Eight types of slides you need in your template library for streamlined success.
Visual representing 8 for projector template.
A slide template library is the single best way to supercharge your content operations, efficiently build new presentations, and ensure every external touchpoint with your company is on-brand.
By investing in a suite of fully customisable, brand-aligned slides, you'll be ready to seize every opportunity to show off your work without spending hours formatting old materials.
Yes, template libraries keep everything looking slick, but they also serve a specific purpose unique to your business. Perhaps you create custom proposals for new prospects each week or need your team equipped with up-to-date assets for their meetings.
Check out our dedicated landing page for more information on our PowerPoint Templates. Maybe you need a central resource for brand-aligned sales information for everyone to access. Your template library should be tailored to your business needs.
From our experience creating custom template libraries for our clients here at Presentation Studio, there are a few types of slides that most companies benefit from. Together, these slides bring dynamism and variety to a presentation, tell the story of a business, create opportunities for authentic and memorable storytelling, and elevate brand perception—all while remaining flexible and customisable to achieve your specific presentation objectives.
Read on for the eight types of slides you should have in your template library.
1. The introductions
First impressions count, and they can be the difference between an audience locked into every word you say and one filled with people reaching for their phones. What you say to begin your presentation is the most important thing. Still, good introductory slides can help support your mission to get everyone on board and engaged.
For some presentations, an introduction to the speaker is essential to set the stage for what's to come. For others, a brief overview of the company's mission and purpose is sufficient. An element of these introductions could also be signalling the company or speaker's authority or expertise on the subject area — more on these "authority-building" slides later.
2. The storytellers
Studies have shown that humans are more likely to take action due to narrative development and storytelling and have comparatively lower engagement with facts. Anecdotes can effectively build rapport with an audience and infuse your personal experience into your presentation.
When it comes to slides, some of the best storytelling slides are the simplest in design. A single image, a short video clip, or a quote can be enough to make your audience curious and lean in closer to hear what story you have to share.
3. The perspective-shifters
Remember those cartoon animations that rapidly zoomed out of somewhere until you saw the whole town, country, planet Earth, and eventually the entire galaxy? Perspective-shifting slides aren't as corny, but they achieve the same effect: bringing perspective into your presentation, contextualising your data and information on the broader sector or industry landscape, and showing your audience where you fit into the wider "galaxy" of possibilities.
For some, this will be a market-sizing slide showing the total addressable market. For others, it could highlight the scale of a problem on a national or global level, drawing the audience's attention to the magnitude of a specific issue. Either way, these slides shake things up by dramatically shifting the audience's perspective.
4. The key statistics
We've all seen excellent examples of these slides: think large-scale images and staggering statistics that drive home a single, often shocking fact. These impact-heavy slides work best in moderation when used among standard slides with less urgency.
If you want to make your presentation even more engaging, consider leaving out some vital information on the slide and instead verbalise it so that the audience can listen more closely to the full story. For example, an unlabeled graph has no context for the audience until the speaker clarifies what they are looking at. Once you have delivered this information, you may "complete" the slide using an animation that fills in the information gaps.
5. The interest capturers
As public speakers, sometimes we have to get creative with ways to sustain the audience's attention, particularly for longer presentations. The best way to do this is to shake things up with something specifically designed to capture their interest, encourage engagement, or incite a response.
This could be an interactive poll or a call for a hands-on demonstration of a particular topic. It could be a single word that piques their curiosity and delivers new information astonishingly simply. It could be a humorous picture or graphic that makes them laugh until you explain why you included that slide. Whatever you decide, these "interest capturers" are great to revitalise your audience and renew their waning attention towards the middle or end of your presentation.
6. The explainers
If you have a detailed methodology or a process-oriented model to explain, use considered graphic design to simplify your communications and illustrate your message. Forget dozens of bullet points or DIY flowcharts: well-designed explainer slides make the complex clear and give greater authority to your presentation.
If there's one area where it makes sense to outsource design expertise, it's for these methodology or process-related elements of a presentation. Remember, as a speaker, it's your job to deliver your message clearly and with impact. Your slides should support you in clarifying your message, not confusing it.
7. The authority-builders
So, you've started sharing your key messages, and your audience seems to be on board. Now, it's time to build your speaker's credibility and convince them that you're the person they should trust in your area of expertise. Authority-building slides answer the question your audience may be thinking: "why should I listen to you?"
There are several ways to build authority through your slides: case studies illustrate the proven results of your unique work approach. Track record slides show what you've been able to achieve so far and what's possible for future clients. Timelines convey the momentum you've built, the recognition you've achieved, and the milestones that have shaped your journey along the way. A credits slide with partner logos shows prospects that they'll be in good company when they sign up to work with you.
These slides can be worked into the introduction to set the scene, used towards the end in a "why us?" section, or peppered throughout the presentation as a constant signal of credibility and authority.
8. The calls-to-action
Now that you've conveyed your key messages and delivered your impactful presentation, it's time to mobilise your audience to take action in line with your presentation objective. Sometimes, this will be a single, clear call-to-action: displaying a QR code for audience members to book a follow-up call with you or directing them to your company booth at a fair to continue the conversation.
If your objective is to raise brand awareness, you might encourage audience members to take out their phones and snap a picture of the event to share on social media or follow you on your most active accounts. A call-to-action could also be more open-ended, such as an invitation for audience members to come and chat with you at the end of the presentation.
To make building future presentation slides a breeze, ensure you have a few alternate CTA slides ready to be customised in your slide template library.
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