Humans beings process visuals 60,000 times faster than words. This is probably why marketing presentations have become such a visual performance filled with so much showmanship.
Irrespective of the industry you serve, a marketing presentation has become the key step to introducing services to prospective clients, selling a product, conveying targets or sharing potential ideas.
A marketing presentation can occur at a coffee shop, a large hotel with hundreds of people, a meeting room, or a conference hall.
No matter the location or the people surrounding you, when it comes to creating and delivering a good marketing presentation, you’re usually on your own.
And there’s nothing worse than having to fumble through a presentation, having your audience sneak out, or fall asleep midway through your delivery or that nauseous feeling after a botched presentation.
But not anymore.
Here’s a strategy to make your next marketing presentation a hit!
What Makes A Good Marketing Presentation?
Now, there are two parts to this strategy. These are the presentation and the presenter. Let’s look at the presentation first.
Get Customer Input
So, you’ve spent a chunk of time with prospecting clients either through cold calls or software. You’ve got the date! Then what?
A good marketing presentation takes the customers input into consideration. What is the customer looking for? What do they need? What are their pain points?
If you don’t know, ask.
Get in touch with your prospect and find out what they want. Going in blind and throwing all your products at them is not going to help them unless it addresses their concerns or business requirements.
Tailor Each Client’s Content
It’s very easy to roll out the same marketing presentation to every client you meet when you’re presenting five times a week or five times a day. But that should not be the case.
Tailor your marketing presentation to the client. Even if that means changing a few slides. Every client wants to feel special. If you’ve listened to your client then you can position yourself for the hook.
By including a few well-researched details in your presentation, the client is made aware that you took the time to read about their requirements. Also tailoring the presentation to a client can help you market special products that specifically meet their needs.
Have Key Take Away Points
After your introduction, identify the goals of this marketing presentation. Add the key takeaway points in the form of a bullet list or a quick hit list that is easy to read. That way your clients know exactly what they’re going to get from your presentation.
Get to the Point
The average attention span of the human mind is 20 minutes. There’s no point in sharing meaningless data and wasting time. Get to the point and present information that is relevant to the client.
Tell A story
Chip and Dan Heath wrote a book called Made to Stick, where they gave an example of Stanford students. After a presentation, 63% of the students remembered the stories and only 5% remembered the actual statistics that were cited.
That tells us that you should use your marketing presentation to tell a story that connects your products with their company.
This connection is very important and once established, the prospect sees themselves in the story you create about the product and their success using it.
Stay Away From The Clutter
In your bid to tell a story, don’t go crazy and add every image, gif, and animation available on Powerpoint or google slides.
Busy slides are distracting. It confuses them as they dart between your voice and everything on the slide.
Add Images and Charts
If you’re going to add statistics, use a chart. Adding images instead of texts also helps.
A picture really is worth a thousand words. Speak your words but don’t write them on your slides. Use high-resolution images that are beautiful and convey what you’re trying to say.
But don’t be too generic.
Sales are emotional and if your image can convey emotions, then you can be sure of leaving a good impression.
Highlight Current information
The business world is changing rapidly and what was trending once has vanished only a season later. Make sure your marketing presentation reflects current market trends.
Most clients are sensitive to market fluctuations, so don’t brush this step off. Invest some time in studying the changes in your niche and update your presentation accordingly.
Physical Demo
A physical demo of your product and service is an opportunity to put on a show. The client gets a chance to see that your product actually works just as you say in your marketing presentation.
You can use a video too of someone else using it. This builds trust. The best part is, video marketing is proven to have an 80% conversion rate.
Include Testimonials
Another important addition to your marketing presentation must be testimonials. Nothing adds more credibility than other customers confirming that your product or service is worth investing money in.
Known as evergreen referrals, testimonials are social proof that plays into the herd mentality of human beings.
A good testimonial has an image of a person, their full name, their job title, their organization, and a link that anyone can verify is a real person.
Ask Questions
If you have a particularly long marketing presentation, ask a question every 8-10 minutes, just so your prospect is still on this journey you’re taking him.
Have a Q&A session
It’s very good to have a short Q & A at the very end of your marketing presentation. You aced the presentation but don’t allow this session to drag you down. Everyone’s watched the video of Elon Musk struggle through his well-prepared presentation when he was confronted by a bizarre question.
Allow your client to speak or clarify any doubts they may have. This is your chance to put to bed any suspicions or any concerns prospects have regarding your service or product.
Also, be prepared for non-questions and hostility. Have a sense of humor about it.
