19 Tips to Make A Professional-Looking PowerPoint Presentation

A PowerPoint presentation is a fantastic tool to communicate vital information. Even though people think it’s simple to put all of your material together and make a presentation, arranging and preparing the template and design takes time to ensure it is impactful and professional. But how to make PowerPoint look professional?

Well, an engaging PowerPoint presentation goes beyond simply exchanging information; it connects with the audience. It must transport the listener on a journey, induce emotions, and leave an unforgettable impression. Lets understand more on how to make a professional presentation with little preparation and ace it!

What Is A Professional Presentation?

A professional presentation is a well-structured and effectively delivered communication that conveys information, ideas, or proposals in a business or formal context. It typically adheres to certain standards and practices to effectively engage and inform the audience. As a result, such presentations can be fairly diverse, and they may be necessary to complete job interviews, provide sales pitches to potential clients, or present project proposals to top management. 

EXPLORE: 7,000+ PROFESSIONAL POWERPOINT TEMPLATES

How to Make A Professional PowerPoint Presentation? 

Here are some tips for making a professional presentation. Below, we have divided the PowerPoint presentation tips into 3 main parts:

• Content and Slide-Related Tips
• Design-Related Tips
• Delivery-Related Tips

Content and Slide-Related Tips for PowerPoint Presentations

Follow the steps below to make your PowerPoint look professional:

1. Start with a title slide
2. Add an agenda slide
3. Logically arrange the middle slides
4. Include a call-to-action slide at the end of your presentation
5. Conclude with key takeaways

READ MORE: How to Write A Good Presentation?

1. Start with a title slide

An eye-catching first slide serves as an introduction to your subject. To make it clear to read across the room, place the title of your presentation in huge letters in the middle of the slide. If your audience doesn’t know you, you can also include your name and title on the slide, depending on the sort of presentation. One of the most underrated and important presentation tips – On the title slide, keep the background simple to avoid drawing attention away from you as you speak. 

2. Add an agenda slide

List what the audience can anticipate. Label your slide with “Presentation Agenda” or a phrase to that effect. List the key lessons you want your audience to take away from the presentation. It not only makes it easier for your audience to follow along, but it also clarifies your main objective.

3. Logically arrange the middle slides

For more clarity, identify the presentation’s beginning, middle, and end. Make a list of the facts you want to provide and important points you want your audience to take away from your presentation. Take what you’ve written and arrange the ideas in an outline so that each idea leads naturally into the next. For instance, if you’re making a persuasive presentation, you might begin by providing background information on the subject and then discuss potential solutions before concluding by outlining actions an audience member can take to contribute.

4. Include a call-to-action slide at the end of your presentation

After you finish, inform your audience of the next steps. After reviewing the key points of your presentation, provide a list of actions your audience may take to advance the project. So that your audience has several options for what to do next, try to come up with some concrete ideas.

5. Conclude with key takeaways

Make a summary of your important points so your audience will remember them. Start the last slide with a header at the top that reads “Takeaways” or “Key Points”. Make a final list of bullet points containing the most crucial information you have covered. Ensure to emphasize your previous presentations’ key ideas and speak them aloud to your audience. In this manner, your presentation will leave a lasting effect on the audience, making them more likely to recall what you say.

Content forms the foundation of any presentation. But, if not designed correctly, it can lead to a boring presentation. That’s where an impactful design for a presentation comes into the picture.

Design-Related Tips for PowerPoint Presentations

Now that you know some content and slide-related tips, let’s read about the top design-related tips to make a professional presentation:

1. Aim to have about 10 slides
2. Make your presentation background consistent
3. Select readable fonts
4. List the important points in brief bullets
5. Include relevant graphics

1. Aim to have about 10 slides

More than 10 concepts at once will be difficult for your audience to recall. Count your slides once you’ve organized your data to check if you have 10 or fewer slides. If you have more than 10, review the content once more to see if you can squeeze anything onto one slide. Decide which ideas need to be covered the most, and eliminate anything that doesn’t seem appropriate or doesn’t fit the style of your presentation.

