Posted on August 26, 2022
Presentation skills is what gives value to your insights, instead it is useless if you aren’t able to communicate them properly.
Communication is a soft skill that many organizations recognize but fail to look for when recruiting fresh talent. Yet, in marketing, communicating with presentations is something that will happen quarterly, monthly, and sometimes even more regularly.
A good presentation requires planning, research, and practice to perfect. Done right, they can be the difference between you winning that budget for your future campaigns or not.
In this article, we’ll explore the importance of your presentation skills in hybrid or in-person events, what they can do for you and your business, and how to improve them. Let’s go.
What are presentation skills?
Presentation skills are a marketer’s ability to interact with their audience, clearly convey messages, and engage the audience in the content of what they have to say.
Presentation skills help event professionals and marketers adequately communicate their offerings and value to a specific audience and are quintessential to the role’s success.
How do presentation skills help marketing roles?
Presentation skills allow marketers to deliver messages to a target audience concisely and clearly. Excellent presentation skills are valuable in marketing when you’re trying to land a new client, pitching a campaign idea to stakeholders, or reporting on success analytics.
It’s fair to say presentation skills significantly impact job performance as well as workplace and team engagement. For example, a presentation writer at an event is responsible for creating engaging and informative presentations that will be used to educate and inform the audience.
As a marketing specialist or manager, it’s your job to organize marketing reports and analytics and present them in a way that engages your team. You’re responsible for curating, creating, and presenting content to help better your brand. Every great content marketing campaign started with a presentation.
Before we get into the skills you’ll need to improve your marketing presentations, let’s consider the tools to make your job easier. Let’s explore the top marketing templates the pros use to improve their workplace presentations.
5 Top templates to lift your marketing presentations
As a marketer, you’re likely to be tasked with:
- Regularly submitting campaign proposals
- Spearheading go-to-market strategies
- Conducting market research and analysis
- Producing KPI reports
One of these templates, from Pitch, will help you deliver better presentations while saving you time to work on your marketing skills.
1. Project proposal template
A great project proposal template can help you save time and energy and give you a framework to introduce to your organization. If you need to identify a problem, present a compelling solution, and incorporate social proof to win over stakeholders on a regular basis, this is the proposal template for you.
2. Market analysis template
A market analysis provides information on markets, buyers, competitors, and other market factors that can help your business stay on top. A well-designed template is key for presenting your research with confidence and communicating the potential of a market to your team.
A market analysis template is great when you want to confidently present your research. With slides for market size, buyer personas, customer demographics, market trends, and more, it comes with everything you need to effortlessly communicate and structure your analysis.
3. Marketing strategy template
A marketing strategy consists of tactics you’ve determined your business needs to implement to hit its organizational goals. It’s a comprehensive plan hitting those quarterly and yearly benchmarks through consumer insights and the creation of a distinct and evergreen competitive advantage.
A marketing strategy digs into the characteristics of customer segments and identifies how to target them better.
A thorough marketing strategy template containing the company’s value proposition, key brand messaging, and data on target customer demographics can help you clearly communicate with key stakeholders and get that strategy ball rolling.
4. Marketing plan template
Once you’ve got the green light on your marketing strategy presentation, the next step is to create a marketing plan. This should provide specifics on how you’ll achieve your marketing objectives and support the strategy.
By using a detailed marketing plan template, you can organize your promotional efforts, lay out the content you need to build, finalize your marketing objectives, and assign roles and responsibilities to everyone on your team.
5. KPI report template
A KPI report offers a measurable way to evaluate the impact of your marketing activities. It helps you monitor the success of different marketing channels to determine where your marketing budget should and shouldn’t go.
With this free KPI report template, you can easily identify trending data to see what’s working and what’s not and showcase this visually. From here, you’ll be able to make and communicate strategic tweaks to better reach your targets and business goals.
How to improve your presentation skills and become a better marketer
Aside from using marketing templates to offer your presentation structure and aesthetic flair, it’s also crucial to consider how your speech, tone, and body language can help you deliver a stellar presentation.
