has now become routine, and like most routines, if not managed correctly, has begun to take its toll on people. The honeymoon phase is over but work still needs to get done.
Considering the pandemic still greatly limits one’s movements, what can be done about remote work burnout?
Structure Your Workdays
The most immediate adjustment to working from home is that it tears down traditional work environments. The distance between your office and home is now non-existent. The problem with losing such boundaries is that it makes it easy to overwork yourself. Back then, the act of leaving the office and going home was a clear way to switch off your brain from “work mode.” Now that you both live and work in the same place, it can feel like the “work mode” switch is always on.
That feeling of being “always on” is what quickly leads to burnout. This can cause you to slip into bad work habits. Considering the distractions around you at home, it has become easier to be neglectful about work duties. The irony of that situation is that putting off work will only force you to work more hours than you should. Procrastinating only means you’ll need to spend more time catching up later.
In cases like this, you simply need to be stricter on yourself about your work hours. Allot a specific amount of time per day to be in “work mode” just as if you were still going to the office. Use that mental clock to push yourself to finish your work duties for the day.
Make Time for Hobbies
Having work-life balance is as important as ever in these unique times. That requires good time management. By switching yourself off from “work mode”, you can start spending time on hobbies you’re passionate about. Whether its painting, exercising or reading, these hobbies play a crucial role in keeping your mind balanced. Especially after longs days working, it feels like a great payoff to spend time on something that relaxes you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
From a practical standpoint, keeping your mind balanced greatly benefits your work productivity. Hobbies are great for de-stressing yourself while keeping your mind sharp. If you’re starting to feel like your old routine has started to get monotonous, try out something new for a change. We all have some extra time on our hands these days. A new hobby will also give you something to look forward to once you log off work.
Give Yourself a Break
While travelling may be off the table these days, it doesn’t mean taking some time off work won’t do you some good. You may still have to stay home, but at least you’ll be giving yourself some time to recharge. It can be anything from a day to a week, but use the time to balance yourself out, especially if you’ve been feeling like work is absorbing too much of your energy. Treat it as a break from the regular routine that’s been wearing you down.
Even pre-pandemic, “staycations” were great for spending more time with things that bring you joy. More time with your family, a good book, a few movies, these are all great ways to make the most of a break at home. Time away from you’re your routine stressors will give you an immediate boost and get you ready for when the time comes to start work once again.
Outsource Design Work
It’s important to remember that you’re not the only one working remotely these days. Even before things went into flux, the gig economy was rising fast across nearly all industries. The current situation just pushed both freelancers and companies alike to make rapid adjustments in their workflows to offer more services remotely.
If you ever feel out of your depth with work, reach out to outsource services. Whether you need graphic design, copy work or even animation, there is a vast number of professionals today willing to help. These collaborations will ultimately help lighten your load while also giving you a tremendous resource for future projects.
SlideGenius, Your Invaluable Partner
As a presentation design company since 2012, we’ve experienced our fair share of work and productivity struggles. What pulls us together is our shared passion for helping our clients succeed. From our artists, writers, web developers, animators, and project managers, we utilize our expertise in presentation design to spark invaluable growth.
At SlideGenius, we are eager to be your partner during this challenging time. Contact us today for all your presentation needs!
In today’s world, distance is no longer an issue when it comes to effective communication. With web conferences or webinars, you no longer have to hop on a plane to sit in meetings with those in another time zone.
But there’s more to webinars than just talking in front of a webcam, especially if you want to share crucial information or leave a lasting impression. It’s important that you enhance your audience’s experience with a webinar PowerPoint deck.
When you’re presenting in front a live audience, you’re physically available to command their attention. Your PowerPoint slides serve a secondary purpose. However, when you’re presenting online, your webinar PowerPoint deck is the main attraction.
With that in mind, consider these specific tips to make sure that your webinar PowerPoint speaks through the computer screen.
The Benefits of Hosting a Webinar
The perks of hosting a webinar abound—that’s why businesses can’t get enough of it. Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy from using this marketing tool to your advantage:
Save on costs. No matter how big your company is, you still need to use your resources wisely. Webinars are a good investment because they don’t cost much. All you need is a stable internet connection to hold one and a few active online platforms to promote it.
