Presentations can make or break your speech. Whether you own a startup and need to pitch or share new product features with consumers, the information needs to appear both in a professional and visually appealing way. You know this if you have presented at school, pitched a startup, reported to clients, or listened to the addresses of your colleagues at a meeting.
As a marketer, you have to share a lot of information on your newest campaigns, product changes, and much more with the public. To do this more creatively, you should consider engaging and educational presentations.
But how to do this if you don’t have any design skills?
This is an article for non-designer marketers who want to create outstanding presentations professionally. In our guide, you will discover how to choose proper presentation tools, where to begin, avoid common mistakes, and create a successful presentation, even if you are doing it for the first time.
How to get ready for a presentation
How to make a beautiful and captivating presentation?
Before you sit down to create a presentation, create a project roadmap ask yourself a few questions:
- Who is your audience?
- What is the main idea of your presentation?
- How will you articulate it?
- What do you want people to take away?
The better you prepare before creating the presentation, the faster you'll get ready.
Get to know your audience.
Make sure to get to know your audience if you want to influence their point of view. After all, you are doing your Influencer marketing. Surprisingly, some presenters don't seem interested in their audience when preparing presentations. The presentation should suit the audience, just like the dress code during your presentation. If you meet with the audience for the first time, pay attention to their age, profession, and position.
Conventionally, any audience can be divided into three types:
- Emotional
- Factlovers
- Visionaries
How to understand who is in front of you?
- Emotional
Usually, these are the people of creative professions - designers, art directors, photographers, creators. To gain the trust of such an audience, use emotion. It could be a joke or a powerful emotional image. How to make a presentation for inspirational people? Use vivid, persuasive visuals where mood matters most. In addition, make sure to stay in touch with the trends. If you are presenting a new podcast concept, check out podcast trends. Emotional listeners will value this input.
- Factlovers
These are scientists, accountants, IT departments, lawyers, C-level executives, etc. They don't care much about the emotional aspect of your speech. They want to see the facts, information about a specific product feature or an offer condition. Therefore, it is better to convince them through facts using charts and graphs. If you're reporting about a product's success, make sure to include some customer feedback.
- Visionaries
Visionaries include all strategically-minded people - managers, executives, the board of directors. Marketers report to visionaries on all sorts of data, for example, Instagram follower demographics of your social media marketing campaign or budgets. If you are a social media marketing manager and you constantly follow social media trends, you get to interact with visionaries all the time. One of the essential skills as a social media marketer is planning and effectively presenting a social media budget. After putting together the budget for your expenses, you can start visualizing it for your presentation. Remember that all internal and external fees need to be included. For example, if you’ve hired a logo maker company to create a logo for you, you can calculate the return on your investment.
Use trending colours
Every fall, we learn about the colour trends that will be popular the following year. You can find Facebook influencers, brands, bloggers, entrepreneurs, and online publications that use these colours to create distinctive colour schemes to remain trendy. You can always draw inspiration from their content. To help you make a fantastic presentation, we've created a list of top colour trends.
- Trend No.1 Cheerful colours
For many, 2021 symbolizes the conclusion of a long period of isolation, uncertainty, and economic turmoil. We confronted so many limitations in 2020, and we were so exhausted by monotony and regularity that designers now provide us with some fun. This spring, for example, expect to see a lot of bright, cheerful, lively, and rich colours on the runways.
- Optimistic Colors
The Pantone Color Institute, a global authority in design, selects the current palette of New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week every year. The Pantone Institute is inspired in its decision by societal activities, including fashion, politics, and social media management trends.
Bright and saturated hues will be fashionable at New York Fashion Week, according to Pantone Institute experts: golden orange, heavenly blue, sunny, deep blue, green, coral, refreshing menthol, and attractive colour of raspberry sorbet. Colours blend comfort and tranquillity with power that inspires, elevates moods, and encourages you to do new things with your style.
- Trend No.2 Technological colours
Colours associated with tech products are the second trend. Global digitization and technological progress will be fruitful for forming a substantial variety of trends in the following seasons, including the upcoming season's trendy colours—one of the most technologically advanced palettes.
