As a presentation design agency will tell you, ensuring your PowerPoint presentation captivates your audience is one of the essential aspects of any sales pitch.
Presentations are essential for any business that sells a product or service, regardless of its size.
It is all too easy to forget how important an engaging presentation might be, and this can greatly hamper how engaged an audience is with the content, reducing how effective it could be.
This article will focus on some of the ways that you can put the “Power” back into PowerPoint presentations. We want to make sure that you never find yourself delivering dull and uninteresting presentations that your audience finds hard to engage with.
Minimal Text Means a More Effective Message
When you create a presentation, it is easy to fall into the trap of adding far too much text to each presentation slide, as you are eager to include all of the benefits and talking points you want to cover.
This is easily one of the most common ways that presentations tend to lose their value and become less engaging. Your slideshow text should never be used as a replacement for your own voice. It is hard for any audience to digest the text on-screen while also listening to what you have to say, which is why it is important to use a minimal amount of text and expand on each point in more detail as you speak.
If you are worried your audience will not remember what you have to say, you can always print out your slideshow and type up notes to share after your presentation.
Use Quality, High Definition Graphics
During the design phase of building your presentation, it is crucial that you only use high-quality images and graphics. If a picture or graphic looks a little grainy on your screen, it will only look worse on a big screen.
High-quality graphics immediately give any presentation a professional look and feel and are much more engaging for your audience. If they find themselves having to squint and struggling to understand what they are looking at, you will have lost them before you even get started.
There are plenty of websites that offer free, high-quality professional imagery for you to use.
Don’t Use Animated Transitions
Don’t get me wrong; the odd slide transition can certainly help if you find yourself constantly clicking the button to get to the next slide. However, animating each image and bullet point is overkill and will slow your presentation down too much.
The aim of your presentation is to allow your audience to engage with what you are saying. If they are too focused on all of the various animations on your slides, you might lose their attention and prevent them from hearing valuable information.
Use a Single Clear and Consistent Font
Nothing looks more amateur than a presentation that uses various different fonts on different slides. If you present a PowerPoint that uses various fonts, it also looks like you have gathered content from other slideshows and not bothered to format it correctly.
Ensure you use a single font and that each slide uses the same size and style/ Your PowerPoint presentation show use simple fonts like Arial, which can easily be used across each slide. It might be tempting to use fancy letters to look pretty, but if the information becomes tricky to ready, it is a waste of time and effort.
Prepare, Rehearse and Ask for Feedback
When you begin to prepare for any speaking engagement or presentation, it is important to practice your PowerPoint cues and verbal cues beforehand. That way, you are ready for anything that might be thrown at you on the day.
Chat to a colleague or close friend about watching your presentation and then offering you their honest feedback on how you present your information. You would be amazed at how many things they will notice that you hadn’t even considered.
Ask them to consider these main points before you start. Does the PowerPoint slideshow support your speech? Will the content included on each slide capture the audience’s attention? Is the content included easy to retain and digest?
Learn from Examples
Fortunately, there are plenty of PowerPoint template examples online, as publicly traded businesses are required by law to post any presentations executed to shareholders.
If you are struggling to put the “Power” back into the PowerPoint presentation, be sure to get in touch with us about how we can help take your presentations to the next level.
