Powerpoint/Keynote

How to Create Professional Corporate Slide Decks

Purpose of Corporate Slide Decks

In a corporate setting, people use a collection of slides called a corporate deck, presentation deck, or slide deck to present information or ideas. Corporate slide decks are often used in business meetings, conferences, or sales pitches to represent key points or data visually. Corporate slide decks contain slides with text, images, charts, graphs, and other design elements to enhance the message effectively. Utilizing PowerPoint for presentations integrates slides and multimedia, popular for professionals. Businesses use pitch decks to persuade investors. Choosing a theme sets the tone and creates a cohesive look. Slides should balance text and visuals. PowerPoint slides show key points and data visually. Charts in presentations help communicate data. Examples aid in creating suitable graphs.

Corporate Slide Decks

Overview of a company’s business, products, services, and financial information. Slide decks summarize key information for meetings, pitches, or investor presentations. They visually enhance presentations with text, images, and other elements for clear communication. This helps in better audience engagement and creating a positive impact for your business presentations. With this basic introduction to corporate slide decks, let us move to designing corporate slide decks as more professional and engaging.

Designing Corporate Slide Decks

Designing presentations in business is crucial. Businesses create slides, Pitch Deck for investors. Pitch Deck is a brief presentation for potential investors or clients, sharing business plan, products, services. Slide design includes text and visuals for visual flow of information. Businesses create different corporate slide decks at different stages. An agency can help reduce the burden of designing slides.

Creating a corporate deck involves several key steps:

  1. Determine your target audience and the purpose of the deck.
  2. Gather relevant information and data to include in the presentation.
  3. Organize the content clearly and logically, using visuals and graphics to enhance understanding.
  4. Practice and refine your presentation to ensure it is engaging and impactful.

Corporate Slide Decks – Content Generation

The length of a corporate deck varies based on content and purpose. It’s recommended to keep it concise, with around 10-20 slides. Provide enough info to communicate effectively without overwhelming the audience. Slide deck format is the layout and structure of a presentation with slides containing text, images, and visual elements to convey information or tell a story. It may have a title slide, introduction, main points, supporting details, and a conclusion, and is used in business, education, and conferences. Structuring corporate slides involves following design rules. Two rules aim to keep slides concise and focused.

Some Design Rules to Deliver Concise Corporate Slide Decks

Corporate slides convey data, visuals, and ideas to an audience. Keep designs simple, less cluttered for impact. Focus on key points, use minimal text, and visuals. Follow the 10-20-30 rule for effective presentations: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30pt font. 20 seconds rule is often recommended to keep presentations concise, engaging, and easy to follow. 20 seconds per slide refers to the presentation format known as PechaKucha. In PechaKucha, presenters are limited to 20 slides, and each slide is shown for exactly 20 seconds before automatically advancing to the next slide. This format of 20 slides for 20 seconds is designed to keep presentations concise and focused.

Pitch decks are vital for the growth of startups. Entrepreneurs and business professionals often need to present pitches to various audiences. These pitches can be customized depending on their purpose, audience, delivery method, and objectives.

Corporate Slide Decks – Startup Pitch

Before discussing on business pitches, let us try to understand how to create a slide deck in 5 simple steps.

5 expert-recommended steps for developing a persuasive slide deck: 1. Construct your presentation around your narrative, 2. Leverage pre-designed templates, 3. Prioritize design elements, 4. Incorporate high-quality visuals, and 5. Make your Slide Deck concise and easy. Let’s consider essential business pitches crucial for business growth. Each pitch applies to a unique business action. Identify the right pitch and tailor your slides accordingly.

Business Pitches fostering Business Growth

Business pitches are essential for effectively communicating ideas to the audience. Before creating a presentation, identify and answer these questions.

  • Who is the pitch intended for?
  • What is the purpose of the pitch?
  • Is the pitch happening face-to-face or remotely?

To create a successful business pitch, first, identify the audience’s needs by answering questions about the pitch type. Tailoring your content to their needs will engage them effectively. When preparing a PowerPoint presentation, keep slides clean and organized without clutter. Use a consistent design theme for a professional look and add high-quality images for impact. Present your content clearly to resonate with the audience’s mindset. By following these tips, you can create a concise and compelling pitch that will leave a lasting impression on your viewers.