- Good Gray
The eco-friendly grey is reminiscent of the unprocessed, mixed colour that results from combining several elements. It is the most neutral colour in the palette, and one of its tasks is to balance and neutralize the other brighter shades. However, because it represents the concept of simplicity and helps you build a harmonious presentation with a calming vibe, it can be used on its own.
- Quiet Wave
Since there has been a lot of attention to environmental issues in recent years, green is also included in the palette of trendy colours. However, this season, we are treated to a lighter, whiter, and more relaxed version, influenced by technology rather than nature.
In 2021, trendy tech colours are ideal for presentation or multimedia design. This type of green doesn't only have to be associated with nature. You can make modern, athletic, or futuristic designs for your website, presentation, Facebook, or Instagram with this colour. It also works well if you ever decide to integrate website chatbots. Find out how bots work and create them in the quiet wave colour to establish more trust. Combine this tech colour with a gradient effect for a unique look. In animated designs, rich tech colours look fantastic. Try it out. It is sure to attract your audience's interest.
- Trend No. 3. Cosy colours
The pandemic has impacted interior design in all aspects of life. We were obliged to spend so much time at home that we developed a new perspective on living space and considerably elevated our comfort expectations. This tendency can be seen in colour trends that transcended into the world of digital.
- Comfy palette
Each shade is intended to produce a contemplative, quiet, and welcoming environment in a comfy palette. Note that these colours can range from neutral tones to bright sunny ones. The exquisite representation of comfort extends beyond the standard beige, grey, and green colours. Everyday Comfort, Optimism, Fine Focus, Quiet Zone, Safe Harbor, and Getaway to Fresh Air are the six colour themes that can make up this palette.
- Soothing colours
This article also looks at the influence of the pandemic's restrictions on colour trends and presentation design. They are now leaning towards warm, calming, and emotional colours that promote a positive mood. The soothing colour palette varies from light greyish-green and lamp beige to warm beige and deep grey. Graphic designers use these current colours as inspiration for digital design in three to five years. Trendy colours that are calming might be taken as a background for the main message. If you wish to share a quote or some text, use a photo with light colours.
- Trend No. 4. Earthy Colors
Soft natural tones will continue to be popular next year. For example, sandy beige, grey, brown, and yellow shades can help you feel more connected to nature and generate a sense of harmony with it. If, for example, you offer a new tool for higher email deliverability, you should represent it in these earthy tones. Whether it’s about the new SPF record checker or a unique technique for sending emails, it’s important to leave a serious impression.
4. Presenting your speech
If you get to know your audience, formulate your message, communicate it clearly and straightforwardly, your presentation is already on the way to success.
Now you can go further and explore presentation creation tools, choose an appropriate font and colour.
- Rehearse your speech
Practice your speech before speaking. This will help eliminate the fear of public speaking and forget your words at the most inappropriate moment.
Share your presentation aloud several times with a listener and watch their reactions. If they get bored and leave the room, add something fun to the slides, such as animation or a meme.
- Speak slowly
A fast-paced voice gives out nervousness and diminishes the credibility of the narrator. People like slow speech and a low timbre of voice much more. Take your time to deliver your presentation as soon as possible; instead, give yourself time to breathe as you speak.
- Talk to the point
Try to keep it short, like 10 minutes and ten short paragraphs. The audience will lose interest if you last more.
- Use slides as background
Remember, during your presentation, you are the focus of the audience. Therefore, the slides shouldn't be duplicating your words or be the centre of the action. Instead, bring illustrations, key messages, and pictures on them, and tell a good story yourself.
If it’s necessary, organize employee training to improve your team’s speech skills so they can represent presentations professionally with detailed prepared speeches and easily attract your audience.
Conclusion
Creating a presentation is a challenging but fun and creative task. First, dedicate time and effort to understanding your audience, what you want to share with them, and how you want it. Then, use those insights to craft a presentation that will not simply share the information with the audience but do this in a catchy and memorable way and spark a meaningful two-way conversation.
