Marketing Presentations: Are They the Low-Investment/High-Reward Solution to Bigger Profits

Want to show what your brand is made of? Marketing presentations are the answer. When done well, presentations can help you tell an engaging story that connects with your audience and inspires them to take action.

With just a few pages, marketers can weave valuable information into a story about who their company is and what they offer. More importantly, marketing presentations can address an audience’s most burning questions about a business’s services. Come for the story, leave with a solution.  

Marketing presentations are a powerful way for brands and companies to get their message across. At a minimum, audiences will see your company as an option to solve their pain point. But a well-crafted presentation will forge an emotional connection between your brand and the audience. It’s this connection that will ultimately lead to more purchases and higher profits for your business.

The Power of Marketing Presentations

Before the internet became mainstream, buyers relied on sellers to provide them with the information they needed to make a purchase decision. Sales representatives often had exclusive access to details such as technical specifications, price lists and stock inventory. So, customers had to contact their sales rep to learn more about the product they were interested in.  

Thankfully, times have changed, and today’s generation of buyers don’t leave much to chance. Instead of waiting for a salesperson to show up at their door, buyers now do the research themselves. In fact, buyers can usually get most of the information they need online before they ever contact the seller.

Of course, you can’t trust everything you see on the internet. So, brands put out accurate details through their website, blog posts and sales presentations.

Marketing presentations are an ideal way to share details about what a brand stands for, what products and services it offers and what problems it can solve. Once a customer learns more about a brand, they can take the relationship to the next level.

In short, marketing presentations are the key to advancing a business relationship. And the more engaging and relatable the content, the more likely buyers are to start trusting the brand. Let’s dig deeper into the impact these presentations can have.

Leveraging Storytelling for Effective Marketing

Storytelling is a creative way to attract an audience’s interest. Who doesn’t want to hear a story about a hero overcoming all obstacles to save the day? Even better, who doesn’t want to hear a story that they highly relate to? Wouldn’t you want to learn about brands that can solve your everyday problems?

Whether it’s a safer drive to and from work, a better-performing laundry detergent or athletic shoes that can elevate your game, you’d want to know how these products helped people like you have a better day. This is where the art of storytelling comes in.

Use marketing presentations to tell a more captivating story. In fact, treat the presentation like a story and give it a beginning, a middle and an ending. Storytellers usually present the problem at the beginning of the story to hook an audience with similar issues.

A Sample Story Time

Consider your morning commute as an example of a story. Every day, 74% of American workers commute to work, and it takes them about an hour round trip on average. What’s more, 76.4% of commuters drive to work alone.

What could make a commute more pleasurable? Lower gas prices, better safety features or more entertainment choices? How about all three? The presenter might then spout the virtues of their new vehicle model that has great mileage, packs extra safety features and has a brand new infotainment system on board.

Stories are mostly about resolving conflicts. So, you’ll need to present your story to an audience who can relate to similar struggles. In this example, presenting your no-compromise solution will appeal to first-time car buyers or owners who want to buy a newer model. And your story should be engaging enough to influence their purchase decisions.  

The Art of Persuasion in Marketing Presentations

Storytelling aside, another technique that can enhance your marketing presentations is persuasion. Your presentations should have enough convincing power to compel your audience to learn more about your offerings.

Establish Your Authority

To persuade an audience more easily, do some prep work. Customers look up to an authority figure when they’re shopping for solutions, so position your brand as an industry leader.

For instance, if your company has been around for a while, show yourself as the established veteran who made all the right decisions over the years. Or if you’re a new business, portray your brand as an upstart that continually pushes the boundaries.

Either way, you’ll need to show proof of what your brand has accomplished so far. Depending on your current track record, you can post your increasing sales figures, wide-range industry certifications, quality manufacturing practices or your highly professional sales and customer service teams. You can also cite industry recognition, customer testimonials and positive peer reviews.

