Why presentation is important in business

It all started with the invention of Microsoft PowerPoint. This software was developed in 1987 by Robert Gaskins & Dennis Austin. In July 1987, Microsoft Corporation purchased the rights for PowerPoint for $14 Million.

Initially called “Presenter”, PowerPoint was designed to facilitate visual demonstrations for group presentations in the business environment.

So, if you ask “Why presentation is important in business”, you have to look into its history & purpose. You have to ask why did they develop this software in the first place. The answer is business purposes! It was essentially developed keeping corporate usage in mind. Today, we use presentations for high-stake storytelling like pitch decks & sales decks.

I personally think that it was a brilliant idea. If you can add visuals to your speech, why not?

But that was in 1987, how about today? Are presentations still relevant in the business world? Everybody is talking about “death by PowerPoint” & how regular speeches are back. So how do you navigate the business context of presentations today?

If you’re reading this, one of the three things is true,

• You have a presentation opportunity & you’ve started to research from the very basics.

• You loathe the idea of presentations and you’re looking for a meaning to this ordeal.

• You’re generally curious about this subject matter.

No matter your reading objective, I’ll try to address your interest.

In this article, we’ll talk about the practical & strategic usage of PowerPoint presentations. Let’s look at them point-by-point.

1. Visual Aid

I’m well aware of the myths & discussions around presentations. One such slang is “Death by PowerPoint”. Even though it’s a famous one, those who coined it came across some pretty lame presentations.

On the contrary, presentations are great visual aids when wisely used. Not everybody can hold an audience with just the tone of their voice. Hence, presentations are life savers for professionals who need something for reference.

For example, have you heard of startup founders who have great connections? They know investors, venture capitalists & everybody needed to run their company. If interpersonal relationships were so important, why do they still build investor pitch decks? Because no matter how great your relationships are, some things can’t be done without presentations. You can’t talk about traction & financials without slides.

Presentations help the audience to grasp your complex concepts. Also, if you do the storytelling right, it brings the audience in your favor.

2. Visualization

Strategic meetings often mean presenting complex charts & graphs. The concept of data visualization exists because numbers in themselves are dreadful. Nobody wants to sit through 20 slides looking at ugly-looking charts. Or ugly-looking slides.

Most presentation software now allows you to beautify those charts & present your data visually. You can’t do that verbally now, can you?

PowerPoint presentations are effective tools for data visualization.

For example, if you want to share live reports from Power BI, you can connect them to PowerPoint & share them with a few clicks. Everything is that easy with PowerPoint. I bet you didn’t know this!

3. Narrative control

If the idea is to entertain the audience, there are other ways to do so. Say videos.

But why are presentations still preferred? Because stopping & running the video is a nightmare. Not to mention the accuracy of timing in video editing. You’ll be spending at least 30 hours preparing the visuals & then editing that video.

For example, if you’re to present at an event, you’d like to have pace control that’s easy to manage. Would you like to keep one eye on the big screen to check if it’s running properly? I’m guessing the answer is no. Slides have a manual as well as timed animations & transitions which you can customize. To avoid any public embarrassment, you should pre-set them as per convenience.

PowerPoint gives you a manual as well as a timed option for your visuals. With better control of the pace, you have control over how your narrative plays.

4. Widely accepted usage

A study showed that on average, professionals spend 20 hours a week designing PowerPoint presentations. The question is, “If presentations aren’t relevant today, are these people crazy?”.

The fact is they’re not crazy. Most executives, prospects & partners demand presentations for overview & submissions. All venture capital firms ask for pitch deck submissions. A considerable number of prospects ask for a sales deck before taking a meeting with you.

For example, we have a client who’s a brand manager. Every week, his bosses ask him to submit presentations to gauge his strategic direction. Why do they do it? Because executives don’t have time, they demand visual information that’s easy to digest.

So as a solution, he outsourced the design part to us. If he didn’t, he’d be designing PowerPoint slides for at least 10 hours a week.

The point is, presentations are the most widely accepted submission formats today. What will you do if you come across such situations? Tell them that you think “presentations are irrelevant”. Hence, we have reasons to believe that presentations are relevant even today.

5. Demos & showcases

There are some business scenarios where you just can’t use words. This is true for most tech companies.

Imagine describing this in your speech,

“The QIN uses private LTE/5G networks and Edge Devices (QED) to meet the connectivity and data needs of companies involved in the movement of goods and/or those that serve and support them”.

What do you think will happen? People will doze off & forget everything about you. They’ll pray to the almighty to never have to sit through your speech again. Today nobody likes complexity. Complexity kills everything — attention, deals, sales, you name it.

However, if you use PowerPoint animations to show this, it puts you way ahead of the game. Presentations make demos & showcase digestible for the audience.

All in all!

PowerPoint is too powerful to ignore. Presentations win hearts not because of visuals, but because they’re a great tool for business storytelling.

The audience will engage & love watching you present. What more does a professional want? If there’s anything professionals care more about than growth, it’s influence. High-stake presentations with well-crafted stories win hearts & give you influence. If you think of more business benefits of presentations, feel free to comment.

