523. The perfect slide deck template jk 🥒
There is no perfect slide deck, but this one works pretty well [free downloadable template included]
Hellooo 👋 So happy to have you here. I’m Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now I’ve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, we’d love for you to join us.
How to make a slide deck
The other day, a vendor sent me a 70-slide overview deck — 70 slides! — that was so cumbersome they had to preface the deck with an explainer and a table of contents in their email to me. Slides 1 thru 24 were just the company intro!
Now, I love a good novel (did you know I read 50+ books each year?), but I’d rather keep my PowerPoints and my Kindle library separate.
There is a simpler, more straightforward, more effective way to make a slide deck.
One that isn’t anywhere near 70 slides.
In fact, we just made a deck for a client at Bonfire.
Let me show you how we approach it.
The only five slides you really need
Of course, I’m being overly simplistic when I say there is a way — i.e., one way — to make an easy, effective deck. There are actually lots of simple, straightforward ways to make a good deck. Just do a quick Google, and you will find no shortage of opinions on what is the best. You may even find opinions from me, because I’ve written about it before!
Most decks follow a version of a storytelling framework. (No surprise that I’ve written about those before, too.)
We apply storytelling frameworks to a majority of our brand, messaging, and marketing work at Bonfire. Stories are the way that we (humans) engage with the world around us, including the digital worlds of buying and selling things, whether it’s B2B software or retail e-commerce.
With that storytelling lens in mind, here are the five essential components that we bake into our decks:
1 — Situation
This describes the state of the world today. It’s kind of a “no duh” slide, but it does serve a critical purpose: It brings relevance to everything else you say next. In a way, you are answering the question of Why Now by providing context into what Now is all about.
Example:
The situation for Oyster, a global employment platform: Talent is distributed around the globe, plus remote work has made global talent a viable option for businesses
The situation for Buffer, social media marketing software: Customers expect to discover and engage with their favorite brands on social media
2 — Challenge
Or, rather than Challenge, you could frame it as Opportunity. Either way, you’re trying to name the tension within the Situation that you believe your audience needs to overcome in order to live their best life or be their best self. You can think of Slide 1 and Slide 2 as a compound sentence with “but” as the conjunction. “Here’s the reality of the situation, but the issue is this.”
Example:
The challenge for Oyster: Hiring internationally is complex, arduous and rife with risk
The challenge for Buffer: Social media is time-consuming and complicated to manage if you’re just one person, doing lots of other things
3 — Solution
Here you can start to talk about you. But don’t just come right out and say, “We’re the answer! Buy us!” You want to describe your core value rather than your specific business name. Like this:
The solution for Oyster: You need global employment software that manages everything for you: hiring, payroll, and benefits
The solution for Buffer: All-in-one social media platforms make your social strategy easier (and possible)
4 — Benefits
Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty stuff about what makes you so great. Here’s where you can list out multiple benefits across multiple slides, ideally talking about the ways that your solution makes your audience’s life better (not talking about how cool this or that feature is).
5 — Why us
This may be the most controversial part of the deck because I’ve heard many people say you don’t need any slides talking about who you are and how much others love you. But I have found it very valuable to explain what qualifies you to be the one solving this problem — it could be past experience or social proof of customer logos.
Appendix
That’s it! Well, that’s a starting point. You can always add more slides into an appendix or pull them forward into the main deck. For instance, maybe you need a slide on pricing or competitors or methodology or a “data room” of statistics.
The many different types of decks
A generic slide deck storytelling template can work across a number of different types of decks in a number of different contexts. Here are the places where I’ve used it most effectively:
Pitch deck: Useful for when you’re fundraising or drumming up interest. The story remains the same, you just orient it more toward Market Opportunity (Total Addressable Market, competitors, etc.)
Sales deck: Helpful framing for prospects. You will want to iterate and adapt based on feedback of what’s resonating and what’s not
First call deck: For the very first sales call with a prospect, you’ll want to lean more heavily on the first few slides rather than the benefits section.
Presentation: Can be used for reporting on campaign performance or giving an update at an all-hands on how things are going. And the storytelling sure beats the traditional (boring?) slides that are all numbers
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.
Each week on this substack, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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