Maintain an Air of Credibility and Trustworthiness

At the same time, you should avoid going too far in trumpeting accomplishments. Making wild claims or false promises can negatively affect your standing in the community.

When publishing sales data or survey results, don’t share information that can readily be dismissed. More importantly, don’t cherry-pick positive reports while suppressing negative ones. Savvy buyers want to know both good and bad news when they make a decision.

Finally, double-check any facts or claims in your marketing presentations for accuracy. Customers will appreciate your transparency.

Low Investment, High Reward: Myth or Reality?

Do engaging marketing presentations actually present a low-investment but high-reward strategy? How much must brands spend to create compelling presentations? Compared to other outputs, are marketing presentations more cost-effective? Let’s separate fact from fiction.

How Much Does It Cost To Deliver a Marketing Presentation?

First, let’s look at the cost of marketing. According to Deloitte’s Annual CMO Survey, a typical company allocates around 13.6% of its operations budget to marketing activities. However, some industries base their marketing spend as a percentage of revenue. For instance, B2B companies assign 7.8% of revenue to marketing.

A sizable chunk of this budget now leans toward digital marketing, including advertising on social platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Content marketing also figures prominently in the budget, with companies allocating anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 a month.

Presentations are a major component of content marketing. Costs include the salary of marketing staff tasked to create the presentations. To reduce operational costs, you might hire a design agency or freelancer to create or edit presentations. Agencies charge on a campaign or project basis, which means significantly lower costs than using in-house talent to do the work. Similarly, freelancers work on a per-project basis and usually charge $75–$250 to complete a 10-slide presentation.

Meanwhile, the presentation software that brands, design agencies and freelancers use is often considered software-as-a-service (SaaS). These platforms are accessible via web login, so there’s no need to install the software on local computers. Plus, many run on a subscription basis, which covers all software updates as long as the account remains active.  

Software purchases can cost thousands of dollars per version. But SaaS presentation programs provide the same functionality for a smaller slice of your budget.        

Comparative Analysis: Marketing Presentations vs. Other Strategies

The benefits of well-designed marketing presentations go beyond avoiding overhead costs. For one thing, clients will have the information they need from the onset, fast-tracking the sales process. The shorter cycles let sales teams manage more prospects and generate more revenue.

Customers will also have access to complete and accurate information that can enhance their trust in the brand. This can lead to incremental sales.

What’s more, well-designed and well-written marketing presentations can generate higher returns due to their lower costs and faster return on investment (ROI). Presentations make up a small part of content marketing costs, which average $6,750 a month. So, this strategy can potentially be a lower risk but generate higher rewards.

Considering that marketing presentations usually start the ball rolling for most prospects, getting it right the first time can help improve the ROI of other programs such as pay-per-click advertising ($10,000/month), social media marketing ($20,000/month) and website copywriting ($25,000/month). Exposing your prospects to quality marketing presentations makes it easier for prospects to trust your business.

Calculating the ROI of Marketing Presentations  

Given their low-risk, high-reward potential, how soon can marketing presentations start generating returns on your investment? The basic way to determine the ROI of marketing presentations is to take the sales growth amount, subtract the presentation cost, and then divide by the presentation cost.  

Let’s say you paid a freelancer $2,000 to build your marketing presentation. If your presentation platform subscription costs $3,000 a year, then your total marketing cost for the presentation is $5,000.

Now, suppose you generated $100,000 in revenue from one client during your latest fiscal year thanks in part to the marketing presentation. To calculate the presentation’s ROI, you would use the following formula:

Sales Revenue - Total Marketing Cost / Total Marketing Cost

Inserting the numbers, you get:

$100,000 - $5,000 / $5,000 = 19.00 or 1900%

Considering that part of your marketing cost (subscription) covers the entire year,  generating an amazing 1900% ROI is a low-risk, high-reward venture indeed. This also means that thanks to your marketing presentations, you earned $19 for every dollar you spent on making a presentation. These are incredible returns, to say the least.