Maximize time. Unlike in physical events like seminars or conferences, you don’t need months or weeks to prepare for a webinar. A few days of preparation would suffice. You can also save time from traveling since you can conduct a webinar from the comforts of your home or office.
Repurpose content. Webinars are versatile tools for marketing. You can turn them into webcasts once the event is over. You can also repurpose webinar content into a blog post or website copy. If you’re able to record your sessions, you can keep them in your knowledgebase for future reference.
Eliminate physical barriers. One of the conveniences of hosting a webinar is that anyone can participate in it, regardless of location or time zone. Speakers are also free to interact with participants through real-time polls and chat boxes.
Get feedback. You can immediately gauge the success of your webinar by sending out a survey to the participants. The feedback can clue you in as to the strengths and weaknesses of your event.
Can a Webinar Help Reach Your Business Goals?
You’d think the answer to that question is an unwavering yes, but it actually depends on the goals you aim to achieve. While it’s true that webinars are an effective marketing tool, they only work in certain contexts. So, before planning one, make sure it will leave a positive impact on your business.
What exactly are webinars for? For one, they’re a good training and outreach tool. You can use them to share your expertise to your target audience. Webinars are also effective for getting the word out to your customers when rolling out a new product. When done right, it can help you move customers further down the sales funnel and reposition yourself as an industry thought leader.
Primary Goals and Purposes of Webinars
There are many reasons why marketers include webinars in their business efforts. The following are the three most important.
To educate customers. According to ClickMeeting, 85% of webinars are designed to educate existing and potential clients. If there’s one thing webinars should do, it’s to offer a novel perspective. They ought to satiate people’s desire to learn new things. Webinars are also a tool for businesses to solidify their credibility and establish themselves as experts in the field.
To promote brand awareness. The more successful your webinar is, the more people will learn about it. The louder the noise it makes, the more people will check it out. Hosting a webinar can expand your audience reach every time you bring something fresh and interesting to the table.
To generate/convert new business. The same infographic by ClickMeeting claimed that 77% of webinars are designed to attract new leads. With a successful webinar, you can reach more business prospects and cultivate them through the sales process.
Planning a Successful Webinar
Planning is a critical step in any type of campaign, including hosting webinars. To produce a successful experience, you need to lay out all the steps leading to the actual event.
It might be tempting to jump straight to the promotion stage, especially if you have a winning topic and a celebrated speaker, but no excuse can justify skipping the planning part.
Without a solid plan in place, you run the risk of delivering a lackluster presentation that’ll only prove to be a waste of time, effort, and money.
Before hosting a webinar, you need to find out first if there’s even a demand for it.
Conduct a survey in your audience circle, and find out if enough people are interested to join your session. Once you’re sure that the audience likes this format, proceed to the preparation phase.
Here’s what you’ll need to do:
Craft the content. Kick off by briefly introducing yourself, the other speakers or panelists, and the companies involved. Tell the audience about the topic you’re going to tackle, and give them a preview of what’s going to happen. You should be able to grab their attention during the first few minutes. In the body of your content, present a maximum of three ideas that you can expound on. Finally, finish off with a memorable statement, a call to action, and a courtesy message for the participants.
Set the time and duration. Find out what works best for your attendees. If you’ve hosted webinars befor, take note of when people start to drop off (if they do) and plan accordingly. If you have foreign prospects, make sure that you find a common time that’s convenient for them and for the local participants.
Determine the panelists. Invite someone who can communicate the message best. You can collaborate with other brands to add greater value to your webinar. Have someone who is familiar with your content and who can help keep your presentation flowing smoothly.
Prepare your tools. Obviously, you need technology to set up your event. Find a platform that can host your webinar, and make sure that your Internet connection is reliable enough to stream it. It’s also important to get a good phone headset, ideally a cordless one, so that you can stand up and move while talking.
Create a landing page. Make sure it has sufficient details about the webinar to make the prospects excited about signing up. Include a registration form that requests information from your attendees. The most important fields are the name and e-mail address. You can also ask for the company they’re affiliated with. Any more than these three can make your prospects less likely to sign up.
Creating a Presentation that Speaks through the Screen
The Structure
It’s important that your webinar PowerPoint follows a structure with a logical flow. Begin with a quick introduction, delve in the main body of your topic, and end with a concise conclusion.
