Whether you’re pitching the company’s management team on a new marketing initiative or campaign, speaking at a networking event or conference, or presenting a webinar for potential or existing customers, an effective and engaging presentation is central to all these use cases.
Though PR and marketing professionals have excellent relationship-building and networking skills to spread awareness about the brand and drive word-of-mouth recommendations, they usually break out in a cold sweat when asked to present in front of a live audience. Addressing a mass audience requires not only slides with well-organized information but also an energetic and enthusiastic delivery of that information.
Well, the good news is: you can make the entire process of creating and delivering marketing presentations more compelling and less stressful by following the below tips. Let’s dive in!
1. Improve your stage presence
Standing on a podium and delivering a presentation to C-suite executives and key decision-makers is completely different from presenting to 2-3 people in a meeting room; it calls for a great stage presence. By stage presence, we mean the way you connect and engage with your audience to make them listen to you.
Pro tips:
- Building an impactful stage presence requires sincere efforts. Step onto the stage with the right mindset to ace the presentation game.
- Ensure your body language and gestures are in sync with your message. It will help you establish credibility and authenticity.
- Project confidence and pay attention to clarity and completeness of thought while conveying your ideas.
- Practice until your presentation delivery looks natural.
2. Don’t go overboard with your slides
PR and marketing presentations are tailored to C-suite executives to win their backing for marketing campaigns and approval for budget. Since executives have loads of business matters to take care of, their attention spans are quite short. So, keep your presentation concise yet appealing. Incorporate only important slides that you can cover in the allotted time.
Pro tips:
- Use high-definition charts, graphs, images, and infographics to convey more in less text. You can also use pre-designed templates to maintain the consistent look of your presentation.
- Edit ruthlessly and eliminate overused words, adverbs, and repeated data/information.
- Remove all the slides that are not relevant or do not support the core message. In a nutshell, choose quality over quantity.
3. Include content that matters the most to the audience
Know the hot buttons of the audience to make your presentations more insightful to them. Adding fluff or hype to your content just to make your idea a ‘big reveal’ can backfire. So, choose your content carefully and wisely.
Pro tips:
- Avoid incorporating funny introductions, a long story, minute details of the project, and the information that the audience already knows.
- Avoid presenting confusing data.
- Keep your message focused on opportunity development.
- Don’t present risks in a sugar-coated form. Instead, highlight risks and mitigation strategies clearly to give the audience an impression that you are keeping every minute aspect in mind.
- Include a strong value proposition in your presentation.
4. Adapt your language to the audience’s language
Let’s assume a scenario. You are presenting to investors and accountants. Just after introducing yourself, you start uttering words like conversion rates, click rates, etc., which only your colleagues can understand. What do you think – what will happen next? Will your audience be able to connect with you? Well, not! Pretty soon, you will realize that they are busy texting or checking social media feeds on their mobiles, and you are talking to yourself.
Align your language to the audience’s relevance for a more meaningful impact. Talk about returns, costs, revenue, trade-offs, and the bottom line. You can also weave the statistics and data into a gripping story to connect with the executives at an emotional level.
5. Leave time for questions
The Q&A session is the most crucial part of the marketing presentation. It allows you to provide thoughtful and insightful answers to questions related to aspects you have not included in detail. Most experts suggest reserving the second half of the presentation for questions and answers.
You can intentionally omit small information gaps in your presentations to encourage the audience to raise queries. You can prepare your answers to these anticipated questions in advance. Moreover, questions signify that the executives are interested in your proposal.
Conclusion
PR and marketing presentations have their own set of challenges, which can be nerve-racking at times, even for those who have given hundreds of presentations. Know your audience, be factual, include relevant information that genuinely matters, and do enough practice before you pitch to ensure success.
The above tips will help take a load off your mind. Move ahead in your journey of creating impressive presentations!
