Back in the day, “branding” and “brand image” were concepts restricted to large corporations with hefty budgets.
Most small businesses and startups thought building brand awareness meant getting a professional logo, maybe some business cards and letterheads, and moving on with their day.
Can you even think back to a time like that? Seems unbelievable now!
Today, branding and building brand awareness are not just for big businesses.
Even standalone freelancers and consultants must think about building their brand recognition and brand presentation through marketing efforts, to entice potential clients and new audiences while staying relevant to their target audience.
This includes everything from creating a brand logo and letterheads to site design, promoting relevant content, and maintaining a consistent brand identity online and offline.
You, as the creator of this business brand, have to think beyond the basics to highlight your brand in everything you do.
For example, you have to consider branding when preparing a pitch deck. This is also known as brand presentation.
This article shows you how to improve your brand presentation skills and ensure that your branded presentation does what it’s supposed to do — help you and your business stand out from competitors. You’ll also find brand presentation templates and examples below to make the right impression.
Create a free Piktochart account so you can follow along and play around with the branding presentations and templates we feature.
Let’s get started.
Why You Should Care About Getting Your Brand Presentations Right
One of the common characteristics of brands that endure the test of time is strong brand presence.
What is brand presence?
Brand presence refers to the visibility and recognition of a brand in the marketplace. It is the extent to which a brand is known, understood, and respected by its target audience.
A strong brand presence is essential for building customer loyalty, increasing brand awareness, and driving business growth.
Brand presence can be established through various marketing activities, such as advertising, social media, content marketing, and public relations. These activities help to create a consistent and recognizable brand identity, which makes it easier for customers to connect with the brand and its products or services.
Factors contributing to a great brand presence include a clear brand message, consistent visual branding, positive customer experiences, and effective communication strategies.
Brands with a strong presence are often associated with specific values and qualities that resonate with their target audience.
Overall, brand presence is a crucial aspect of building a successful brand. It helps establish a brand’s reputation, increase customer loyalty, and differentiate it from its competitors.
These brands (think Coca-Cola and Apple) have built a name in their industries not just because of their products but also because their brand voice and personality are immediately recognizable.
A solid brand presence is a key factor in helping promote consumer trust, and consumers want to buy from businesses they trust. Plus, when your customers think highly of your products and services, the greater their willingness to purchase from you.
10 Pro Tips for Nailing Your Next Brand Presentation
Now that you already understand the importance of getting your brand presentation right, take note of the following pro tips to help you get started.
1. Identify your presentation goal
You could have the most beautiful presentation, but if it doesn’t drive home a single, clear point, then… what’s the point?
Before designing your presentation, know what it’s supposed to convey and work backward from there.
For example, if you’re presenting logo design ideas to a client, you could start your presentation with how you see the brand and take them through your thought process.
Use the slides to craft a story about how the logo’s colors, fonts, style, icons, and layout will help the brand build a lasting connection with its users. Show the logo designs after setting the context.
Think of this as a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
2. Align your brand presentation with other branding elements
Building a brand image is necessary irrespective of whether you’re a business or a solo hustler. Your brand presentations must be aligned with your overall brand.
If you’re selling a product or a service, the chances of you performing better increase significantly when you build a brand around your business. In fact, 81 percent of consumers say that trust is crucial for them before buying a brand.
So, what is it that builds trust?
It always comes down to professionalism and consistency.
Let’s explore them individually.
Professionalism
Person A and Person B are logo designers who help young startups design a logo and craft a complete brand identity.
Person A only has social profiles and a generic email address. They have their portfolio in Google Drive, and they share that long, clunky URL every time someone asks to see their past work.
Meanwhile, Person B has built a brand for themselves. Their website has a professional logo highlighting who they are, their academic and professional accolades, past work, and client recommendations. They use a professional email address, and all their social profiles follow similar branding as their website.
