Crafting a Compelling Pitch Deck – 7 Tips for Capturing Investors’ Attention

Being the only one cheering for your big idea is never exciting. When business ideas are held in our minds, we often try to get investors to fund and materialize them into real-time projects. Sometimes, this can be difficult, especially since these investors usually have many other proposed business ideas lined up for their approval.

But your idea is important and deserves a hearing and approval, no matter how long that would take, as it is one of many ideas in our booming world of startups.

In this article, we have written seven tips to help you craft a compelling pitch deck that captures investor’s attention and ensures your idea gets the funding it needs.

Ready to start learning? Let’s dive into it!

What is a Pitch Deck?

A pitch deck is simply a short presentation that pitches a business idea or product.

The Importance of a Pitch Deck

Crafting a pitch deck is much more than showing slides or hosting spoken presentations that promote the essence of your products or brand. Instead, convincing potential investors by authenticating your idea, communicating your vision, and prompting target audiences to take the desired action is vital.

How to Craft a Compelling Pitch Deck With Seven Tips

1. Tell a Winning Story

An ideal pitch deck is straightforward, compelling, and prompting; your story should include all three characteristics. Narrating your story also gives you a floor to begin with a great pitch introduction. But, this should be done strategically as you risk wasting time and boring your investors if you don’t.

Begin with a slide showing the title of the pitch and your company. Next, provide a short background of its inception and one successful project so far. Then, introduce a problem statement where you lay out a problem you have identified in the market and why it should be tackled. Afterward, reveal the solution, which is your business idea. Briefly discuss the researched target customers, market size, and opportunities. Don’t forget to address your competitors’ wide gaps in identifying and solving this problem. Lastly, talk about your team and their involvement in the business growth thus far.

2. Conduct an Investor’s Research

Talking to the wrong investor is like teaching arithmetic to kindergarten pupils. The benefit of conducting investor research is to ensure beforehand that you would pitch in dead to investors familiar with the cornered area. After validating they are the right audience, the next step is to craft your pitch deck outline based on previous ideas that have interested them.

3. Use Appealing Visual Designs

To feed the brain, the eye must be fed. Every human succumbs to the hold of aesthetics; we all cannot do without them. Since your intended investors are humans, they fall for it, too. So, when representing your idea, use charts, graft, bullet points, and mix up the white background with eye-drawn colors to attract attention. Also, use images and icons to set one subsection apart from another. Remember to maintain consistency in your font choice and make them large and less cartoonish. Applying these steps increases the appealingness of your pitch deck visual design.

4. Present an Updated Pitch Deck

Maybe you had prepared a pitch deck for past investors three months ago, but it wasn’t successful, and since you’re burdened with tasks, an idea to pass it on to your next investors might seem reasonable. This is a mistake that would cost you another rank of unsuccess. Be sure that every document you aim to share is updated and relevant. First matters matter to investors, and they’re not famous for second chances.

5. Ensure Your Pitch Deck is Customer-Based

Last year, I kept up with a 1-minute pitch competition where contestants were expected to market a certain wine. One of them spent 40 seconds talking about his background and working ethics and couldn’t make a compelling market statement with the remaining seconds. He didn’t win, of course. The moral of this story is to ensure that your proposed ideas focus on how customers would perceive your company’s response to their interactions and need from the next similar company. At the end of the day, satisfied customers are every company’s goal.

6. Discuss Marketing and Sales Strategy

Show investors you understand market trends by disclosing intended steps to identify opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.

7. Allocate more time for Q&A

Your intended investors are extremely busy, so when outlining, organize other items in a time-conscious manner. This method helps ensure their questions are answered. A good hack that dictates the direction of the questions they’ll have for you at the end of the slideshow is to infuse rhetorical questions as you present them. This will show you are researchful and prove your dependability in acing the discussed project.

The Bottom Line

Crafting a compelling pitch deck that guarantees the inventor’s approval is an art that requires delicate steps to deliver a winning pitch. Endeavor to begin with a gripping but realistic introduction, present your outline, reveal a problem you aim to solve, and finally, present your unique solution. Practice for questions at the end of your presentation and answer them confidently. Remember, preparation meets opportunity.