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Check out our Website.

6 reasons to hire a presentation design agency

Presentation designing is popular among freelancers & agencies. Every marketing agency, creative agency & graphic design freelancer provides this service. Some companies even have an in-house team dedicated to PowerPoint presentations.

So, for someone who’s looking for a presentation solution, the options are just too many. The worst part is, more options create more confusion about what to do & whom to hire.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking…

• Should I design it myself?

• Is our marketing/creative agency the best option?

• Should I look for a freelancer on Fiverr or UpWork?

• Should I hire a specialized presentation design agency?

Out of all the options, the 4th option is the best one. Here in this article, we’re listing down reasons for hiring a presentation design agency as opposed to the other options. We’ve also compared them with other options to help you make an informed decision.

1. Design specialty & expertise

Presentation design is significantly different from graphic design. The principles of visual design & audience psychology change with narrative structure & business context. The design software changes too.

Let’s take an analogy,

Can you imagine a general physician performing a root canal on you? Would that be acceptable? No, you’d prefer a specialized endodontist to do that.

Similarly, graphic designers can’t create presentations like a presentation design agency.

In our experience, graphic designers don’t create slides on PowerPoint/Keynote/Google Slides. Instead, they use Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Indesign which is their expertise (as it should be). But there’s a problem with slides created on other software. Editing them is a nightmare! So, if you need to make a few last-minute changes or use it as a template, it won’t be useful.

A presentation design agency works on presentation software like PowerPoint. We deliver user-friendly files keeping their usage in mind.

2. Save time

Presentation design is frustrating, especially for executives. A survey of over 1,000 employees across multiple industries found that, on average, people spend 20 hours a month on PowerPoint.

That’s ridiculous! These professionals would rather delegate this task & focus on their actual job.

Imagine if you’re up for a presentation at an event. You already spent 10+ hours brainstorming & putting the ideas together. Now would you like to spend more time refining the slide content & designing the slides? I’m guessing the answer is no!

Presentation design agencies solve this problem. Clients send us rough drafts of ideas, and we refine the content and design slides. As a result, we save close to 20+ hours spent on presentations.

3. Industry niche know-how

Presentations are not just about design. They’re also about industry best practices. Your go-to creative agency can’t help you because presentations demand niche know-how.

For example,

• If you need to build a pitch deck, we’d know the submission formats for top venture capital firms.

• If you’re speaking at an event, we would know that you should show up with handouts or infographics. So, we’d suggest the best ideas and help you create them.

You get the idea! Again, we’re specialists & hold deep knowledge of our art. You may overlook some things & we take care of them. Hence, hiring a presentation design agency gets you much-needed professional support.

4. Service focus

To date, 8 companies outsource their presentations to us. All of them need their slides turned around in 48 hours. This tells us that availability & service focus is important.

The regular agencies probably have one designer who’s designing your slides. Or even if you have an in-house designer, they have limited capacity (they can only design 250 slides a month). Which makes availability a very big problem.

Presentation design agencies have many presentation designers ready to deliver. On top of that, you have a dedicated project manager who can solve your issues immediately.

Basically, our service focus is presentation design, that’s what we do 24X7. Hence, presentation design agencies can deliver & support efficiently.

5. Better resources & Infrastructure

As a presentation design agency, we maintain the resources & infrastructure needed to deliver.

For example,

Imagine you need a presentation with high-quality branded illustrations. In this case, we have two options.

• We either choose illustrations from our well-maintained asset libraries.

• We ask our illustrator to create them from scratch.

Now, a freelancer can’t maintain this library infrastructure or the talent needed to get this task done.

Because of resources & infrastructure, presentation design agencies can tackle complex creative challenges. Capacity matters with strategic solutions like outsourcing too.

6. Saves cost

The capacity doesn’t help us alone, it helps our clients too. Because of high-scale slide production & virtual operations, we save a lot on production costs. As a result, we have fewer overheads.

So, we pass on this cost-benefit to our clients.

For example,

With a minimum volume of 100 slides, outsourcing presentation design to us costs $20 per slide. At 250 slides, it costs $18 per slide.

On the other hand, a freelancer would cost $50-$75 per slide & full-service agencies cost $80-$110 per slide.

It’s a common misconception that presentation design agencies cost more because they are specialists. The opposite is true. We cost less because we are specialists.

7. Storytelling support

Presentation design agencies have in-house communication consultants who help craft presentation messaging. We understand that “what you say” is as important as “what your slides look like”.

For example,

If you’re speaking at an event, our consultants will help you with the good synergy of slide content, speech & visual design. You can hardly find these three specialties with freelancers or creative agencies.

Hence, hiring a presentation design agency is essential for your story. You can even get a free presentation review & consultation before starting a project. Drop us a review inquiry, at contact@inknarrates.com

All in all!

Don’t hire a presentation design agency just for the sake of it. If you’re comparing rational parameters for decision-making, it helps you save cost, save time & get better expertise.

I know I used too many examples in this article. Thank you for bearing with me for so long. But, I had to use practical use cases to support the article. Hope this was helpful!