Prepare for Difficult Questions
Prepare for tough questions. There will be one or two of those and the only way you can handle them well is by being absolutely thorough about your product and the market you serve.
If you don’t know the answer to a difficult question, don’t make one up. Inform the prospect you will get back to them at the end of the day and do it.
Next comes the presenter. Just as the content of the presentation is important so is the presenter.
So, What makes a good Presenter?
The following are the traits you should possess.
Establish credibility
What makes you credible is your trustworthiness. Whether you’re an expert on the matter you’re presenting, your audience judgment is critical.
When you make your presentation, you can establish your credibility by trusting your audience, wanting what’s best for them, aligning with their values, using evidence they find credible and embodying the message you give.
Be relatable
Don’t be the salesman or the expert. Be the friend whose recommending them something that they really need.
Your prospect wants to know how this will make them money, how it will benefit their business and whether the returns will justify the investment.
Forbes identified nine elements that make a presentation relatable. They are a singular primary focus, emotion, authenticity, humor, self-deprecation (especially if you’re a CEO), advice, honesty, active conversation, and storytelling.
Smile
Presenting can be nerve racking but practice smiling between pauses. When you smile you convey that you are confident about your service, you’re grateful for the opportunity, and you know this will benefit the prospect.
By smiling, you also build a rapport with your audience.
Be a showman
What is showmanship in sales? Showmanship is the ability of a person to hook an audience to achieve a sale through entertainment. It might seem contrary to the goal of giving a serious presentation.
Bob Kennedy talks about how he uses showmanship with a pair of dice at every sales presentation. His little act of rolling the dice and getting sevens is just a little flair to drive across the message that with preparation you can get the desired outcome.
Twenty-five years later he still uses it to get his client’s attention. It doesn’t have to be over the top and it may not work the first time, but practice using some showmanship to set yourself apart from the competition.
It will make your marketing presentation stand out from the crowd.
Believe in your service
This is a critical part of your presentation. Discuss your product or solutions, while remaining animated and energetic. Your voice should sound excited.
Also, look and feel enthusiastic. If you don’t get excited about your own service, how can you expect a prospect to be motivated enough to buy?
A true and genuine belief in the product or service you’re selling says with certainty and confidence that your product will make a client’s business more profitable.
Don’t be afraid
Lots of people are afraid of public speaking especially when it comes to marketing. Practice with your own staff or colleagues and build up from there. The size of the audience shouldn’t matter.
If you’re well versed in the subject matter, your pre-speaking jitters will disappear. Prepare well by knowing your material inside out.
Rehearse often. Don’t memorize anything. Use key points and prompts to help connect the examples to stories. Practice visualization, often used by athletes to reduce stress.
Also, find a friend in your audience. This is usually the person whose open to you and you can look in the eye repeatedly while you talk.
Positive Body Language
Body language comprises of your stance, gestures, and facial expressions.
And why is body language important?
Positive body language builds credibility when you are presenting. It also shows your emotions, which allows you to connect you with your listeners.
When it comes to gestures, use your hands. Don’t keep them on your hips or stuff them in your pockets. Neither should you fold them across your chest or behind your back. Use them to highlight a point.
How you stand in front of the room before you can even begin your presentation is called stance. It tells the audience of your emotional state if you’re happy, petrified, confident, or uncomfortable. Prospects “read” your stance unthinkingly.
Stance speaks more than words. A balanced stance looks like your weight is even but pitched slightly forward tends to convey that the speaker is engaged with the audience.
A slumped stance which can be leaning to either side says the speaker isn’t too bothered or is too nervous if slouched.
Keep your feet pointed straight ahead. Constant fidgeting and swaying are repulsive. It distracts the audience and can also annoy your listeners. Stand tall, confidently with controlled movements.
The movements of your eyes, mouth, and facial muscles can convey your emotions to an audience. Don’t avoid eye contact.
Effective presenters can engage with each person, one at a time.
By doing this they focus long enough on an individual to complete a natural phrase and allow him or her to let that sink in. This kind of focus can draw the attention of a room as each member’s attention is riveted to the presenter.
This allows the audience to process the message and keeps them involved with the speaker.
Wrapping Up
Marketing presentations don’t have to be boring. 70 % of industry experts say that presentation skills are critical for career success. It’s no longer just for the top dogs and CEOs.
Engaging presenter behavior can be learned with practice.
And with their growing role in convincing clients and customers, they are becoming the go-to delivery method for sales pitches, communications, reports, and conversions.
Currently, human resources place great emphasis on presentation skills in marketing, requiring some marketers to do them almost every day for clients and internal management. It’s a skill that is now considered essential to marketing.
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