Audience nature and content type determine 5 business pitch types.

5 types of Business Pitches

1. The Investor Pitch: An investor pitch is essential for startups to raise funds. It involves entrepreneurs presenting their business idea to potential investors, aiming to secure investment. A well-prepared slide deck is crucial for conveying the business concept, value proposition, revenue plan, and financial breakdown effectively.

Investor Pitch – Corporate Slide Decks

2. The Elevator Pitch: The elevator pitch is a short presentation delivered in one minute to communicate business, product, or service and entrepreneurial skills clearly and persuasively with a compelling call to action.

Elevator Pitch – Corporate Slide Decks

3. The Sales Pitch: A sales pitch is a presentation that introduces a product or service, highlights its benefits, provides examples, and encourages action. Sales slides, also called marketing slides, are visual tools that help showcase the offering to potential customers. Including graphs and charts in these slides is essential for presenting data that supports the pitch. PowerPoint decks are comprehensive presentations that combine sales slides, graphs, and multimedia elements to deliver a persuasive message. They are crucial for sales meetings and cover key findings for driving sales growth and enhancing business performance. Overall, a successful sales pitch involves presenting a compelling value proposition, real-life examples, and a clear call to action to attract and engage the audience for lead generation.

Sales Pitch – Corporate Slide Decks

4. The Product Pitch: A product pitch is a presentation that highlights the features and benefits of a specific product. It typically includes: 1. Product introduction to the product, 2. Market opportunity analysis, 3. Analyzing competitors, and 4. Revenue model. The pitch should also address a specific problem that the product solves and explain how it meets customers’ needs.

5. The Twitter Pitch: The Twitter pitch is a brief summary of your business idea in one or two phrases, adapted for social media’s 280-character limit. This trend has gained popularity as a modern twist on the traditional elevator pitch, aiming to be quicker and more concise.

9 Amazing Slides for Corporate Slide Decks

1. Overview, Vision and Mission: When designing corporate slide decks, it is essential, to begin with an introduction to your company. This should include a clear explanation of your organization’s vision and mission.

2. Problem Statement and Solution: The main goal of a pitch is to provide value and present ideas to meet customer needs. Outline the problem your product aims to solve. Show how your offering can be the solution to their problem or address their challenges.

3. Market Research: Include slide on marketing opportunities, go-to-market strategy, marketing plan to reach customers. Outline promotion plan, target audience, customer journey. These elements help in effectively communicating your marketing strategy to potential investors or stakeholders.

4. Competitor Analysis: When creating a pitch deck, highlight competitors and your competitive advantage, focusing on what sets your company apart and its unique value proposition. Showcasing these factors will explain why investors should select your company over others.

5. Revenue or Business Model: A business revenue overview must include revenue generation plan, pricing model, customer acquisition channels, and cost considerations for financial insight into business viability.

6. Financials: Financial projections for 3-5 years should show business milestones and outcomes. Important for startups to show future path to investors. Use MS Graph or think-cell for charts in presentation. Visuals simplify data for better comprehension. Choose a professional layout and theme for a captivating audience-focused design.

7. Team: This slide shows team headshots & work experience to highlight expertise. It aids stakeholders in understanding key team members.

8. Contact Information: When creating a pitch deck, clear contact info is vital. Include email and relevant details for quick contact. Also, show company website and social media on the deck header for visibility and connection with interested parties.

9. Call to Action: Including a clear call to action at the end of your presentation is crucial. It tells your audience the next steps, such as investing, partnering, or supporting your cause. Consider the business’s objective, industry, and audience. Customize each deck to match the desired goal and action.

10 Proven Tips for Better Corporate Slide Decks – Suggested by Presentation Experts

To design slides effectively, use visual content strategy, create clean layout, choose suitable fonts and colors, add relevant images, animations and transitions in PowerPoint. Many blogs offer valuable insights on presentation design. By incorporating those effective PPT presentation tips, you can design your next slide deck as top-notch.

