Presentation slides are one of the most important tools for audience engagement in a webinar, and compromising on this could jeopardize your entire webinar! You want to make sure that you deliver your content effectively so that your attendees are focused on the webinar and make the most of the event.
This article aims to provide you with a comprehensive guide to help you create effective webinar presentations, and to give you an idea of the presentation essentials and tools.
7 Steps to Create an Impactful Webinar Presentation
So how do you create the ideal presentation deck for your webinar? Well, it requires a lot of preparation and strategy to implement.
Here are some steps you can plan and apply on your presentation deck to make your webinar engaging.
Choose an ideal topic for your audience
The first thing you should do as the webinar organizer is to research your topic. Identify the ideal topic that will capture the interest of your target audience, and is relevant to them.
Create an outline for your presentation
It is occasionally possible that you don’t get a lot of preparation time before conducting the webinar, but investing some time to prepare your presentation slide deck is a must. Create an outline of the content of your webinar PPT, and how you will present it. The intention behind creating an outline is to help you organize your thoughts and also shape your webinar presentation .
Work on designing a template
Create a visually appealing template that will help you deliver the webinar content effectively, and engage the webinar attendees.
Some of the common slides you must include in a webinar presentation template are a title slide, a slide showcasing company branding, an index slide showing the agenda, slides that discuss the main webinar content, a Q&A slide, a Call-To-Action slide, and a ‘thank you’ slide.
Add Visuals to your Slides
Remember to include quality visuals with images, charts, videos, infographics, etc., which will help you to communicate the message more effectively, and will boost audience engagement. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” which justifies why inserting visuals in PPTs works wonders.
Include CTAs
It pays to include intuitive and clear CTAs in your presentation slides to promote your products and services and prompt action. Calls-to-Action serve as a crucial part of your webinar presentations, which encourage the webinar attendees to take any sort of action, like deciding to buy your product or visiting your website to check on your products, look for more details, etc.
Time to proofread
Now that you have put all the necessary details in your webinar presentation slides, it is time to proofread the slides, and check if you have missed something. Also, check for grammar or sentence construction errors that you might have made while crafting the content. You might deliver an excellent webinar with your presentation skills, but silly, avoidable errors can create a negative impression among the audience.
Allot time for Rehearsals
You have now drafted your webinar presentation and have also ensured you haven’t left anything out, including all the necessary details in the slides. To make sure that you don’t fumble or hesitate while presenting your slides during your live webinar, rehearsals are absolutely crucial. The quality of the content definitely matters in how it will cater to your audience, but the way you deliver it matters even more. So, give yourself some time to rehearse on these before your virtual event so you can deliver the live presentation seamlessly.
Must-have Slides in a Webinar Presentation Deck
You’ve come through how to make an ideal webinar presentation, but don’t you want to know what slides to include to make your presentation comprehensive and professional?
The concept of an ideal PPT presentation might differ from webinar to webinar, and its audience, but there are some must-have slides, without which any slide deck would look incomplete. Check out the key slides you need to include in your virtual presentation:
Introduction Slide
Start with an introductory slide, which will help you create an impression on the webinar participants. Share the hosts’ and speakers’ qualifications and experiences, and then dive into the topic, which will help you eliminate the distractions in the audience.
Include Table of Contents
An index slide establishing the webinar’s agenda or content is a great way to set the right expectations among audiences, and also allows them to look forward to their desired topic along the course of the webinar.
Leverage Visual Aids
Based on your webinar content, determine what kind of format will best suit your content and implement it accordingly. You can either go with the traditional route of text slides, provide videos and diagrams to make it look more engaging, or have a mix and match of all the formats to avoid redundancy.
- Videos – When inserting videos in your presentation slides, use short and relevant ones. Videos can be used to describe more complex ideas compared to text slides. Reports even state that 83% of respondents prefer watching videos compared to audio or reading texts for accessing information and decoding instructional content.
- Diagrams – Just like videos, diagrams are also important tools for clearing visual concepts. It can help you capture the attention of the webinar participants and make them understand complex information.
Use Testimonials
Including a testimonial slide is likely to make your webinar attendees trust your brand. Fill a presentation slide with quotes from a trusted source or customers, which will work as social proof. People often tend to check the reviews of a brand before putting their trust in it, and providing a slide of these reviews from the customers is likely to elevate their will to invest in your brand.
Include CTAs
Providing a whole slide for the CTAs itself is more impactful than just adding CTAs across slides.
Also Read – How to create and send a “Dynamic Calls-to-action (CTA)” to all session participants?
Encourage Questions
Inserting a slide to encourage participants to ask their queries at the end of the webinar can be helpful. People might be intimidated to ask questions or clarify their doubts typically; however, if you display a slide encouraging attendees to ask questions, they will feel confident to pose their questions openly.
Also Read – Webinar Slide Design: Tips for Engaging Presentations
Top 5 Tools for Making Webinar Presentation Slides
Well, there has been a lot of talk about how you can create an ideal webinar presentation slide, ways to design it, what to include, and what not to include, and so on. Though these are significant points to remember, the real challenge is identifying the best tool to design your presentation slides.
Below are some of the best tools you can employ to make some wonderful presentation slides for your webinars:
- MS Powerpoint – Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular and widely used tools for making presentation slides. It offers an extensive range of features, including an easy to use interface, robust design options, and compatibility with other MS Office tools.
- Google Slides – It is a cloud based system that offers easy collaboration and integrates with the Google Workspace.
- Apple Keynote – It is specially designed for MAC devices, and is great for creating visually alluring presentations . It offers sleek design templates, powerful graphics tools, and smooth transitions, making it great software for business professionals.
- Canva – Canva is one of the best tools for making presentation slides. It offers a user-friendly interface and has an extensive library of templates as well as images.
- Prezi – Prezi offers you a non linear presentation format, a zoomable canvas, as well as dynamic visuals. It helps create engaging presentations that stand out from the traditional slide formats, eventually helping you host an interactive webinar.
Bottom Line
You might have understood the ways you can create an effective presentation for your webinar, while also delivering it confidently. With all the tips and tricks shared with you in the article, you’ll be able to boost audience engagement and hold their attention from start to bottom
FAQ
There’s no strict rule, but aim for around 1 slide per minute of speaking time. For a 30-minute webinar, you might use 20-30 slides. Focus on quality over quantity.
Handling text on presentation slides should be done carefully to maintain audience engagement- here are some strategies to apply –
- Brevity: Use bullet points or short phrases instead of full sentences. Your slides should highlight key points, not provide detailed information.
- Highlighting: Use bold or different colors to emphasize important terms or concepts.
- Readable Fonts: Use fonts that are large enough to be read easily from a distance.
