Today’s successful entrepreneurs share their secrets to success in marketing and pitching products for startup ventures. I’ve listed the top 12 mistakes beginners make in creating a pitch deck so you can learn from others’ missteps. The mistakes often stem from not doing enough research on customers and competitors before starting the slides-writing process–or even worse, writing a presentation without understanding your market at all. The last thing you want is your whole world crashing down when you get up to present, so avoid these blunders with your pitch presentation by reading on!
1) Start with a Jumbled Mess of Information on the First Slide.
When a viewer sees a confusing mess of images and text that appears random, it’s called “clutter.” A cluttered presentation deck isn’t going to say anything about your business–it only serves as an eyesore.
2) Don’t Have a Focus on What You’re Trying to Accomplish with the Presentation.
If you can see from the beginning of your deck that this will not be appealing at all, why waste time or money-making one? Often, business owners know nothing about design or marketing but want to make something quickly without truly understanding how it should look or who their target audience is. If this describes you, work with someone who knows about these things than you do. Or take the time to do them yourself. You may end up with something you’re proud to show others.
3) The Slides are Too Text-Heavy.
The images you choose should be simple and complement your presentation well. Images with a lot of detail can also look cluttered on-screen and increase visual fatigue–the feeling of being tired from looking at a particular picture for an extended period of time. While you click your PowerPoint clicker, the audience won’t pay attention and this will hurt your presentation rather than help it. Instead, use infographics to turn lengthy texts into relatable visuals. There are design solutions that can create infographics for you, too, like Venngage infographics! So, keep your visuals clean and relevant like below!
4) Don’t Adjust Font Size or Color to Fit the Design/Layout of the Slide.
It’s incredible how this mistake is often made by people who don’t know better! Fonts should always fit the slide. If they don’t, guess what? You’ve got another error to fix.
5) Don’t Use More Than One Font in the Presentation Deck.
For some reason, people like to “play with” fonts by using one style for headers and something else for the rest of the text on the slide to make it look less boring or visually displeasing in some cases. However, this is a common mistake that makes your presentation look incomplete–as though you didn’t finish making it before you were set to deliver it! Like mentioned earlier, keep layouts clean and focus on creating a solid visual appeal instead of trying new things just because they sound good at first glance. After all, the best pitch decks have decisive and straightforward content.
6) Use Clip Art from the ’90s.
We don’t know about you, but we think this reflects poorly on an individual’s professionalism. How would you feel if presented with an investor pitch deck with clip arts? Clipart is outdated and cheesy at best, which means it’s not going to look good in any presentation–even if you set it to black and white! Choose images relevant to your product or service instead of clipart from the old days.
7) Use Comic Sans, Papyrus, or Another Tacky Font No One Likes.
You can get away with using different fonts for headers or titles. These short phrases stand out against the rest of the text for emphasis purposes only. Try to use them throughout your whole deck without looking like an amateur designer who has no clue what they’re doing. You’re only going to make yourself look like an idiot.
8) Use Colors That are Clashing or Don’t Match the Tone of Your Presentation (E.G., Neon Pink Text on a Black Background).
This is another common mistake made by people who want their presentations to be “out there” and flashy in terms of design–something that they think will eventually get them noticed out of the crowd. However, this just makes your presentation more complicated than necessary for viewers to look at and understand what’s actually being said! Don’t sacrifice quality just because you want something eye-catching. As I’ve stated before, professional doesn’t necessarily mean boring. So pick up the phone, do some research online, find out more about marketing, and consult a professional who can help you create something that looks great while remaining effective.
9) Don’t Use Tiny Fonts, Light Colors, or Low Contrast If You Have Text on Images.
Small fonts are difficult to read from a distance, so it’s best not to have any of them in your presentation slide unless they’re enormous and impossible to miss from afar. If you must use small text somewhere in the image, make sure it isn’t significant enough for viewers to miss if they can’t see it! But otherwise, leave small text where it belongs–in documents only meant for online viewing (i.e., Word files). As far as color goes, make sure it’s visible enough for people at the back of the room to see easily. And lastly, contrast is critical for your slides to be readable. For example, if you have text on a dark background and it’s barely visible, make the text more visible by adding some kind of border around it–or vice versa if there’s too much white space on the slide.
10) Don’t Make Your Text All Caps for Emphasis (IT LOOKS LIKE SHOUTING).
If you want to use all caps in your presentation, go ahead. Just don’t do it for every single word or phrase on the entire slide! There’s no need for this because it makes the design look like a 10-year old made it. Instead of using all caps everywhere, play around with colors and different fonts that complement each other.
11) Put Your Name First in the Credits Section.
No matter how good you are, people aren’t going to do business with you if they can’t even remember who you are! I’m sure some of you have already made this mistake during presentations. Still, everyone must know who their potential partners or new employees are so they know what each person is assigned to do. So please make sure to put the names of every single employee/partner listed on one slide where viewers can see them all at once. That way, they don’t have to scroll through your whole presentation trying to figure out who does what–spending more time looking for answers than actually absorbing any helpful information about your company!
12) Don’t Have a Last Page That Tries to Sell Them at the End.
You might be wondering why this is, especially if you are en route to resting an investor deck. It’s because having the last page that tries to sell at the end is entirely unnecessary because it just makes your presentation run too long. Instead of adding one more slide, you should try to condense all critical points into as few slides as possible. This will help you catch any other mistakes before they happen!
There you have it! Don’t be shy and lookup pitch deck examples for inspiration when in doubt. An easier way is to access online pitch deck templates from Venngage. It’s free to sign-up, and creating a pitch deck from scratch is easy; no prior design skills are necessary. When you’re ready to pitch the best presentation to date, create your account with Venngage today!
Ashley Rosa is a freelance writer and blogger. As writing is her passion that why she loves to write articles related to the latest trends in technology and sometimes on health-tech as well. She is crazy about chocolates. You can find her at twitter: @ashrosa2.