Use These 4 Copywriting Pillars to Craft Kickass Presentations

I love presentations. I love going to them and I love giving them.

You have a defined amount of time, during which a bunch of people come together to listen to a message.

Whether your presentation is online (a SlideShare, a webinar) or in the real world (a talk to a large or small audience), a formal presentation can create a memorable experience that will educate, inspire, and entertain.

Unless, of course, your presentation sucks. Which, sadly, most of them do.

You and I have both dozed through too many boring, lifeless, and irrelevant presentations.

Fortunately, we have this cool tool called copywriting, which is all about how to deliver a message in a way that’s compelling.

Could we use those techniques to deliver more fascinating presentations?

As a matter of fact, we absolutely could. Here’s how.

#1: Focus on the benefits

“Benefits, not features” is one of those cornerstones of copywriting.

In other words, you focus on what this Thing (talk, product, service, free report, etc.) is going to do for the buyer, not on the boring mechanics of how it works.

As the copywriting cliché goes, you don’t sell a drill; you sell the hole in the wall that gives you a place for the screw that lets you hang your kid’s adorable baby picture in your office and give you a moment of happiness in your stressful work day.

Failure to understand this is what makes presentations boring. And that goes all the way from tiny presentations in front of six people to giant pitchfests at huge conferences delivered by mega corporations with all the budget on planet Earth.

By definition, your time with these folks is limited. What do you want them to be able to do, have, attain, or feel by the end of your time together today?

“Make people better at something they want to be better at.”
– Kathy Sierra

If you’re answering that question with, “They’ll learn about the 15 new features of MegaCorp’s exciting new product,” you fail. Your presentation will be crushingly boring.

If you answer it with, “They’ll learn how to do a specific thing that gets them a promotion this year. There’s a new MegaCorp tool that cuts the time in half to do that,” you’re on the right track.

It can’t be 15 things, because this is a presentation, not a university course.

What’s the one benefit they’ll get out of attending the presentation? What’s their single, powerful takeaway that lets them become more awesome?

#2: Understand your “Who”

When I gave a presentation for the Inbound conference a couple of years back, I talked about audience engagement, about how frustrating it can be to write by committee, and about the joys of Moleskines and having a favorite pen.

When I gave a presentation for Dan Kennedy’s audience, I talked about fast content marketing strategies, leads and conversion, and the concrete ways that content pillars can lead to more business.

When I gave a presentation for an intimate audience over at Orbit Media, I talked about dreams and passions and the things that scare the hell out of me.

All of these were talks about content marketing strategy. But the audiences were in very different places, thinking about different things.

When I’m giving a talk, I don’t ask the audience to come to where I am. (They won’t.)

I go meet them where they are.

The presenters who work for MegaCorp have a specific deck that’s been approved by Legal and the Brand team and that runs down all the talking points to provide cover for the latest launch campaign.

And those presentations are boring. Brain-meltingly boring.

Because they don’t speak to anything that’s actually going on with the specific audience in front of them.

Understand who’s there in front of you. (Even if they’re with you virtually.) Ask them questions. Find out what’s on their minds. Give them the opportunity to make your talk more relevant by speaking to the conversation going on in their heads.

#3: Make the pitch

Every presentation is a pitch. Otherwise, there’s no point in making it.

But not every pitch involves selling something for money.

Every worthwhile presentation tries to get the audience to do something differently.

You might be selling the adoption of a new idea, a change in a behavior pattern, the use of a different tool, a different approach.

If you aren’t trying to persuade your audience, there’s no reason for you to take up their time. Everyone would be better off just grabbing a coffee and catching up on email.

A copywriter knows what she’s trying to sell. She makes her case coherently and succinctly. She provides the evidence. She gives examples of others who have benefited from “buying.”

Whether you’re selling an idea, a process, a tool, or a product, get clear.

Trying to sell a bunch of different things at once, by the way, confuses the audience, which typically causes them to walk away with a headache and find someone else to listen to.

#4: Tell them what to do next

A presentation is limited in time. Thankfully.

You have, let’s say, 45 minutes to give your talk. Cut at least five minutes off of that just for housekeeping and fluff and nonsense.

That gives you 40 minutes to transmit a persuasive idea and convince your audience to adopt it.

And then what?

If you care about moving that audience, if you care that they get the results they want (and if you don’t, why not give your spot to someone who does?), they’re going to need a next step. In copywriting terms, they need a call to action.

This can be done bluntly. (“Here’s a whitepaper: download it and one of our sales associates will call you twice a week until you quit your job or die.”)

It can be done subtly. I recently attended an excellent presentation that contained relevant references to a premium coaching product throughout. At the end of the presentation, the speaker pointed everyone to the sales professional who had come along to answer questions about the product.

It can be done masterfully. At that same Dan Kennedy event, I watched Bill Glazer give a talk that raised all of the thorny questions around a particular business problem — then spend about eight minutes walking through a product that solved all of them.

(Don’t avoid events that feature masters of pitching, by the way. FedEx your credit card to Antarctica if you have to, but watching these folks and taking notes will teach you a lot about the architecture of persuasion.)

The simplest version is to let the audience know how they can stay connected. It might mean asking them to sign up for an email list, with some kind of incentive that’s directly related to your presentation. (Checklists, mind maps, and cheat sheets are all handy for this.)

If the event organizer would prefer you not do that, you’ll need to get creative.

What’s their next step?

If you’re selling an idea or a behavior change, the next step might not involve you at all. But there’s something they can go out into the world and do, to get where they want to go.

No matter how great your talk, it can’t get your audience all the way there. What’s the next simple step they should take? You’re the expert. You’re there to help them get the thing they want. Tell them.

How about you?

What makes a presentation interesting for you? What makes it deathly dull? Or uncomfortable?

Let us know in the comments. 🙂