Introduction: Include slides introducing yourself and other presenters in the webinar. Include a picture and relevant credentials so your audience can feel like they’re not just talking to a computer screen. It’s also useful if you can include a slide that explains the logistics of your webinar.
Body: The body of your webinar PowerPoint deck will depend on the topic you’re discussing. Whatever it is, keep your discussion clear but brief. Stick to discussing only one point at a time. There are plenty of ways to arrange the body of your webinar PowerPoint, just make sure that each point is structured into main segments.
Conclusion: The conclusion of your webinar PowerPoint should be short and sweet. Don’t drag it out by repeating everything you said before. Instead, create a slide that summarizes your main points. To encourage your audience to participate in a discussion, include an action plan or a call-to-action question.
Design for Audience Engagement
Your webinar PowerPoint should be efficiently designed for online sharing. Lags in your presentation look unprofessional and can be frustrating — and disengaging — for your audience.
Opt for a simpler, sleeker design. As always, avoid using too much text and bullet points. Most importantly, avoid using huge picture files, videos, and animations which might cause problems for connectivity. This doesn’t mean you should go completely without graphics. Just make sure the file sizes aren’t too large or are compressed before sharing.
Consider the following when designing your webinar PowerPoint deck:
When explaining something that requires several steps, consider making use of “build” slides. This is a type of animation that allows you to reveal a slide bit by bit as you talk. Breaking content up with build slides is key for keeping virtual audiences engaged. Here’s an example:
Visualizing data properly is paramount for engaging all audiences, but even more so for online audiences. Make sure the visualizations you use tie in to your narrative and overarching message for maximum effect.
A Harvard Department of Psychology study showed that people tend to characterize presentations with animation as quantifiably more “dynamic, visually compelling, and distinctive. Make sure you’re doing it right.
Make use of PowerPoint’s SmartArt graphics to illustrate key points without having to use complicated images.
For the background of your slides, opt for a solid color or gradient effect. Lower quality images might not be big enough to fill the entire background. And if you resize them, your background will look distorted and pixelated.
Tips for Hosting a Successful Webinar Experience
1) Make It Personal
Speaking to a computer screen won’t engage your virtual audience. Talk through the slides to present and persuade people as if they were there in person. Don’t let your monitor hinder you from successfully delivering your webinar. Instead, make your talk personal as if doing a one-on-one conversation with a close friend or colleague.
2) Be Creative
Virtual audiences are more likely to wander off and multi-task while listening to your online conference. No matter how good your speaking skills are, they can still get bored with your discussion. Keep them engaged by incorporating creative visuals in your deck. Use a combination of interactive images, questions, and short video clips to catch their focus and heighten their interest in your business presentation.
3) Use Effective Pauses
Hosting a webinar is much like public speaking – it requires appropriate pauses and pacing. Effective, short pauses allow you to steadily control the discussion’s flow. You can use noticeable silences to give your listeners a chance to think about what you’ve just said. Choose a healthy pace so you don’t look like you’re rushing through your entire presentation.
4) Avoid Filler Words
Most speakers use filler words “uh,” “um,” and “you know” to make everything they say one long sentence.This presentation habit is also a big taboo when delivering a webinar. Keep these words to a minimum to not alienate your audience from you and your message. This can cause a big dent in your credibility, and should definitely be avoided.
Conclusion
Once you’ve hosted your own webinar, you’ll understand why it’s considered by many businesses as an effective customer acquisition channel. Webinars offer the perfect platform for attracting new leads and nurturing existing client relationships to a more responsive level.
Follow these presentation tips to facilitate effective learning and engagement across varied online audiences, and give your business a higher profile.
A lot of time and resources can be spent crafting beautiful and effective presentations.
After all, they’re the cornerstone of sales and marketing efforts—and made right, are highly effective in driving success.
But we don’t just mean in slide deck format. Because whether it’s a presentation that gets used frequently or not, hidden inside it is a treasure trove of additional content possibilities.
They just need to be teased out.
Repurposing presentations is a great strategy any business can take advantage of.
Don’t worry, it’s not lazy or unoriginal to reuse good content. On the contrary. It actually offers your business tremendous benefits!
