How to Create a Winning Presentation That Wows Your Audience

How to Create a Winning Presentation That Wows Your Audience

by | Blog, Contributed Post

As a business owner, you very well may have been in a situation where you have to create a presentation that will make a memorable first impression on your audience. Be it pitching a new idea, a proposal presentation, or simply speaking at a conference, sometimes the quality of your presentation may be a real make-or-break deal determining your success. Designing any winning presentation that can engage your audience requires more than just a deck of well-designed slides; thoughtful preparation, engaging content, and strategic delivery are needed.

Here is how to create an unforgettable presentation based on four of the most important focus areas: knowing your audience, impactful content, designing visual slides, and mastering the delivery.

Know Your Audience

The foundation of any great presentation rests on knowing your audience. Ask yourself: Who do you think they are? What interests them? Are these potential clients, investors, or your peers in the industry? Once you comprehend their needs and motivations, it shall be easier to deliver information that you believe would resonate with these people. Research becomes key in this regard: professional background, pain point and interests. Investors may instead want to know about the profitability of the output and scalability. Remember, the better you know your audience, the stronger you are in speaking effectively to what matters to them.

Address Their Pain Points

Once you have identified your audience’s most relevant concerns, it’s time to address them directly. After all, the best presentations offer up solutions. As you build out your content, keep in mind the problems of your audience and how your business solves these. Give examples specific to your business and provide case studies that reflect expertise in your subject matter. For the women business owner, this is particularly important because one is pitching products or services to a potential client who may be skeptical about the product or service. By framing how your business solves certain challenges, you immediately make your presentation relevant.

Connect with Stories

Stories are one of the most effective ways to connect with an audience. Humans are far more likely to remember stories rather than facts and figures. When you’re preparing your presentation think about how you might weave in stories to show value and impact from your brand. These could be personal anecdotes about how you started your business or success stories off the back of satisfied clients.

Impactful Content

Strong Hook

The first minutes of your presentation are the most critical moments in the presentation, where you need to capture the audience’s attention. Begin with one strong hook to draw in your audience and make them curious about what you’ll be saying. This is surprising statistics, a provocative question, or some kind of intriguing statement that goes against the conventional way of thinking. You will be trying to entice them into wanting to hear more.

Keep It Simple and Focused

One of the worst things a presenter can do is overwhelm their audience. The best presentations are light on detail and focused on just a handful of takeaways. Before you start building your slides, determine the three key points you want to leave with your audience. Design a presentation that will center around those core points and resist the urge to tangent.

Call to Action

What do you want your audience to take away with them at the end of your presentation? Do you want them to call to learn more about your services? To book an appointment? Sign up for a newsletter? Whatever it is, a presentation should always have a clear call to action. Make it easy for your audience to take the next step.

Designing Visually Appealing Slides

Presentation Slide Design

Remember that when designing your presentation slides, less is often more. You should avoid cluttering your slides with too much text or images. A clean, professional design presents your information nicely and will help to keep your audience engaged with your message. Use a continual color scheme depicting your brand, and no more than one key point per slide. The text should be supported by the visuals and not overwhelmed by the visuals.

Add Storytelling with Visuals

This can add a whole new meaning to your presentation. Rather than just writing your messages, you can show images, graphs, and infographics to display your key messages. This keeps the audience more tuned into your presentation, rather than reading through ‘bulleted text’. In this way, they retain more of the information. Visuals unravel the text-heavy slides and hold the attention of the audience members.

Exercise Restraint with Animations

While it might be tempting to add a few flashy animations to your presentation, it is smarter to use them sparingly. Too many transitions and/or animations are distracting and take away from your message. For that reason, subtle transitions are best since they offer a smooth-looking presentation that doesn’t steal the show. Of course, if you do utilize the animations, make sure they have a point.

Mastering the Delivery

Practice Makes Perfect

No matter how well-designed your presentation is, poor delivery can undermine its effectiveness. Practice is the master of delivery. Run through your presentation several times to make sure you’re comfortable with the content and pacing. Record yourself, if necessary, and then watch for places where you can improve your tone, pace, and body language. Whenever possible, practice in front of a friend or colleague who can give you feedback.

Engage with Your Audience

A good presentation is not one way; rather, it’s an opportunity to engage with your audience. Make eye contact, ask questions, and invite participation. This keeps your audience involved in what you have to say and creates a more interactive and dynamic experience. During the middle of your presentation, stop and ask for questions or even comments. This will not only make your audience feel more engaged with you, but also provide you with the opportunity to extend any points which they fail to get.

Collaborate with Professional Support

Developing a successful presentation requires much time and hard work. If you face any problem with the content or layout, then you should not hesitate to consult any professional help. Of course, many business owners juggle their many responsibilities, and this is where outsourcing can free up valuable time. Professional writing services can help develop well-honed content that best fits your brand, ensuring the presentation communicates its subject clearly, is engaging, and most effective. This enables you to pay more concentrated attention to what you do best: run your business and communicate with your audience.

A presentation that wows requires a mix of thoughtful content and engaging visuals, delivered confidently. Understanding your audience, crafting effective messages, designing clean and simple slides, and practicing delivering-the fundamentals of constructing a presentation are all sure to educate and delight.