Let’s look at some practical ways to evolve your presentation skills and win over internal and external stakeholders.
1. Stick to a script
A presentation script is the secret behind a winning presentation, and scriptwriting is a skill well worth honing. Done well, you’ll be able to better structure your thoughts and ensure that your information is packed with a punch—saving the drama until last.
There are a few common speech writing tactics you can use in your script writing to help you deliver a more persuasive presentation. Consider things like:
- Lists of three
- Plosives
- Rhetorical questions
- Hyperboles
- Rhymes and half rhymes
- Themes
2. Kiss your audience: keep it simple, stupid
There’s nothing more powerful in conveying a message than keeping it simple. When you keep things simple, you keep them memorable. You’re able to deliver the point you’re trying to make in bitesize chunks that your audience can digest—no matter how complicated the topic.
One of these courses, from Udemy, can run you through how to technically deliver presentations clearly and memorably, using common public speaking tactics.
3. Tell a story
According to a Stanford University study, facts that are built around a story are seven times more memorable than those that are not. When you create a story around your presentation, you can create a compelling beginning, middle, and end, that becomes more of a journey for your audience.
In doing so, your audience will retain more information, and you’ll be able to confidently deliver your presentation with the knowledge your audience is wholeheartedly engaged and interested in where you’re taking them.
4. Use body language to your advantage
As a marketer, it’s important to consider how your body language affects the overall reception of your presentation. Non-verbal communication is just as important as verbal communication.
Confident body language can help you establish credibility, connect with your audience, and make your audience feel at ease.
There are multiple aspects of this non-verbal communication tactic. You want to control the room with a combination of different facial expressions, eye contact, hand movements, and other whole body gestures.
Consider the following when giving your next big presentation:
- Face your audience as much as possible and avoid turning your back on them
- Establish eye contact with individual members of your audience
- Smile! It’s been proven to be infectious and boost moods
- Mimic some of your audience’s actions to feel more relatable
- Keep hand gestures up and constant to be engaging
- Avoid crossing your arms or legs, keep everything open to appear welcoming
- Own the floor: move around the room to keep your audience engaged
- Avoid clapping or making sound with your body movements as they can be distracting to what you’re trying to say
5. Let your personality shine
Incorporating aspects of your personality into your presentation will help your audience feel at ease, while adding a personal touch that will make your presentations more memorable.
Of course, keep things as professional as they should be, but there’s absolutely no harm in using personal anecdotes, telling jokes, sharing your personal experience, or ad libbing from the script to keep listeners engaged.
6. Record your presentation and self-edit
A smart way to improve your presentation is to record yourself going through it. This will allow you to analyze and pinpoint problem areas, such as body language, voice clarity, and your pace—making sure you keep things on time.
You can then focus on improving those areas before the big day. When self-editing your presentation, pay attention to:
- Timing
- Tone of voice
- Body language and facial expressions
- Sound and lighting
- Your digital aid
- Relevance
7. Take things online
Given today’s world, there’s a high chance you’re presenting online, however, if you’re not, then don’t rule out your online audience as well—ensure your presentation is accessible as possible to your team and those that need to hear it.
If you are presenting online, virtual audiences can easily get distracted or struggle to engage. Ensure you’re fighting both of these factors as efficiently as possible.
Linkedin learning instructor Cassandra Worthy says the three most important components to engaging your virtual audience are energy, connection, and content; and she’s not wrong. However, there is more you can do to keep that digital audience engaged:
- Ask people to mute their notifications before the presentation starts
- Encouraging questions
- Invite a facilitator to help manage the chat
- Encourage chat reactions: with emojis
- Frequently ask questions to keep them on their toes
- Use visual and sound assets
- Ensure you’re got a solid wifi connection
- Ensure you’re using a good quality microphone
- Present in a quiet place, without any distractions in your background
You’re ready to nail that presentation
Now that you have the necessary tools, templates, courses, and knowledge to improve your presentation, the only thing left to do is to jump straight in. Start learning and improving your presentation skills today, and deliver better presentations tomorrow.