You’ll get consistency across collateral and conserve your marketing budget for other important projects. Plus, you’ll have assets at-the-ready, enabling you to roll out marketing efforts quicker and with better consistency.
The key is in repurposing presentations properly, which this posts addresses.
Use Individual Slides as Images
If your presentation was designed with best practices in mind, it’s sure to have more than a few visually appealing slides.
Don’t be afraid to take these individual slides out of the deck and use them as images alongside other marketing collateral.
Images for Blog Posts
Blog posts are a great example.
If your deck has a slide about product benefits, use it as a visual aid for a blog post about that product.
Adding visual elements like images and videos (more on videos later) to blog posts enhances reader experience.
Just like for presentations, visual aids increase engagement, reinforce concepts (when done correctly), and ultimately keep readers reading — remember, the length of time readers spend on your posts is one of the most important SEO signals search engines pay attention to.
For example, you can see how the second slide in the following Zillow presentation could be re-purposed as a supporting image for a blog post covering the top real estate markets:
Taking a few benefits-driven slides from the deck and using them as visuals on these types of web pages is the perfect way to capture visitor intrigue and answer basic questions.
One way to do this is to transform individual slides into a beautiful downloadable sell sheet and offer it on pertinent product or services pages to measure user intent.
The best part about this is that your slide deck is already branded, making them a seamless fit for your website.
Images for Social Media Posts & Promotional Ad Campaigns
Another great place to use slides as images is on social media.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are all visually-driven platforms (and we all know that posts with images and videos see much higher engagement rates than text-based posts).
The right presentation slides can be a quick and easy way to populate your feed with social-ready graphics. They convey meaningful messaging in a branded way—all you need to do is come up with snappy post copy and crop the images appropriately.
For example, with a bit of editing, any one of the following slides could be used as Caterpillar’s LinkedIn “pinned” post, which the company isn’t taking advantage of (at least at the time this article was published):
The pinned post can link to a case study, a blog post on Caterpillar’s recent social responsibility efforts, an industry guide…you get the idea.
Heck, even Caterpillar’s LinkedIn cover photo can be revamped using the first slide in the group above.
Don’t forget about PPC and social ads, too.
Whether you’re running a brand awareness campaign or retargeting to existing customers, branded and benefits-driven visuals will boost the success of your ad campaign. Just keep in mind that some social media platforms (Facebook especially) don’t like text-heavy ad images, so you’ll probably need to make some edits to the slides first.
Convert Your Presentation into a Beautiful Infographic (or collection of infographics)
A good slide deck conveys everything a person needs to know about a topic.
If you’re pitching a product or service, the deck will have robust data and analysis to project these benefits to people.
This type of data is also ideal for infographics.
You may not realize it, but your presentation likely already includes the building blocks for an infographic (or two).
Start with one big infographic. This one might take a little scrolling on the part of a customer, but it’ll be worth it! A comprehensive infographic will tell them everything they need to know about your industry, product, service, or brand story in one condensed image.
There’s no need for a 30-slide deck—a 30-second infographic can sum it all up.
Bite-sized infographics are also valuable. Pick a point and create a smaller infographic that harps on this one facet of the presentation. These mini infographics are great for social sharing, email blasts, and ad buys. They’re digestible in seconds and make a bold statement in just as little time.
Whether you create a big, engaging infographic or parcel presentation data out into smaller concepts, the goal is the same: Lead generation. Infographics are great lead-gen tools, and they’re readily borne from a well-made sales and marketing presentation.
Here are some great examples of infographics crafted from information in presentations:
Think about the difference between manually clicking through slides and having them play automatically every 8-10 seconds, with a transition in-between. That’s a video!
It sounds cheesy, but actually has a ton of practical applications.
Company Lobby Videos
Do the TV screens in your lobby need a content refresh?
If any of your presentations illustrate your company’s origin story, purpose or values, convert it into a video and add it to the content carousel that’s running in your company lobby.
Here’s an example of a a video created from re-purposed slides. You can see how it could be used as an “About Us” video in a company communal or waiting area:
Convert a Webinar Deck into a Video
Remember that slideshow you used for that educational webinar?
Record the voiceover, sync it up to the slideshow in a video, and:
disseminate it in a customer newsletter
upload it to a video-sharing site (like YouTube and Wistia), or
“gate” it behind a lead-generation offer (if it’s valuable enough) and advertise it on social media
The possibilities are truly endless.