Source:https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-sitting-on-gang-chairs-2774556/ 

This is a contributed post

Simple Steps To A Killer User Experience

Simple Steps To A Killer User Experience

by | Blog, Contributed Post, Conversions

***Contributed Post***

User experience is what separates a mediocre website from a fantastic one. You engineer your site to streamline certain processes, influence visitor behaviour and boost your conversion rate – all key parts of a great digital marketing strategy. There are many ways of going through this process and a never ending list of improvements to be made, but these top tips will help you to get started…

Get Your Homepage Right

Your Homepage is your shop window of the world, and as such, it needs to be both accessible and attractive. You need to focus on your core offer and key messages and use these to populate your home page. Keep everything brief and clear – people are landing on this page to do or find something else. Prune out unnecessary content that is better housed elsewhere on your site so potential customers don’t have to wade through columns of irrelevant information. First impressions are critical online and you don’t have much time to make them.

Speed Is King

What loading time do you think is acceptable for your site? The brutal truth is, if it doesn’t load in 3-4 seconds, you’ll face abandonment rates as high as 87 per cent. Time is of the essence online and users are highly impatient. Make sure that you work on the loading speeds of your site and streamline clunky content that is slowing it down.

Pare It Back

Great website design is as much about what you don’t include on the page as what you do. Content needs to be given proper spacing in order for it to have due prominence. Take a look at some of the best designed websites of 2018 to see this principle in action. This trick improved reading comprehension and click throughs while showcasing your most important products, services or ideas.

Signpost For More

Use your design to help customers on their journey by signposting them to relevant resources, like www.casinoseniors.com. This creates an opportunity to add value to the lives of your customers, which will keep them coming back for more and creates a constantly fresh offed for repeat visitors.

Harness The Power Of A CTA

What are the Calls To Action (CTA’s) that a user encounters on your website? A slick design makes use of these buttons to move customers to behave in a certain way. Clear CTAs have the power to drastically improve conversion rates and average basket value too. Use the psychology of colour to make your calls extra appealing. The text used should also be a little more descriptive than something like ‘next’ or ‘link’. It’s a small thing but it can really make an impact on customer behaviour.

Don’t Skimp On The Images
Images and video content is the best way to grab attention and engage people. They up trust levels as people feel they know more what they will be getting, and they also allow more space for you to properly explain the features and benefits of a product or service or demonstrate how to use them.

3 Ways You Can Increase Your Conversion Rate Right Now

3 Ways You Can Increase Your Conversion Rate Right Now

by | Blog, Branding, Conversions, List Building

Today’s topic we will cover how you can improve your landing page conversion rates with 3 simple changes.

For the most part, readers have short attention spans. 

I’m sure that’s no big surprise to you. In fact, you probably browse the Internet at light speed, too, skipping to the bottoms of sales pages, and fast-forwarding through videos just so you can get to the next thing.

The same is true for your readers, and if you want to capture their attention long enough to entice them to opt-in to your mailing list, then you have to keep that in mind.

1. A Tip From Newspaper Publishers

Have you ever noticed that everything you need to know about a news story is in the first paragraph? 

Journalists are trained to answer all the questions—who, what, where, when, why and how—in the first few sentences, just in case the story gets cut off when the paper goes to print.

In today’s online world, where column inches no longer matter, this type of story formatting isn’t quite so critical anymore, but it’s still a useful tip to use when you’re writing an opt-in page.

Think about it: If your readers are skimmers (as most of us are) then making sure you include the most important information right at the top of the page is going to greatly improve your conversion rates.

For opt-in pages, that means putting the biggest benefits in your subject line and following it up with two or three sentences that build on your headline. That’s it. Keep it short, sweet, and benefit-driven, and you’ll have greater success than you would with longer content.

2. Graphics Matter

Whether your opt-in incentive is an e-book, a video, or even a simple checklist, having a graphic representation of your offer is an important part of your landing page.

You could create an e-book or CD cover, which you can easily outsource, but be sure you follow these strategies:

  • Bold fonts and short titles make your cover more readable.
  • Use high-contrast colors for more visibility.
  • Be true to your brand and stay with colors and fonts your readers expect.

3. Crafting a Compelling Call to Action

You might think that when readers land on your opt-in page they know exactly what to do, but that’s not true. You need to invite them to take the next step. Give them clear instructions and you’ll have higher conversion rates than if you just leave it to chance.

Your call to action needs to tell your reader exactly what to do, like this:

  • Click here to download
  • Enter your name and email for instant access

Watch the text on your form buttons, too. After all words like “Subscribe” or “Sign Up” don’t exactly excite you do they? Consider using a phrase that matches your call to action instead, such as:

  • Get the Checklist!
  • Send the Video!

Take a look at your opt-in pages. Do they follow these strategies? If not, consider making some changes to your copy, your images, and your calls to action, then watch your results. You’ll more than likely see a boost in conversion rates if you do.

Have a great 24 hours!

Robyn

P.S: If you’re looking for virtual support in growing your business, click here to schedule a call with me where we can discuss your business needs and how I can help you.