How to Use PowerPoint to Increase Your Online Leads
Did you know you can share your PowerPoint online? SlideShare is a fantastic tool for businesses looking to increase their lead generation. Online, people usually view images, infographics, and videos individually but in this format, you combine all three.
Users can also pin slides they find most useful. If you brand each slide with your company information, the user sharing the slide increases your visibility as a business. SlideShare has 80 million active users. People also search these PowerPoints through a search engine and sometimes will organically find them if you link them to your website. What a great way to increase quality leads across a large audience!
SlideShare is a hosting service for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format. Content can then be viewed on the site itself, on hand held devices or embedded on other sites. SlideShare is also available as an app as well.
What is a Lead?
A lead is a person or entity that indicates interest in a business product or service. Leads usually hear about a business through the business’ marketing materials (offers, trial, newsletter), other media marketing or social media marketing.
Think of it as indirect and not the result of actively contacting the person directly to generate leads. The passive generation comes across through marketing, social media, website, search or just wow-factor content. Social media marketing is powerful in this regard as people can see your authentic media and engage before they purchase anything and will feel more comfortable to do so during a sale.
Let’s say you entered a contest for a kitchen appliance suite from a company and you saw the contest while you were browsing social media. The rules are you enter your name, age and email on a ballot and like the post. After the contest, they send you an email to your email address provided on the ballot to thank you for your participation and let you know those who entered can receive 10% off their appliance purchase within 30 days.
That would seem more organic than perhaps calling them directly and allows the consumer to go into the shop freely with this deal instead of being asked to. This passive lead generation allows the consumer to respond. You can see who is interested or not as a demographic.
You as a business can save time from contacting those who may not be interested and spend time and resources into generating leads in a similar demographic that responded. Social media platforms also have powerful analytic tools that can allow you to see what kind of marketing your consumers like and don’t like very quickly.
How Can I Improve My Online Leads?
There are several ways to increase traffic and lead generation to your website. This includes email marketing, social media, live chat or blog posts. You can also improve your website and increase leads. Colourful and clear CTAs, simple and easy to use landing pages, value-driven offers and well executed campaigns are part of the big picture ideas of how to drive interest.
The king of all is relevant content that you produce across all mediums and connect with the medium, which would be specific to your market and understanding of your audience. Social media marketing is very powerful in this regard, as organic content always seems to strike a cord with users. People like to see relevant content to the environment and current zeitgeist of the digital landscape.
By actively engaging through social media marketing, people can see your marketing within seconds at their finger tips, each passive customer is a potential lead on social media. Do not under value social media marketing!
By consistently posting content on your website and social media channels, users can engage with your content before purchasing a product or service and will feel more comfortable doing so when the sale cycle begins.
Tips for Creating an Effective Online PowerPoint Presentation to Increase Your Leads
1) Make sure your PowerPoint slides can speak for themselves without narration and keep it simple
Remember that you will not be there to narrate the slides unless you do a recording. Each slide should be able to explain itself and represent your business. Even if your slides are longer, the writing should be clear so the person can read it like an open book.
You can use the same approach you would say if you were producing content for social media marketing. What audience are you appealing to and how much do they know without explanation? Are you appealing to a general audience that might not be specialized?
Use your knowledge of your customer base, demographic or general audience and use that to narrow down your information.
2) Use unique designs - you can use PowerPoint designer to help too!
Standout designs still apply for sharing presentations online. When users search for content, they are still looking for a level of authenticity so it hurts your business identity to have something simplistic or not stand-out from the clutter of an online search.
You can use PowerPoint’s designer tool to help as PowerPoint suggests several modern designs. Having a beautiful design will help you generate leads for your business with content people see right away and remember.
Think of the form used the last time you saw something designed well. Making full and complete slides do not need to be all unique slides, rather the design should just be consistent and similar across the slides but clean and eye-catching.
There are a lot of pre-existing templates that you can use for your ppt. Using a modern, clean template does not hurt if you do not have time to create slides from scratch. So long as you have PowerPoint in your Office account, you will have access to PowerPoint designer. (Keep in mind PowerPoint Designer uses an active online connection to generate ideas for example page layout or diagram for free)
3) Use storytelling in your PowerPoint presentation
Similar to one, another tip is to use narrative principals in your media or slides for your business presentation. Have a clear beginning, middle and end to the thoughts presented in your work.
If you have a strong brand identity, you can use the same principals of designing a website and the storytelling behind how you present yourself and your brand. Really plan out the story as you create your slides.
Provide a clear and distinct voice. Are you the smart and savvy friend who people can ask questions without feeling too alienated? Are you a top-tier service to the most knowledgeable in your field? What stage do you set for your customer engagement and what is your strategy in talking and presenting yourself to your customers?
Once you process your identity or strategies in communication, you will get closer in really striking a cord with your demographic and could even potentially reach out to one you normally do not engage with.
4) Brand each PowerPoint slide and establish yourself as an authority on the subject
Make sure your company’s logo, name email, social media, and website are on each slide. Even if you do not use all, you should at least have your logo on each slide. This helps with lead generation as people remember your brand or your website and can refer to it in the future. If they pin your slide, they can quickly access the information or search through social media as a reference.
Make this information a little less of a priority to the other items on your slide that is easy to see and still is readable. If you do choose to show your social channels or marketing, make sure you link it so the user can click on your social icons to go to your social pages.
By releasing consistent, good quality PowerPoints that offer useful information, you can quickly establish yourself as an authority on the subject. By also liking and sharing slides that are relevant to your field from other authors also shows authenticity and knowledge of the digital landscape.
You can also share this information on your social channels or other forms of marketing you use. You could also possibly make your PowerPoint available for download, so it is easy to share too.
5) Use call to actions
Do not forget to use a call to action! This is very important for lead generation, sales, and performance anywhere: social media, overall marketing materials, and on your website. Users must be guided or told what they must do in order to obtain a service, product or offer.
Like the design aspect of the PowerPoint, the CTA should be eye catching and the first thing the eye sees on whichever slide it appears on. Using a CTA allows you to guide the user to a clear path of contact and conversion.
You can create pop-ups in your PowerPoint as well if you do not want your CTA to go to a website. You can create a shape with the information that would appear if a user clicked on a “LEARN MORE” button you added to your presentation.
To make the pop-up open during the presentation:
- Select the rectangle or shape you made and add an Entrance animation to it.
- Set “Start: On click”.
- In the “Trigger” drop-down, select the element name that will open the pop-up.
- Add a closing action
- Add an Exit animation to the same pop-up shape
6) Social Media Marketing
Lead generation should also go hand-in-hand with your social media marketing. You can generate leads by promoting your PowerPoint’s most eye-catching material as collateral on your social media marketing.
Likewise, you can use what information and design that works well from your social media marketing to your PowerPoint as well. You can funnel customers to the links to your PowerPoints by promoting the more in-depth presentation with short, concise, clear copy on social media or even on your active site.
Conclusion
There are a myriad of ways you can increase lead generation. One way most people do not think about is using PowerPoint to establish yourself as an authority on your market or knowledge base. By producing good content, that is dynamic, interactive, and memorable, you can make an impression if people refer to that in-depth knowledge in their day to day life.
Remember, even if it isn’t an instant click, the view count can be seen as a delayed form of lead generation. The return of investment always varies, but with higher view counts, some definitely will convert! Keep producing, checking the analytics versus leads and see what works best for your brand!