Share on Video-sharing Sites
As stated above, whatever you decide to do with your video, make sure to upload it to sites like YouTube (you’ll reap the SEO benefits from the world’s second-largest search engine), Vimeo, Wistia, and other video-sharing sites for easy and extra exposure.
Internal Training Videos
The same goes for a training video for internal teams.
With videos, people can pause, rewind and play at half or double speed in video format, making it easier to follow along and retain information.
Product/Service Videos
Another great slideshow-to-video idea is to extract individual slides and combine them into a targeted short video for a product or service page.
These videos don’t have to be more than 30 seconds and can play automatically alongside product listings, in social feeds, or in standalone video ads.
Social Media “Stories“
Finally, there’s social media to consider.
Video is huge on social platforms! Facebook and Instagram in particular reward video content with more exposure, which can bring much-needed attention to your product.
Adding these short product videos to the “stories” feature of these platforms only serves to increase exposure to them.
Convert Your Presentation into a Free (or Lead-Generating) eBook
On-the-go readers appreciate having access to downloadable content they can take with them and read on their own time.
That’s why eBooks and guides are still popular content assets.
So, take the slides you’ve already designed, combine them with existing blog posts on the same topic, and bring them together in an informative eBook!
Naturally, the most useful eBooks or guides will come from presentations that are more “educational” in nature. For example, if your CEO recently gave a keynote presentation on the trends of the industry your company operates in, this is perfect content to be re-purposed into a beautiful downloadable industry report.
eBooks don’t have to be long—under 10 pages is common, and they’re great for showcasing your expertise, improving brand exposure, and establishing you as a credible resource.
Offer an eBook for free on your website as supporting content or charge a small fee on Amazon Kindle (only if the content is valuable enough!) for people to tap into that knowledge.
Finally, consider offering it as a free download after someone provides their email address. It’s a tried and true lead-gen solution that’ll help you capitalize on your marketing collateral.
Here’s an excerpt from an eBook we created from a slide deck on data visualization:
Back in 2011, fresh out of college, I worked for an advertising agency in New York City as an account manager.
It was one of the most stressful jobs I’ve ever had.
One of my responsibilities was overseeing the creation of my clients’ pitch decks, which — unsurprisingly — weren’t considered “mission critical” deliverables for the creative team.
There was never time to be idle; we were always on the go, brainstorming, producing content, and running to client meetings. The job was stressful but we were fortunate to have the right people that were easy to work with, passionate, and fun.
Over the next year though, the team began to thin. Some members left for bigger opportunities, others were poached by competing agencies, and some even started their own businesses.
Eventually, most of our veterans in the creative department were gone and the empty seats were filled with junior art directors and copywriters.
I remember being worried about how things would unfold without some of the key employees I had come to rely on. Everyone had to step up.
The creative team — consisting mostly of junior employees — were overwhelmed with pitch deck projects. At one point, they were unable to handle one of the decks assigned to them.
I remember it like it was yesterday…
As the account manager, I had to keep things moving and decided to just make the deck myself.
Never did I think creating the PowerPoint deck would stress me out. After all, I’d used the tool for years to present my school reports and projects. The pre-loaded animations were there for the choosing and I knew I could find some cool-looking pre-designed templates somewhere online and simply visit YouTube for “design hack” tutorials.
Boy was I wrong.
See, the problem is that we’ve all worked with PowerPoint for years (even decades) and we trick ourselves into thinking we know enough.
Think about that for a moment.
That’s basically saying because we’ve driven cars since we were 16 years old, we feel comfortable with how the machine works.
In reality, most of us only know how to get from Point A to Point B (in most cases), and keep ourselves comfortable along the way.
We don’t know how to make the car more fuel efficient, or give it more horsepower to make it faster, or how to adjust the shocks for more on-road comfort or off-road capability—things that would undoubtedly benefit us in our week-to-week (depending on one’s lifestyle of course).
Instead, we use the same vehicle in its original configuration until it’s time to move on—because that’s what we’re used to.
If you think about it, that’s basically the same as downloading a pre-designed template that appears suitable, uploading content, and then hitting the proverbial gas pedal.
I felt I knew enough about PowerPoint to make the pitch deck acceptable.