Maximizing Marketing Benefits Through Presentations

Presentations are simple but effective ways to connect with audiences, convey your message, build trust and present a solution. Using a presentation format means having a free hand to use text, images, video and audio to prove your points.

In addition, interactive features can add more dynamism and increase engagement levels with your viewers. Depending on how you lay out your ideas and information, marketing presentations can answer questions before they’ve even been asked.

What’s more, this medium’s portability enables busy clients to take in the information at their leisure. While sales teams can personally make a presentation, clients can also download a copy and read through the content at a more convenient and relaxed time.

Pros and Cons of Marketing Presentations

Of course, presentations aren’t always the perfect way to communicate with clients. Like any other communication format, they have drawbacks as well.

Pros of Marketing Presentations:

Promote Effective Communication: Presentation slideshows are great for explaining concepts, proposing solutions, listing accomplishments and telling a story. In short, you can present ideas in a sequenced, logical order. Features such as bullet points, headers and text boxes let presenters organize their content and make it easier for audiences to follow the train of thought. The addition of images, video and audio also helps explain complex subjects and increase clarity.

Unlimited Customization: Different clients have different requirements and may need slightly different presentations. Most presentation software has powerful editing features that allow users to create custom presentations. Templates, font packs and other enhancements are also available to keep designs fresh and unique. And if you need to create time-constrained presentations for busy clients, you can limit your slides to fit any given time frame.

Versatile and Convenient: Outside of their native format, presentations can be exported as common files that are readable on most computers. This means that most, if not all, smart devices should have no problems opening a presentation saved in common formats such as PDF files or JPEG images. This lets viewers look at the documents anywhere. They can also save a copy as a handy reference.

Interactive and Engaging: This feature is reserved for modern interactive presentation software. Adding interactive elements increases user engagement levels by making things a bit more interesting. Viewers will enjoy clicking on presentation elements to see additional information. The more they engage, the more they get to learn about the presentation and the brand.

Cons of Marketing Presentations:

Designer-Dependent: Great marketing presentations don’t happen by accident. It takes skill for a sales and marketing team to come up with content that makes a presentation informative and engaging. Additionally, a user’s familiarity with the presentation software’s features can help them create highly interactive pages or compelling content. In short, presentation software remains highly dependent on the one wielding it.

Time-Consuming Creation Process: Designing and creating effective marketing presentations requires preparation, lots of research and effective layout skills. Combining all these elements into one presentation will take time and effort. Similarly, customizing existing presentations to conform to specific client requirements will also need time.

Potential for Boring or Overly Long Presentations: Again, this is a bug that’s highly user-dependent. Unskilled presenters will try to cram as much information as possible into every slide, leading to a bloated, incomprehensible slideshow that guarantees information overload. However, this condition can be easily remedied by following certain guidelines for creating effective presentations.

Crafting Engaging Presentation Content

As you can see, presentation software remains highly dependent on its creator’s presentation skills. But like most abilities, your presentation methods can improve through constant practice and a willingness to learn new tricks.

Start With an Engaging Introduction

Whether performing in front of a live audience or sharing a PDF version with your clients, it’s important to fire up your presentation from the start. The first few minutes of a presentation are crucial in keeping your audience enamored, so make sure you start with an eye- or ear-opening introduction.

Humor, a relatable experience or a thought-provoking question are all great cold openers. During the first few minutes, you might also want to lay out what’s in store for the presentation. This way, the audience knows what to expect.

Be a Storyteller, Not A Presenter

Whether you’re designing a presentation or actually presenting a slideshow to an audience, you’ll need to sharpen your storytelling skills. It’s easy—and very tempting—for creators to just dump text and images into a slide and call it a day. But the most engaging slideshows often contain nuanced information outside of the displayed text.

This additional information can come from an embedded video, an interactive event or a presenter’s ad-lib. Again, while your audience may come for the stories, you’ll need to make them stay for your solutions.

