Creating an effective company or product presentation can be a tough job. A good presentation depends on the technology, content and design. Often a lot of work, but the first impression is -of course- important to inspire and convince potential customers. In this blog, we give you a few tips from our own experience from creating presentations for customers.
Technology: Presentation software
When creating a business presentation, people quickly think of programs such as PowerPoint, Prezi or Keynote. But there are many tools and software available to make a good presentation, including our very own Maglr platform. The software behind making a good presentation is an important first step. Therefore always first look at the (technical) possibilities and what you want to achieve with the presentation and/or tool.
What clients often encounter
For example, PowerPoint is a tool that everyone knows and that everyone can work with. You can make beautiful but also very bad company presentations with it. Depending on the time you put in it. In many cases, users of the program run into a number of things when creating a business presentation. Firstly, presentations are often a static file in which you follow one chronological line with slides. It has a linear design. Secondly, a large PPT file is difficult to share, it often contains too many MBs of data. Thirdly, future changes to presentations are difficult to update on all existing versions of the PowerPoint file (which are often distributed among different employees).
What does the software require to fulfil?
We often hear from customers that they need more technical options for presentation programs. For example, being able to present online or offline with embedded media (such as YouTube videos) without having to leave the presentation. Or that presentations are available from a central hub, where the main presentation can be personalized for personal use. But the thing we hear most from our clients is that they find it difficult to keep the customer's attention during a presentation. Therefore, our most frequently asked question is: "How can I ensure that people pay attention throughout the entire presentation?"
“Tell a visual story. Telling stories is the basis of communication, people remember stories, not bullet lists.”
Design: Visuals speak louder than words
Many people are visually oriented, an image says more than a thousand words. And there’s no difference when you are presenting. A good presentation depends on the design. At Maglr we always think carefully about how we can display information as visually as possible. What should you pay attention to so that it becomes more interesting and well-arranged to read? Make it snackable!
A structured layout is a good start. Make sure you are using the same colour scheme and fonts from the corporate identity of your organization. Because every presentation or slide must look the same way to create brand recognition and trust. Also, make sure that when employees want to alter a presentation for personal use they are restricted in certain areas in terms of choosing their own colours or fonts. And most importantly, the text must remain minimal at all times. You don’t want that people have to read off the screen too much. You present a product, idea or service by yourself using storytelling. You’re not going to read a story from the screen towards the prospect, but you supplement keywords with your personal knowledge.
You can enhance the presentation with images, animation, GIFs or a (background) video. And when you want to elaborate on a subject a little more: then you hide this behind a pop-up or in an in-depth slide that you can navigate to.
NOTE: In Maglr, with an extensive set of templates, you have a good starting point for setting up visual pages.
Content: let your presentation connect to your conversation
When creating a presentation, always try to start from what your audience wants to hear and see. Consider their needs and anticipate their questions. When you’re visiting a potential customer, you do not immediately open your laptop and then show all of the slides, do you? You first start a conversation to discover what the real question of their problem is. And so the storyline of your presentation is created. You can use your presentation based on the given answers from the conversation. Not per slide, but only show what is important for the recipient. On the basis of the conversation, you determine the route of your presentation and you can continue to surprise the customer with relevant information.
Content & Technology: Navigation structure
The way you want to go through a presentation depends on the storyline or the conversation you have with your audience. It helps to create a well-arranged navigation structure in your presentation. With a navigation structure and table of contents, you can easily navigate to the desired slides within the presentation. This way you keep control over which slide you want to show as follows, and the presentation becomes interactive through hyperlinks. With a navigation structure, you can also distinguish between the main and side subjects and information in a presentation. You can do this, for example, by following the thread through a linear storyline and navigate to in-depth information with vertical slides. Short visuals & headlines during the presentation ensure that the viewer remains involved. Only go in-depth when it is necessary.