Let’s be clear: when the goal for any project is “acceptable,” it’s safe to assume—in this day and age—it probably won’t move any needles in the right direction.
To no-one’s surprise, I came up with an almost plain deck with cheesy animations. You know, your typical box-in, appear, dissolve-type effects—stuff that causes Death by PowerPoint and makes you look old.
Fortunately, my presentation skills were good enough to outshine my unoriginal slides and the materials my creative team came up with were downright beautiful.
But just seeing how the deck came out was a humbling experience. It was definitely something I was not proud of. I used to be so giddy presenting with the spectacular decks that our creative team came up with, but for this presentation, my deck was as good as just writing on the board with a marker
Heck, a whiteboard session might have even been more engaging than what I came up with. What’s worse is I could’ve had more hours to sleep and focus on what I was going to say rather than spend so much time on the deck.
The lesson here is pretty clear: we aren’t necessarily experts when we’ve done something many times, and just knowing “enough” is never good enough in high stakes environments like sales presentations, boardroom meetings, and keynote speeches (among others).
Whether you’re guiding a prospect through a product demo, trying to garner buy-in in the boardroom, or announcing upcoming products at your company’s annual internal conference, your ability to achieve the goals you set out to accomplish with your presentation rests on four key factors:
1) Your presentation skills (obviously)
2) The narrative of your presentation
3) The design quality of your visual aid (typically a PowerPoint deck), and
4) MOST IMPORTANTLY: your audience’s level of engagement
Thankfully, I had the first one—but imagine what my team could have accomplished if we had all four!
If you’re exhibiting at a trade show or convention, you need to set up a booth that can catch everyone’s attention. We talked about how to make video loops in the past. This will give people passing by your display a brief introduction to your brand. When that catches their interest, provide more information with an interactive presentation deck. You can easily create on through the use of PowerPoint hyperlinks.
PowerPoint hyperlinks allow you to jump to specific slides quickly. It can also serve as a command to switch to a second presentation or open a different document. Here’s a quick tutorial to go about it:
Step One
Start by creating your presentation as you normally would. Add an initial slide you’re planning to use at a trade show should start with a slide that will serve as a “homepage”. This is where you’re going to put all the hyperlinks that will lead to specific parts of your presentation. Forgo the usual title slide for a homepage slide instead.
Step Two
When you’ve finished building your deck, go back to the first slide. You can use any object as a PowerPoint hyperlink. It can be a picture, shape, or text. Whatever you decide to use, arrange them in any way you like. Just keep in mind that you should have an object to correspond for each part of the presentation you want to link to.
Here’s an example so you can visualize it:
Step Three
Now that you have your objects arranged, you can start making PowerPoint hyperlinks. All you have to do is to select the object you want to use, right-click, and choose Hyperlink.
If you want to link to a particular slide in your presentation, choose Place in This Document and select a slide from the list. If you want to open a different file or a web page, click on Existing File or Web Page. You can also link to your email address so visitors can easily send in their details.
Important note: If you’re using a different computer for the trade show, make sure you transfer your presentation and the files you want to link to. Keep everything in one place to make this step easier for you.
Step Four
When you’ve finished making each hyperlink, don’t forget to give it a test run. You don’t want broken links when people start viewing your presentation deck.
That’s it! It doesn’t take a lot to create an interesting experience for your prospects. All you have to do is think outside the box. Consider making an interactive presentation for your trade show booth. Practice using PowerPoint hyperlinks. Soon, you’ll be building even more complex and professional-looking slides.
Creating an impact as you get your message across is the ultimate goal of your PowerPoint presentation. To achieve this, your slides have to be planned and designed carefully. One of the things that can contribute to this is a bright background.
Ideally, PowerPoint backgrounds should be simple and clear as the main focus should be on the message and not on than the slide. With just the right brightness, the background can improve your presentations and ‘wow’ your audience.
Below are some ways a bright background can enhance your slides. Just one important reminder: Anything that is way too much can be bad. Having said that, what we’re going to talk about here is tolerable brightness for your PowerPoint backgrounds.
Allows the visuals to stand out
Apart from making the slides easy on the eyes, the contrast between them makes the texts readable. Graphic designer Matt Cronin explains that readability is one way in attracting your audience visually.