Go Beyond Default Settings

Sure, it’s convenient to use default settings and samples when creating presentations. Unfortunately, millions of other presenters think the same way. When viewers see your presentation laid out in the usual default way, they’ll assume your content is predictable as well.

Make your presentation shine differently by going beyond default designs. Download new presentation examples or create your own.      

Provide a Unique Value Proposition

When introducing an idea or proposing a solution, make sure you have a unique value proposition to share with your audience. This is what makes your brand stand apart from the rest and should be part of your presentation’s highlights. It also enables your audience to better attach your brand to your proposed solutions.

Share Social Proof

Today’s customers would rather take the word of fellow customers instead of paid endorsers and influencers. They want to hear from people who have similar experiences and concerns.

When making a presentation that offers a solution, make sure that your audience knows about others who are happy to have chosen your brand. This adds credibility to your brand voice and makes your audience more inclined to join you.

Don’t Skimp on Media

Highly effective presentations use more than just text in a slideshow. They feature lots of images, videos and interactive elements. When adding media to your presentation, always choose high-quality images and video.

More importantly, don’t use copyrighted images without permission. Otherwise, you run the risk of distracting your viewers with questions about stolen content. At the very least, you’ll look lazy.

Effective Delivery Techniques  

At some point, your brand team will have to present your material to a live audience. Whether it’s a single client or a group of like-minded prospects, you’ll need to give a good show with your presentation as the main star. To help you perform better, use these tips to improve your delivery:

Check Your Equipment Before Going on Stage

Race car drivers, astronauts and divers all check their equipment before blasting off. You should do the same to steer clear of preventable mishaps like sudden software updates, files that won’t open and malfunctioning equipment. A thorough check of all your hardware before you take the stage is all that’s needed to prevent a potentially embarrassing scenario.    

Keep Track of Time

If you value your clients, you should value their time. Start and end on schedule, and keep your presentation within the allocated time limit. Your audience members likely have other plans that day. A lack of awareness of their schedules can sour the mood over your presentation and make them less likely to engage.  

Make Viewers Focus on the Content

One skill a presenter needs to master is making sure the audience focuses on what’s important. This entails removing distracting elements from presentations such as hard-to-read text, loud contrasting colors and grainy images. Otherwise, your audience will struggle to focus on the actual message. Review your presentation before the event—with a colleague, if possible—to catch such distractions.

Stay Professional During Unexpected Problems

All the preparation in the world can’t help you avoid some mishaps. Things pop up all the time: an unscheduled power interruption, a computer crash, a software error message, even a sudden weather disturbance.

When this happens, stay professional, calm and cool. Instead of breaking down or freaking out, stay connected with the audience. If you can’t carry on, entertain your audience while these issues get fixed. Prospective buyers will likely gauge how you handle customer accounts by the way you manage unexpected scenarios.

Real-World Success Stories: Success With Marketing Presentations

Throughout the history of marketing presentations, there are some companies that manage to rise above the rest. Using a combination of preparation, on-stage gimmickry and excellent presentation skills, they captivate an audience during a presentation.

Stories of Marketing Presentation Success  

Thanks to one of its founders, Apple became more than just a popular computer and smart device company. Steve Jobs, the company’s quirky former CEO, made Apple equally famous for its offbeat but highly effective marketing presentations.

These killer presentations often happened during Apple’s product launch events. Who could forget the iconic “1984” television commercial they released when they introduced the original Macintosh in 1984?

Or in 2007, everybody expected Jobs to launch three new products. What took everyone by surprise was that Apple actually introduced all three products as one device: the original iPhone. Similarly, the audience erupted a year later when Jobs revealed that an envelope he received from a messenger contained their newest laptop: a MacBook Air.

What’s the takeaway from the Apple way of presenting? Every time Jobs took the stage, he told a story. He started with a problem that always ended up with an Apple product as the solution.

Lessons From the Trenches: What Worked and What Didn't

In an ironic twist, Apple’s rival was the star of a product launch gone bad. With Windows 95 dominating the PC landscape, Microsoft felt it was time to launch its worthy successor, Windows 98. But during the launch in Chicago, the unthinkable happened.

