2.1 Build an Executive Summary

Now that you've selected your marketing plan template, it's time to start building your presentation. To do that, you have to plan ahead. There's no need to make up ideas as you go about building your slides. Instead, have an outline prepared beforehand and then simply make slides to support it. When building out a marketing plan always keep your objective in mind. Marketing typically involves your approach to solving a specific problem or meeting a certain need. To outline this, it pays to start by talking big picture concepts and then zero in on your solutions. And when you're talking to potential investors, as many marketing plans will ultimately culminate in, brevity is a must. They may hear hundreds of pitches every year. Before you dive into the details, you have to set the stage quickly and smoothly. That's where an executive summary comes in. Whether members of your marketing team will use this or external investors, this is key. I'm working on this project summary slide here in PowerPoint. As you can see, it's very early in the presentation. I want to use it to introduce my offerings and unveil my marketing plan. Think of executive summaries as tables of content, where you hit the highlights of the message you're about to share. The first thing I want to do is change out the title to something more specific. Let's call it Everylytics Summary instead. To do this, I'll simply click inside this title placeholder and type in the name that I want to use. Just like any other text box in PowerPoint, I can change the formatting as well. Here, I think it would help to make the name of my company stand out. So I'll click and drag to select the name and then click on bold up here in the fonts menu. Boom, I've added contrast to this slide instantly. Now, it's time to start building out the main executive summary. These placeholders here make it simple. Fields like project name, benefits, risks, and more can quickly summarize the main opportunities and challenges facing your new venture. I'll start off here by entering in a project name. I can simply click in the text place holder and enter in the name Everylytics. It's as simple as that. Next up, I'll continue filling in these place holders here. Remember you can also change out the titles here on the left side. For example, project code doesn't really apply to what I'm doing, so instead I'll briefly introduce my vision for the company. I can click and type over the text here, changing it to read Our Vision. And then I'll add the vision statement in the right hand column as you're seeing me do here. Just like that I can build a customized executive summary to fit my firm's pitch. I'll continue making changes here, swapping in descriptions and titles to fit my marketing plan. Remember, the goal here is to really summarize your marketing plan in a single slide. By bringing your big ideas together, viewers can more easily fit details into a cohesive whole, whether that's outside investors or members at my company. In building my own marketing plan presentations, I've found that it helps to draw up a rough executive summary before you ever start making the slides. Let it drive your value offering by serving as an outline. But when building this slide, it's best to create it after the body of your presentation. That way you can ensure it completely aligns with the later content that's in the deck. However you go about it, a strong executive summary is a must for your marketing plan presentation. It truly sets the stage for your plan and gets audiences excited for the pitch you're about to make. Remember, keep it clear, concise, and quick. This executive summary sets the tone for every other part of your marketing plan. Thanks for watching.