Marketing & Comms Corner: Multi-Purpose PPT

In the previous blog, I looked at PowerPoint’s primary function and how marketing and communications managers regularly neglect presentation design. This time, I want to look outside presentations and explore PowerPoint’s multi-faceted and multimedia marketing capabilities. Marketing and communications managers are often required to produce a large amount of collateral time and again. Whether branded emails for a campaign or media releases for new products – they always have to be conscious of messaging and audience. The need for flexibility and versatility is crucial for ensuring communications are up to date and on brand every time.

Edit and Repurpose with Ease

Designing and delivering in PowerPoint makes editing and reusing collateral a breeze. Even those without design experience can work around PowerPoint’s intuitive interface. No need for marketing and communications folks to pester designers with tiny edits and amendments. This also means marketing materials can easily be shared, since most stakeholders will already have PowerPoint downloaded on their computer or smartdevice. The universal availability of PowerPoint can save people a lot of time fiddling with design software and formatting issues. For example, businesses and universities regularly offer branded PowerPoint templates to ensure consistency during staff presentations. Specifications can also be easily altered to suit different audiences and platforms. A logo designed in PowerPoint can comfortably be reformatted for an Instagram post or LinkedIn-page banner. The ability to repurpose designs keeps marketing material aligned with brand identity. Consistency goes beyond PowerPoint’s capacity for creating and reusing templates. PowerPoint can also handle multimedia files, which means all file types and formats can be viewed within the one program. You can write a branded email and then easily embed video content to create a more engaging touchpoint with staff, clients, or investors.

Interaction: Engaging and Marketing Directly

Unlike static designs for print or digital, PowerPoint offers interactive capabilities, which is the most compelling way to transform passive audiences into active participants in communication. It’s the difference between a promotional video and in-store activation – both create awareness, but only one guarantees consumer feedback. Interactivity isn’t just awesome for marketing; it’s also a great means for onboarding and training staff (interactive learning). However, those in communications will notice interactivity’s value in creating more tailored content for consumers. Interactive PowerPoints force audiences to engage directly with your marketing. And if you build filters and parameters within the presentation, you can create content specific to different demographics. No more blanket marketing campaign where you send out generic messages in the hopes of response. Interactive collateral can help you build demographic profiles of your target markets. This way, you can understand who your customers are, what motivates them, and how your offering will benefit them. Let’s say you produce a catalogue for a print run. Firstly, good on you – I’ll always advocate the benefits of tactile marketing. However, if that catalogue’s reproduced on your website, a little PowerPoint interactivity could make it more dynamic and user friendly. Want to incorporate Excel data into your next presentation? PowerPoint’s got your back. Looking to create a template so communications are consistently on brand? Build it in PowerPoint with these grid and guide templates (or ask how we can create it for you).