The new operating system (OS), which was shown on a large projector screen in the background, crashed and displayed the Blue Screen of Death. Despite the nightmarish sequence of events, the appreciative audience clapped and cheered for the new OS, which caused enormous sighs of relief from Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. Earlier during the crash, Gates quipped that this was the reason they hadn’t shipped the software yet.  

The lesson here? Check your equipment and make sure everything is working. If you’re not sure, play it safe by going for a presentation that won’t crash.    

Similarly, Sony’s infamous product launch of the PlayStation 4 in 2013 is a lesson in what not to include in a presentation. The overabundance of text, too much technical jargon and an ultra-long rambling presentation turned off many viewers. Thankfully for Sony, the actual video game console was too good to ignore. It ultimately became one of the world’s best-selling video game consoles.        

Integrating Presentations Into Your Marketing Strategy

Presentations can play a powerful role in enhancing your marketing strategy. So, make sure you design and create presentations that complement and solidify your marketing programs.

Step-by-Step Guide To Implementing Marketing Presentations

Your sales presentation software should have plenty of samples to make design easy. Still, resist the urge to cram all the information in your presentation slides. Instead, just hit the highlights and trust your presenter to fill in the blanks. But before you go on stage, make sure that your planned presentation adheres to these practical guidelines.

• Your presentation should contain a clear objective and relevant content that audiences can relate to.
• When sharing this information, the presentation (or the presenter) should create an engaging story.
• To make the story more compelling, streamline the presentation’s appearance. Don’t overload each slide with too much information, text or ideas. Instead, try to reduce the number of slides to the barest minimum. For many, 10 slides are ideal.  
• Set the time and duration of the presentation and follow it as closely as possible.

Measuring the Impact: Analytics and KPIs

Finally, gauging your slideshow’s performance is key to making better presentations in the future. Your audience’s reaction is the best way to determine your presentation’s success. Specifically, you’ll want to answer these questions:

• Did audience members stay for the entire presentation?
• Did the presentation answer many of the audience’s questions about the product or solution?
• What parts of the presentation captivated the audience? Which parts didn’t?
• Did the presentation lead the audience to answer calls to action (CTAs)?

KPIs and Metrics

Analytics can play a great role in measuring the impact of your presentations. Thanks to modern artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the software can pick up data to determine if a presentation influenced buyers to take action. These metrics can include the following key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Bounce Rate: This metric measures how many listed presentation recipients were actually bogus email addresses or contact numbers.  
• Open Rate: The open rate tracks the number of actual users who opened the email link containing the presentation link or any attached marketing material.  
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): This measures the number of recipients that actually clicked the links embedded in the communications to download the presentation.
• Conversion Rate: Conversion is the act of turning a prospect into a buying customer. This metric monitors the number of leads that followed through their CTAs and made a purchase.
• Average Purchase Value (APV): This metric represents how much a customer spends on average. This helps measure whether a presentation or other marketing campaign generates revenue outside the cost to run it.

These metrics help marketers determine if a campaign is successful. They can also tell you if your brand is spending more than what it earns as revenue. A successful campaign that burns money will amount to nothing in terms of profitability. So, continue monitoring your programs to see if your marketing presentations work as intended.

Add Interactivity to Your Marketing Presentations With Ingage

Using legacy presentation software may not be the best approach when it comes to modern marketing presentations. Today’s audiences prefer a more dynamic, interactive experience. Instead of the usual linear direction, interactive presentations let viewers take the story in different directions.

Ingage is cloud-based marketing presentation software designed to give your stories the interactivity they deserve. Collaborative features enable entire teams to share the work on a single presentation, even if everyone’s working remotely. In addition, powerful analytics features track your audience’s reactions so you’ll know which sections received the most attention and which ones need more work.

Get your stories straight and interactive with Ingage. Sign up now for a free demo!