- August 20, 2015
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You Lose if Audiences Snooze: Best Practices for Energizing Data-Driven Presentations
Subscribers and bounce rates and click-throughs, oh my! Viewers and visitors, campaign R-O-I.
If you’re a marketer, chances are, you’ll soon share statistics of some kind with someone very important. Whether it’s a client pitch or C-suite presentation, how clearly research and information come across could mean the difference between getting what you want and leaving empty handed.
To audiences, your data presentation is your brand, writes author, Avinash Kaushik, who, as an educator, author and Google digital marketing exec, has made countless data-driven presentations.
“Trust me,” Kaushik says, “It’s better for your career to get really, really good at data presentation.” When data is presented efficiently, he asserts, you build credibility, distinguish yourself as competent, and most importantly, move the discussion past the information itself and onto the actions that should be taken on it (aka your value-added insights).
To help professionals deliver complex data in a clear and engaging way, Kaushik offers these and other best practices over at his Occam’s Razor blog:
- Focus and simplify. Most data slides contain too much information, laments Kaushik. Try to dedicate just one metric per slide and present the data as simply as possible. Spend time noodling fonts and color and try distinguishing data sets or comparisons with contrasting (but complementary) combinations that are attractive and easy on the eye.
- Avoid sloppiness. Pay close attention to the small things, like title placement, legends and labels. Keep all elements neat, proportionate and tidy. Use short, clear descriptions and be deliberate about keeping explanatory verbiage succinct.
- Make your data the hero. It’s tempting to embellish data slides with clever shapes but it’s a practice best avoided, Kaushik cautions. Lines, arrows, icons and other elements can distract your audience and turn attention away from the hero: the data you worked so hard to locate, compile and analyze.
Be Sterile at Your Peril
So, must all data-rich presentations be devoid of style and fun? Absolutely not. If they are, you’re doomed. Try combining Kaushik’s advice above with these PowerPoint best practices from marketing maven, Seth Godin.
- No more than six words on a slide–ever! There is no presentation so complex that this rule should be broken.
- No cheesy images. Always use professional stock photo images.
- No dissolves, spins or other transitions; use sound effects sparingly, if at all.
Driven to get more out of your company’s data? Our data-management archive is filled with actionable tips on how to gather, interpret and apply marketing and other information, including the elusive and mysterious ‘dark’ data.