Both these designers can be equally good at what they do, but the fact that Person B has built their own brand identity conveys their capability of doing the same for someone else.
Consistency
Getting all the essential brand elements in place is the first step in building a brand.
Communicating that brand consistently across all online and offline platforms is what makes the difference.
For example, if you have a professional logo, highlight it on your website, branding videos, business cards, email signature, social media, invoices, brand presentations, and every point of communication possible. This also helps build memorability and brand recall.
The brand awareness presentation template above by Piktochart is quite versatile. You can incorporate many branding elements in your presentation — from customizing it with your logo to changing the presentation’s color scheme into your brand colors.
3. Make the most of emotions
When you think of business presentations, the first emotion you think of is boredom, right?
How excited would you feel to see a bunch of boring charts and texts on a slide?
Don’t answer; that’s rhetorical.
As a presenter, it’s your job to add some spice to your brand presentation.
Telling a unique, engaging story on a dull topic is a superpower. Think about how you can take your audience on an emotional rollercoaster. It’s a proven fact that people remember and engage more with something that evokes some emotion.
So, how do you do it?
Follow this simple formula:
Pain points ⇢ Enter hero ⇢ Happy ever after
Start by painting a gruesome picture highlighting all your audience’s pain points. Use the first few slides showing negative, downbeat, and sad visuals. Once your audience is bummed out enough, swoop in with the hero (solution to the problem).
A great example of this is Velocity Partner’s first presentation slide in “The other C word: What makes great content marketing great”.
Map out your story, write it on a doc, and break it into slides. Creating brand presentations that work requires strategy.
4. Don’t get stingy with your brand presentation slides
How short do you think people’s attention span is?
Think of a number and then reduce it ten times.
If you’re at a conference, chances are your audience has seen quite a few presentations already and is not interested in your ten slides. They’re probably thinking about the buffet waiting for them once you’re done.
Instead of adding a ton of points in one slide and talking on it for umpteen minutes, use multiple slides to help you illustrate as you speak.
For example, Wordstream’s Larry Kim covered almost 200 slides in his 30-minute presentation at the C3 Conference in 2017.
5. Get creative with your presentation slides
A critical factor that makes for fantastic brand presentations is the creativity put into building each slide.
You can add your flair by incorporating PowerPoint’s effects, transitions, visual elements, images, clipart, and more; as long as you keep in-line with your brand guidelines.
However, do not go overboard with this. Add a lot of images and transitions; now what you have is clutter.
The goal here is to be fun and creative and find ways to engage your audience but still keep it simple enough not to distract them from the message.
6. Only use high-resolution images
You don’t like looking at a pixelated image on the phone. Imagine showing it on a 10x bigger screen where the photos don’t make sense.
For example, maybe you have an image with a cool one-liner on it, but it’s not clear enough for the audience to see. What could have been entertaining for the audience has now left them confused.
Images are a fantastic way to make your presentation more engaging and get your point across.
A photo is, after all, worth a thousand words. Your audience will relate to images more than plain text. And finding the right image for each idea/point is like hitting the jackpot.
For these reasons, it’s essential to add high-resolution and relevant images to your brand presentations. Spend some time sourcing these images, and make sure they adhere to your overall brand awareness strategy and align with your brand colors.
Luckily, Piktochart’s integration with Pexels allows you to access a library of over 3000+ high-quality photos and more.
7. Use humor–but in a good way
Good humor can differentiate between a great and a memorable brand presentation.
Don’t be shy to throw in jokes and memes to stir people’s sense of humor. In fact, you could even consider adding some memes to your slides as long as they align with your marketing goals and brand awareness strategy.
Another great way to add more humor is to use gifs. Here, avoid using niche or nerdy humor and stick with common and familiar areas. Using these formats is a great way to give your audience a good laugh and make your presentation memorable.
You can even use gifs to encourage an emotion or a reaction to what you shared. It should ideally give your audience an idea of how to react. For example, when sharing surprising data, use familiar gifs to convey each important metric.