You can achieve an in-depth presentation by dividing a subject into vertical chapters. If you walk through a presentation in a linear fashion (from left to right) then you only use the slides with the mainline or summary thereof. If you want to go into in-depth on a specific topic, then navigate vertically downwards. Here you then have the space to display all information in more detail. Slides remain clear and concise, easier to navigate and therefore easier to maintain. And that is not only pleasant for yourself when presenting, but also for the person who you might send the presentation later on.
Technology: Sending a personalized presentation
Often you want to send the presentation after your visit so that a potential customer can view and read it again in their own way. And preferably, it is sent with only the slides included that you have discussed. For programs such as PowerPoint & Keynote, this means that you must first alter and save the presentation as a PDF-file with the personalized adjustments. After that, the file is often uploaded via WeTransfer because the file is too large for mail to be sent. But the question remains whether the file will also be downloaded and opened.
You prefer to send a personalized presentation in a much easier way. And as the icing on the cake, it would also be nice to immediately receive the reading and clicking behaviour of the potential customer. With our Maglr platform, we also offer a module for sending an email with personalized presentations. This means you get the option to choose the slides that you want to send, supplemented with a number of personalized pages. You send the presentation in a beautifully designed email with a secure web link to your customer. This link can be opened directly on any device such as desktop, tablet or mobile.
The prospect receives a custom presentation with a personal salutation, adapted to your previous sales conversation. Whether you achieve the desired results can be viewed afterwards via the statistics in our analytics dashboard. You see exactly what the customer has viewed and opened, which may also be linked to your favourite CRM system.
Technology: A presentation that is always up-to-date
People who work within a larger organization will probably recognize this. The marketing & sales materials change every now and then between a certain period. This also means that the company or product presentations change constantly. And if there is no central Marketing asset library, this causes problems. Therefore a PowerPoint presentation - that is spread over several employees- is not up-to-date anymore.
In our Maglr dashboard, all presentations are stored in a central place. In addition, we offer the possibility to link presentation slides from the main presentation to your own personal presentation. This way the corporate colour style, fonts and appearance are always protected. And: as soon as Marketing makes adjustments to the main presentation, they are automatically implemented in all presentations. This way you are always up-to-date. A pleasant thought for Marketing that all Sales employees are using and telling the same story. And ultimately: it's vital that potential customers will receive the most up to date information about your product or services.
Share knowledge among colleagues
Do you work with several colleagues in the same department? Then there is a good chance that one of your colleagues already has elaborated on a topic and made adjustments in a presentation. The file is then often hidden somewhere on the server or laptop of your colleague and is quickly forgotten. In Maglr you can easily find and reuse slides that were set up by other employees. This way, presentations do not have to be re-imagined, but can simply be reused. Effective and efficient.
Present online & offline
Nowadays there is WiFi or a connection via 4G available almost everywhere, but to completely rely on this is still not advisable. Therefore always ensure a backup of your presentation if there is no internet available. In this case, at Maglr we offer an app for the iPad, Android or laptop. This allows you to download and update the app with the most recent version of all presentations before you go to an appointment.
What can Maglr do for your company?
With Maglr you have the ability to create unique, visual and interactive content for Marketing & Sales purposes. Suitable for (sales) presentations, online magazines, white papers and interactive brochures. Choose from many ready-to-use templates or start creating digital publications with our drag-and-drop Block or advanced Pro editor. Perfect for marketers and designers who want to convert their static content into an interactive, clear and visual story - without having to write a single line of code.
What are the benefits of our Maglr platform?
- Create eye-catching visual presentations
- Make last-minute adjustments and keep your presentations up-to-date and in sync
- Let colleagues easily share pages with each other
- Send the presentation by mail with a secured link
- Reading and clicking behaviour in our Analytics dashboard
- You decide how you navigate through the slides based on prospects’ interests
- Prospects can view the presentation wherever they want: in the office or at home on their phone, tablet or desktop
- Possible to convert to a simple PDF print variant
- More engagement from your customers
Want to try it out for yourself? Start a free trial or contact us to hear more about the possibilities of our Maglr platform.
