Company pitch decks are ideal for attracting investors, clients, and other prospective partners into collaborating with your business. Promoting the value of your company's key attributes, such as your business model, target market, financial projections, and unique selling proposition, is the goal here.
Even though the objective is to introduce your business and showcase the advantages of partnering with your, your intended audience must be interested in what you’re presenting, and you must make a compelling argument for parties to invest. There are many different design components that can help with this.
We’ve put together a blend of time-honoured and more cutting-edge ways to elevate your company pitch deck in our list of the following seven simple tips.
1. Use high-quality images
The last thing you want when attempting to make a strong positive impression with potential stakeholders is to look amateurish, or worse—sloppy. Overly generic, stretched, or pixelated graphics can be signs of insufficient resources or attention to detail.
They may convey to your audience a powerful subliminal message that your company and your goods are unreliable and untrustworthy. And if you were to invest in a business—even more so a startup—would you put your money where you believe it might lose value? Obviously, the answer is no, so it might be time for you to invest in high-quality visuals composed by a professional visual designer.
For entrepreneurs and small startup teams, you can also be resourceful and see what you can do with your existing brand assets, plus Stock image libraries, and maybe some editing software. For instance, if you have access to Adobe Photoshop, we highly recommend running all your branded image assets through their AI image upscaler to easily edit your images and get them ready to be added to your pitch slides.
2. Be visually consistent
Working on your business credibility goes beyond amazing imagery, necessitating the use of visuals that are uniform and thematic. Having a consistent colour scheme, typeface, and style throughout all of your slides shows stakeholders that your company is meticulous and well-run.
Perhaps more importantly, this consistency provides your distinct brand identity—making your business look not only reliable but also making it that much more memorable. We would call this recall value, and a high degree of this is required to get over and above the competition. Naturally, formulating a strong brand identity is always a fundamental part of establishing a new business or diversifying as an existing company.
3. Customise your graphics
Customising your graphics involves turning straightforward images into key assets. Make each image feel not only consistent but also intentionally aligned with your brand identity. Uniform colour filters, strategic background removal, and well-designed cropping and composition are some highly recommended techniques in image customisation.
Add that unique edge by taking the time to produce custom graphics from scratch. Graphic design abilities are especially useful in this situation. Particularly when adding charts, graphs, and icons, generating your own vector graphics can be very helpful.
A complete level of customisation means these types of data-based designs can be scaled to any size without compromising on image quality. You can invent whatever you want, and in the long run, that can mean more time and energy for further creative efforts.
4. Balance with white space
Make your company's pitch deck easy to read for your audience. You want to make viewing as easy and painless as possible, especially given that people's attention spans are becoming increasingly shorter in this fast-paced age. Enhance readability by artfully using white space to impart focus and clarity.
White space makes your data, images, and text stand out and opens things up for the mind and eye to scan. People will remain more attentive and receptive when you make your presentation effortless and enjoyable for them, which increases the likelihood your corporate messaging will stick.
5. Paint a picture with your data
Take your audience on a visual journey with your company pitch deck by transforming dry and abstract metrics into digestible and captivating snapshots. Consider using easy-to-read charts like line graphs or bar graphs to demonstrate aspects such as trajectories and market opportunities.
Presentation platforms like Canva and Google Slides provide templates that can assist you with painting a pretty picture with your data. Consider charting tools in Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint to create effective and engaging data-based visuals.
6. Use powerful design tools
Capitalise on high-powered design tools that can help you showcase the best of your business offerings in a one-stop-shop platform. Digital tools like Figma and complementary applications such as Canva can allow you to create your pitch deck across a real-time collaborative format.
They can also give you a handy framework to provide your company with the sharpest adherence to brand consistency. Even people without any background in graphic design can create or update visually appealing slides with ease thanks to a library of design assets and a range of interactive prototypes.
7. Employ emotive design
It might seem a bit far-fetched, but you can absolutely make or break your presentation based on your use of images and visual elements. Consistency is key in creating recall value, but you can step up this quotient even more—ingraining your business proposition in your audience’s hearts and minds. You may achieve this by providing a more personalised touch and weaving your data into a narrative structure.
You could try telling a story that follows the traditional problem-solution-impact arc. Present a customer's urgent, understandable pain points at the beginning to spearhead an empathetic approach. Next, outline your product as the obvious, transformative solution. Finally, show the positive impact—the visionary element—to inspire anticipation of a high-value opportunity. All emotional claims should be proven via transparent displays of data.
This type of creative visualisation integrates often mundane, mechanical-type information in a humanistic framework that helps people connect on a more visceral level. How your products and services are likely to make the user feel is integral in being able to sell them. After all, we as humans appreciate a good yarn. It’s vital to get your audience invested on an emotional level.
Make your pitch decks presentable and compelling with these simple design tips
An effective pitch deck is necessary to not only pique interest with potential investors but also to consolidate your business's vision, market opportunity, and potential for growth—almost always in a highly visual sense. This is a cornerstone in your overall communication strategy moving forward.
It is important to elevate your company pitch deck far beyond the ordinary to capture attention and secure advancement for your business. We hope you enjoy implementing the above eight simple yet scintillating tips in doing so.