2. Make your Presentation background consistent

Keeping the same straightforward theme and style for each slide can help you create professional PowerPoint presentations. You can create a background in PowerPoint or explore PowerPoint backgrounds from SlideUpLift. Use easy-to-read layouts that don’t draw attention away from the text or graphics you want to use.

3. Select readable fonts

Keep your fonts large and sans-serif so they can be read across the room. Keep your content between 28 and 40 points because small fonts might be quite difficult to see from a distance. Choose Proxima Nova or Arial rather than Times New Roman or another serifed font to show your content because sans-serif is simpler to read on a screen. Bold, italicize, or highlight the words you want to stand out as particularly important. Throughout the slide, change the font size. For instance, the slide’s headline should be larger than the body content.

READ MORE: Best Presentation Fonts

4. List the important points in brief bullets

Your slides will be easier to follow if they have pointers. On a slide, paragraphs can be very intimidating, and your audience could choose to read them rather than pay attention to you. Keep your slide to a bulleted list of essential phrases or terms rather than writing out every word you plan to speak. Keep your slides to a maximum of 6 bullet points, each with a maximum of 6 words.

5. Include relevant graphics

Select charts and photos of the highest quality to highlight your content. Visuals should only be used if they are essential to the argument you are attempting to make. You can use illustrations, images, infographics, graphs, or charts to display facts or make your point more obvious. To avoid making your presentations appear cluttered, ensure all the images are the same size and resolution, and arrange them in the same spot on each slide. Charts and graphics that are challenging to interpret should have captions. Make one image on a slide stand out by giving it a different hue from the rest of the presentation.

Your PowerPoint presentation is all set once you have the content, and it’s designed to create impact. How you create an impact and engage the audience depends entirely on how you deliver presentations.

Delivery-Related Tips for PowerPoint Presentations

The way you deliver your PowerPoint slides can either make or break your overall presentation. Let’s see some professional presentation tips to help you with presentation delivery:

1. Keep your transitions simple
2. Practice your presentations out loud
3. Practice in front of the crowd

1. Keep your transitions simple

Animations and transitions draw attention away from the material. While adding animations to your slideshow may seem creative to make it stand out, doing so might add a lot of extra time and distract the audience. Have the slides change as soon as the mouse clicks, rather than having the text fly in or the slides animate. Provide the information quickly and simply to make your presentation look stronger and more formal.

2. Practice your presentation out loud

Run the complete presentation to increase your confidence. After practicing your presentation a few times, you’ll feel much more at ease giving it. Practice as if you were presenting to a group of people; raise your voice to the appropriate pitch and volume. Ensure the slides flow together by practicing clicking through them as you speak. Go back and change your slides to make any necessary corrections if you encounter issues. Consider recording your speech to see or listen to it later. You will be able to identify what needs to change as a result.

3. Practice in front of a crowd

Request some early feedback to determine the success of your presentation. Take a group of friends or coworkers and walk them through the full presentation. When you’re done, ask them what they thought of the presentation and whether any points you tried to express confused them. Asking them questions you anticipate your audience will have will allow you to practice providing succinct responses.

Now that you have more than 10 tips for creating professional PowerPoint presentations, knowing how to present your ideas professionally is also vital.

How to Professionally Present Your Ideas?

The professional PowerPoint tips provided below will help you professionally present your ideas:

1. Timing
2. Be brief
3. Inspire participation from audience
4. An emotional connection
5. Visual tools
6. Images and graphics

1. Timing

One of the most important professional PowerPoint presentation tips is timing. Choosing the right time slot is very important while giving a presentation. It would be preferable to select a mid-morning time slot if you have the option to determine your presentation timetable. The attention of people is better captured in the morning.

2. Be brief

Typically, audiences have a limited attention span. When given lengthy materials to read, people rapidly become bored. Be direct if you want people to pay attention and continue to listen. Avoid including unrelated material because this will just make the presentation longer.

3. Inspire participation from the audience

Keeping the audience interested in what you say is a difficult task. You may engage the audience and get them involved in the topic by making a good first impression in the first 30 seconds. Keep them engaged by injecting humor as you change the slides.