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Ink Narrates is a Presentation Design Agency. We craft storytelling PowerPoint presentations & provide services in presentation outsourcing, pitch decks, sales decks, animated presentations, template systems & design guidelines. Basically, we live & breathe presentations!

What is a presentation design agency?

Most people don’t even know that presentation design agencies like us exist. It’s so “niche” that our consultants have a hard time explaining what exactly we do.

How do we survive the networking events? We leave it to your imagination.

So we decided to publish this article to educate you about the meaning & importance of presentations in the business world. Also, the role of a presentation design agency in crafting them.

Generally, presentation means a lot of things but to be more specific, we’re referring to PowerPoint/Keynote/Google Slides presentations.

What does a presentation design agency do?

The array of our services is quite wide & we have no intention of boring you with the technical list. So instead, we’ll focus on the areas in which we solve problems & work closely with our clients.

1. Storytelling Support

So, you’re sitting there thinking about the best business storytellers. Who do you think of?

I’d imagine it’s Steve Jobs.

Be honest. How much time did your mind take to throw that answer? I bet it was a fraction of a second.

In fact, this was his quote from when he was the CEO of Pixar in 1994, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come…”

Storytelling works because people are drawn to stories — they’re easy to relate to and connect to on an emotional level. When you tell stories about your brand, people will feel like they have a sense of belonging to something bigger than just themselves: a community, an idea, or even an idea about themselves.

What’s our role in business storytelling?

When founders, executives & anyone with an idea takes the stage, they need a compelling story.

Founders need a storytelling pitch deck (an investor presentation), executives need decks for high-stake events & almost every business needs a sales deck to maintain a consistent narrative.

This is where presentation design agencies come in. We craft the right strategic narrative that “pulls at people’s heartstrings” & visual slide design to attract their attention.

Speaking of design, there’s a common misconception that presentation design agencies do just one thing- SLIDE DESIGN!

That doesn’t define us in the slightest. What we do is much more than just slide design, we also play a major role in crafting the presentation messaging to make sure you have influence without being too cheesy, too aggressive, or too meek.

2. Visual Storytelling with presentation design

Presentation design is important. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. It matters when you have a large audience & you pitch your ideas in front of them, or when you want to show off your work at work.

Why is presentation design considered so important?

To answer this question, we would like you to imagine a scenario. Imagine that you are to print 300 brochures for distribution at an event.

What would be your primary action? You’d think of getting the brochure designed?

Why? Because you fear a bad design will ruin your brand’s reputation.

Because deep down we all know that reputation & looks do matter. No matter what people say, subconsciously everyone makes judgments & opinions. That’s how humans are wired!

Naturally, you’d want the audience to form a good opinion about your brand.

Now, if you think that your brochure should have a good design, why should your presentations be any different? Are the presentations inferior in significance? No, if anything, they’re far superior.

“Presentation design is more than just design”

A countless number of times, we’re referred to as “Graphic Designers for slides”. However, Crafting the most powerful narratives takes more than “just design”. It’s the art & science of visual storytelling.

Presentation designers craft an array of ideas, stories, words, illustrations, and images into a set of slides that are arranged to tell a story and persuade an audience.

Read more about Visual Storytelling in our Article: Visuals + Storytelling = Magical Presentations

3. Strategic Solutions

Time, effort & design effectiveness are the three parameters where the strategic problem-solving of a presentation design agency is required.

Time

A survey of over 1,000 employees across multiple industries found that, on average, people spend 20 hours a month on PowerPoint.

Still think presentation is a small & insignificant part of a business?

Presentation design agencies study the usage & setup solutions like template systems or design guidelines.

By reducing the slide design time of employees, companies want to make sure that they can focus on more important tasks.

For companies where the monthly slide design volume is higher than 100, presentation design is completely outsourced to the agencies.

Effort

You wouldn’t believe what’s the most frustrating part of presentation design. No, it’s not designing slides. It’s finding the right design resources to design the slides & making them look appropriate as per the brand guidelines.

“That sounds like too much effort for someone whose full-time job isn’t presentation designing”.

Presentation design agencies help set up custom creative asset libraries for their clients to get rid of this energy-sucking ordeal.

Design Effectiveness

Even after the burnout, if the designs aren’t good enough, what’s the point?

Some companies just don’t want to compromise on their brand aesthetics & presentations are a big part of their communications. Especially management consulting firms.

So, would you make your employees go through hell just to maintain your brand consistency? No, you would delegate the task to a presentation design agency. It actually costs less than hiring in-house.

Read details about outsourcing in our comparative article: Outsourcing presentation design vs hiring in-house.

All in all!

There’s a whole world that exists within the niche of presentations. Even though people think presentations are an insignificant part of a business, they do spend too much time writing & designing them.

Hence, presentation design agencies are valuable to companies for storytelling, design & strategic solutions.

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Ink Narrates is a Presentation Design Agency. We craft storytelling PowerPoint presentations & provide services in presentation outsourcing, pitch decks, sales decks, animated presentations, template systems & design guidelines. Basically, we live & breathe presentations!