Hot Tip For Presentations: Give Out Coupon Codes!

This is a neat trick we learned. We were speaking at a technology conference and we decided to give everyone in the audience something that would help their business. But we didn’t have any budget for something expensive. What could we give to this group of 2,000 people that we could afford, but would give them something of value that could save them lots of money. Then we realized: you can use Coupon Puppy to save money.

Most of these people had websites, and these websites all have web hosting. Hosting tends to be one of the most expensive expenses for a website owner, so we realized that we could copy down some coupon codes from a site like this: (update: here’s a new site that we recommend:

print it off on little cards and give them to the audience. If they used the coupon, then they would save 40% off renewal costs of their hosting plans and domains. That’s a real benefit for all those attendees looking for some kind of business edge. And best of all? It cost us nothing! You can find coupon codes for pretty much any kind of merchant for your presentation by searching on CouponJournal.org.

Preparing a Presentation? Here’s Why You Need to Outline First 

If you aren’t a natural speaker, preparing a presentation can be stressful. While using PowerPoint as a brainstorming tool seems like a great way to outline, this can backfire. If you want your talk to be engaging and exciting, you need to outline your talk before you make your slides; here’s why. 

Outlining Improves Your Messaging 

If you develop slides before you know what you’re going to say, you’ll wind up with a vague message. Your talk might not convince the audience. To get the message right, take a step back and think about how the content you are creating relates to the overall branding.

Outlining Creates a Natural Flow

Your initial thoughts may not be very organized. As you create an outline from these scattered thoughts, you risk creating a talk that does not flow. In the worst case, this could create a talk that fails to convert audience members or impress a potential new client. When your business depends on making an effective presentation, you need to sit down and create that talk first. 

Outlining Helps You Create a Strong Presentation 

As you draft, you might grab image and video content and drag that onto the slides. Since you are still in the create mode and you are not clear on the message yet, you can end up creating slides that look messy or don’t really go with your talk. You’ll need to spend more time editing these down or you’ll end up with a cluttered, weak presentation. 

Outlining Shortens Your Time on Task

If you delve into using your professional PowerPoint design as a drafting tool, you will inevitably end up spending more time reworking the content to a polished draft. So, if you want to do the best job possible on your PowerPoint without spending a lot of time on it, outline your talk and then create slides from your template. 

Hopefully, these points have convinced you to take a step back next time you need to deliver a talk.