Another critical thing to remember here is to use them strategically. If you use them a lot, they may distract the audience from what’s important. Correct timing makes a joke funny; the same principle applies to building presentations.
8. Think about the wider use of your presentation
Keep the flow and content of your presentation in mind if it has the potential to be shared later.
Here’s why: Each slide should be complete and comprehensive, and the presentation should make sense even when you’re not around to share additional context. Each slide should promote and establish brand awareness for your large or small business.
The slides from a talent management and recruitment presentation template below are great examples.
You know you’ve done an excellent job if someone were to go through your entire brand presentation and understands what you were trying to communicate.
The jokes, graphs, and pointers in your presentation should be constructed to achieve this goal.
9. Get someone to proofread
Even when you think you’ve nailed your brand presentation and adhered to your brand guidelines, get someone to proofread it for you.
Even when you’ve gone through all the slides hundreds of times, get someone to see it differently. No matter how confident you are, get someone to proofread your presentation.
There’s nothing more embarrassing than standing in a room full of people giving a presentation and realizing a spelling error. Yikes!
For example, let’s say you’re fluent in English and have a strong command of the language. If you’re presenting in the US, the spelling of “colors” will be different than if you’re presenting to a European crowd that spells it as “colours” with a “u.”
This blunder comes across as unprofessional, which can be why someone hesitates to do business with you and your brand.
People who proofread may always be able to highlight an error or two, and they also can give you their feedback on whether your jokes are appropriate or not, and if they can follow your story.
10. Rehearse multiple times
Practice makes perfect! The more you rehearse, the more gaps and inconsistencies you’ll find. It’ll also help you understand your story and time yourself better.
You’ll be able to identify any dull points or unnecessary information while rehearsing, and it’ll help you nail your brand presentation.
You’re Ready To Roll Out Your Brand Presentation
Thousands of tools and resources are available today to help businesses build and communicate their brand better (most of them are free). Piktochart’s presentation maker provides great examples to get started quickly on your branded presentation and other relevant assets. Try it for free.
The key to this task lies in identifying the right presentations to build brand awareness and using them to design beautiful brand presentations that seal the deal.
Be ready for brand perception changes
Finally, keep in mind that you will never be in complete control of your prospects, consumers, or customers’ perception of your branding.
Brand perception can change over time due to a variety of factors, including changes in the marketplace, shifts in customer preferences, and the brand’s own actions or messaging. Here are some ways brand perception can change:
- Changes in the marketplace: The competitive landscape can change rapidly, and new competitors may emerge with new products or services that offer a better value proposition to customers. If a brand fails to adapt to these changes, its perception may suffer as customers switch to competitors.
- Changes in customer preferences: As customer preferences change, brands must adapt their products, messaging, and overall strategy to remain relevant. For example, a brand that was once known for its traditional values may need to update its image to appeal to younger, more diverse customers.
- Brand messaging: The way a brand communicates its message can also impact perception. If a brand’s messaging becomes inconsistent or fails to align with its values or target audience, it may be perceived as less trustworthy or less relevant.
- Negative publicity: Negative publicity or scandals can have a significant impact on a brand’s perception. Customers may lose trust in the brand or associate it with negative traits, which can be difficult to overcome.
- Positive experiences: Positive customer experiences can help to improve a brand’s perception. When customers have a good experience with a brand, they are more likely to recommend it to others and have a positive view of the brand overall.
Overall, brand perception can change over time due to a range of internal and external factors. Brands must be aware of these changes and take steps to adapt their strategy and messaging to remain relevant and competitive in the marketplace.
The most important thing is you’re always putting your best foot forward to build brand awareness every time you interact with your audience, from your packaging, brochures, your FAQ page, and all the way to your business presentations.
As long as you keep your audience in mind and apply the tips we mentioned above, you’ll be well on your way to build stunning brand presentations.