1. Think about your Main Message: Think about main message, support points, practice and time it—then consider slides. Presentation stands alone; slides enhance listener experience.

2. Create a Consistent Look and Feel: A consistent design theme, color scheme, and font selection enhance visual appeal and convey the message effectively. Visuals are crucial for presentation effectiveness. Brand identity and consistency in marketing materials are key.

Corporate Slide Decks – Consistent Look

3. Topic Transitions: When presenting, consider transitions between topics. Smooth transitions help the audience follow the flow, understand topic connections, and use transitional phrases or sentences.

4. Concise and Simple: Overloading slides can overwhelm audience, detract message. Keep slides simple, concise, highlight critical information. Audience focus on delivery, engage with message.

5. Meaningful Photos: Utilize impactful imagery to enhance presentations without overshadowing speech. Choose for simple, relevant photos that align with your message. Photo slides improve presentation aesthetics. Testing ideas leads to a minimalistic design. Presentation and deck designers create visually appealing presentations. Quality images boost deck appeal.

Corporate Slide Decks – Meaningful Photos

6. Use Transitions for a Purpose: When making a PowerPoint, using effects and transitions can be tempting to enhance slides. However, use them sparingly. Overuse can distract from content and seem unprofessional.

7. Masking Effect: By masking info and focusing on essentials, you keep the audience concentrated on the main message. Masking adds visual appeal to presentations.

8. Try Panning Large Images: Instead of making an image too small or cutting it, you can use a better method. By using the panning technique, show the image vertically while talking about it. In Keynote, select the Move effect in an object’s action panel to do this.

9. For Video, don’t use Auto-Play: Frequently, presenters click video during delay, advancing to the next slide. Set video for click-to-play to avoid mishaps. Grant autonomy over start time and select poster frame before playback.

10. Create Simple Charts and Graphs: Although adding an image of a chart is allowed in a presentation, it can disrupt the overall aesthetic negatively. If the data is simple and there’s time, consider recreating the chart in the presentation app for a better look.

Corporate Slide Decks – Charts

Wrapping it Up

Creating an effective corporate slide deck is a crucial aspect of business communication that requires careful planning, creativity, and attention to detail. By following the tips in this post, you can enhance your corporate slides and make presentations that resonate with your audience. Focus on clear messaging, quality visuals, and overall design. By following these tips, you can take your corporate presentations to the next level and effectively present your business ideas to stakeholders.

Are you looking for design tips to professionally enhance your corporate slide decks? See our portfolio for design inspirations. Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter to get tips on effective presentation designs that adds value to your key messaging in each slide.

FAQs

1. What is a corporate slide deck?

A corporate slide deck is a presentation that is typically used in a business setting to convey information, data, or ideas to an audience. It usually consists of a series of slides that may include text, images, charts, graphs, and other visual elements. Slide decks are commonly used in meetings, conferences, and sales presentations to provide a visual aid and support the speaker’s message.

2. Why Are PowerPoint Presentations Called Decks?

The term “deck” is often used to refer to a PowerPoint presentation because it originated from the idea of a deck of cards. Just like a deck of cards, a PowerPoint presentation consists of a series of slides that can be shuffled, rearranged, and presented in a specific order. The term “deck” has become a common slang term for a presentation in the business world.

3. What is the purpose of a slide deck?

The purpose of a slide deck is to visually enhance a presentation and provide key information in a concise and organized manner. It helps the presenter communicate their message effectively and engage the audience. A slide deck can include text, images, graphs, and other visual elements to support the content being presented.

4. How Many Slides Should Be in Your Presentation Deck?

The number of slides in a deck can vary depending on the purpose and content of the presentation. However, it is generally recommended to keep the number of slides between 10 and 20 to maintain audience engagement and avoid overwhelming them with too much information.

5. What is the standard slide deck size?

The standard slide deck size is 16:9, which means the slides have a width-to-height ratio of 16 units to 9 units. This is the most commonly used aspect ratio for presentations and is optimized for widescreen displays. However, it’s important to note that you can also choose other aspect ratios, such as 4:3 or custom sizes, depending on your specific needs and the devices you will be presenting on.

Karthick N