A bright background and a darker font color create a great combination. Some graphics will also stand out when placed on a bright-colored background. Using any one of these techniques may be beneficial to you in the long run.
After all, people don’t want to look at something they can’t understand.
Focuses the audience’s attention
If you don’t want to use a plain background but still want something bright, then you may want to use radial gradient with a rather bright center. The depth this adds to your chosen image or slide background not only makes it interesting, this also engages the viewer’s gaze more.
This background creates a highlight effect, which looks like a glow. When you use this effect, make sure to create the right balance to keep the glow from hindering readability.
Evokes positive emotion
Bright colors such as yellow and orange evoke a bright and sunny day. They seem to create a lot of positive energy. As bright colors generate feelings of joy and vitality, your audience are sure to feel quite comfortable and at ease throughout your presentation.
Indeed, a bright PowerPoint background has its benefits. It can enhance slides more than what dark backgrounds can do. When used with white texts, dark slide backgrounds can be hard on the eyes. Dark backgrounds just don’t have the same effect that you get from brighter ones.
Final Words
Bright backgrounds are appealing and eye-catching, but at the same time, don’t overdo them. This word of caution stems from the fact that bad combinations can lead to worse results.
Out-of-place neon colors can hurt the eyes and disrupt the senses, rather than draw viewers to your presentation. Use bright colors wisely and attract people to your deck in no time!
SlideGenius.com is your business PPT guru. Based in San Diego, California, SlideGenius has helped more than 500 international clients enhance their presentations, including those of J.P. Morgan, Harley-Davidson, Pfizer, Verizon, and Reebok. Call us at 1.858.217.5144 and let SlideGenius help you with your presentation today!
Using images to represent ideas is one of the best ways to enhance PowerPoint presentations. A product label tag, for example, is great in designing your deck during a sales presentation. According to Entrepreneur, in such presentations, it’s essential to establish your identity and address your customers’ needs.
If ever you need a tag to back up your points and differentiate yourself from the competition, you can always search for custom images of these tags on the Internet and tweak them to your advantage.
Or better yet, create one that you can easily customize using the Shape functionality in PowerPoint. This tutorial will show you how to do it using the Shape and Text tools in PowerPoint 2010.
Drawing the Frame
First, assuming that your PowerPoint is already open, create a new, blank slide. Then, draw the label using the Rectangular shape with a rounded border. You can find this in the Insert tab under Shapes.
After this, select the Oval shape from the Shapes option to create a small circular shape. Put this near the top portion of the rectangle to serve as the label’s tag hole.
Filling with Color
Fill the circle with the same color as that of the slide background. Do this by right-clicking on the shape and selecting the Format Shape option. Click Fill and then select Slide background fill.
To give the label some depth, you may want to fill it with gradient color. To do this, click Fill from the Format Shape option and select Gradient fill. Depending on your preference, you may adjust the Gradient type, direction, color, brightness, and other qualities.
Final Details
To create the label’s string, select the curve line from the Shapes option. Draw a line from the small circle and then click twice until you reach the label’s border. You may manipulate the string to give it a more natural look. Simply click on it and drag any of the visible points accordingly.
Lastly, you’ll have to group all the shapes in a single label. Select all the elements and then right click on the label. Next, click on Group (and the other Group option that will appear) and
Next, click on Group (and the other Group option that will appear) and Voila! You now have your very own product label tag that you can use for your sales presentation. For added impact, think about adding some text inside the tags.
Conclusion
An impressive deck is often eye-catching and unique, but more importantly, it should always be there to support you when you need to pitch to the crowd. Experiment with PowerPoint and add a tag to your slides. It’s simple and interesting. With just a few clicks using the Shapes tool, you’ll already have a tag-shaped image that you can spice up with text or gradients for depth.
Having trouble with your deck design? Our SlideGenius experts are always ready to help. Contact us today for a free quote!
SlideGenius.com is your business Power Point presentation expert. Based in San Diego, California, SlideGenius has helped more than 500 international clients enhance their presentations, including those of J.P. Morgan, Harley-Davidson, Pfizer, Verizon, and Reebok. Call us at 1.858.217.5144 and let SlideGenius help you with your presentation today!
SlideGenius.com is your 
SlideGenius.com is your 