4. An emotional connection

Any professional presentation must emotionally engage the audience, much like in advertising. When communicating your message, use feelings. By doing this, you give the visual aids a human face and make your point more understandable to the audience. Encourage them to act by awakening their emotions.

5. Visual tools

Most people learn best visually. Presenters must be aware that their audience needs visual aids to grasp what they are saying. Make sure that visuals are used to support your claims. The audience will understand your message more clearly if they can visualize it.

6. Images and graphics

Graphics and images back you admirably as you give your speech. Charts and other complex data points can make it difficult to design visualizations. To ensure precise and simple-to-understand details, you can create simple templates. However, if you find it difficult to create to-the-point, detail-oriented graphics, and templates that create an impact, you can outsource your presentations. 

When presenting, you are all alone. But you can get help from experts when you are creating one, thanks to Presentation Service providers.

Why Should Organizations Outsource their Presentations to Specialists?

Here are some reasons why outsourcing presentations to professionals is a great idea:

1. Improving presentations for external clients
2. Assisting graphics team
3. Manual efforts and time saved
4. Cost saving
5. Elevating design excellence
6. To support your marketing team with presentations

ALSO READ: Why Consultants Choose to Outsource Presentations?

1. Improving Presentations For External Clients

Your PowerPoint presentation acts as a virtual handshake with your clients, which makes it an important factor in determining how they will perceive you or your company. For this reason alone, many professionals choose to have their external presentations outsourced.

2. Assisting Graphic Team

It’s likely that your devoted graphic team is always creating different types of visual content. Your in-house designers probably already have their hands full with daily design work. When this happens, outsourcing presentation design seems appealing because it relieves your graphic team’s workload and frees them up to succeed in their primary duties. 

3. Manual Efforts and Time are Saved

The possibility of saving time strongly motivates professionals to choose presentation outsourcing. As anybody who has struggled with slides knows, creating an engaging PowerPoint presentation takes time. Professionals can free up their time to work on more important duties or, better yet, to thoroughly rehearse and perfect their message by delegating the creation of presentations to external professionals.

4. Cost Saving

Consulting firms might cut costs by outsourcing presentations to specialists. Outsourcing presentations to an agency costs less than hiring an internal presentation designer. This saved money can be utilized toward other important business objectives while reducing labor expenditures.

5. Elevating Design Excellence

True masters of their trade are presentation designers who work professionally. Their knowledge spans more than just visuals; it also includes the complex art of slide layout and the crucial components that turn a presentation from good to spectacular. For instance, our team at SlideUpLift is proud of its design and presentation services after working with businesses from a variety of industries throughout the world. When creating excellent PowerPoint presentations, this abundance of knowledge is priceless. Beyond just improving the aesthetics, the goal is to use this knowledge to make visually striking presentations that instantly connect with your audience.

6. To Support Your Marketing Team with Presentations

Presentations are in high demand, particularly among marketing consultants. They have to unite their staff, discuss their marketing strategy with the rest of the organization, and win new clients for their enterprises. PowerPoint presentations are a fantastic tool for all of this! A smart marketing presentation can improve communication inside and outside your firm; outsourcing is the best option to achieve that.

In today’s competitive landscape, outsourcing presentations to professionals gives firms a strategic advantage. Outsourcing is appealing due to its time efficiency, access to cutting-edge equipment, brand consistency, new ideas, scalability, and cost savings. Outsourcing presentation companies can make effective presentations that create a lasting impression on the audience by consulting with you.

The ability to generate professional-looking slides is a skill that may take your message to new heights in the dynamic world of presentations. SlideUpLift has materials and tools to assist you in every aspect of creating presentations:

1. If you want to create presentations by yourself, but do not have a starting point, you can download any template from our collection of 40,000+ PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themes. Just download the template you like and make the changes to the content as you need.
2. In case you don’t want to make changes to the templates, you can ask us to customize the templates through our custom-slides service. You can expect fast delivery within 1 Business Day.
3. If you have multiple presentation needs on a weekly basis, you can try our Presentation Services.

Schedule a call with us if you have any questions or would like to know more.

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