3.5 Build Financial Justification Slides

Any form of marketing has to demonstrate a financial return. This really includes a combination of past performance and future results that combine to impress potential investors and help you chart your growth trajectory. I'm working on a pair of slides here that'll help me do just that. Although it's titled Budget, this first slide can really help me highlight growth projects for Everylytics. I'll start off by swapping out the title text, inserting the phrase Growth Forecast in place of Budget. In keeping with the style formatting I've employed in these slides, I'll bold the word Growth. This is an easy way to call attention to a word or idea. What I want to do here is present sales and customer growth data for the next four years. To do this, I'll first start out by swapping out these placeholders here in the first column. This is straightforward, as the only change I'll make will be to swap out product one for 2019 and so forth. I'll repeat these steps on the column placeholders across the top here. In the first column here, I'll type in New Customers. Then I'll jump to the next tab and add Forecasted Revenue. And then finally, Market Share. Just like that, I've built the foundation for future success. Building out these key metrics about customer growth, revenue, and market share over the next four years will help me to size up my company. And understand what I can spend when it comes to marketing. Capturing and quantifying some of this data will help you understand where you stand financially within the company. Now it's time to start filling in data. If you've spent time building a marketing plan, you should already have numbers like this in your financial forecasts. Now all you have to do is fill in the blanks with the data you've captured. Forecasting and building out some of these growth metrics is all about sizing the opportunity and knowing where you may be headed. Of course they won't be right, but they do give you a general trajectory. Let's start off by clicking in this first box here and type in 3,500. This is telling my audience that I anticipate 3,500 new and unique customers to subscribe to Everylytics in 2019. While it isn't a huge number, it's a firm foundation that establishes my potential. Next up, I'll jump to the next text box here. This one focuses on forecasted revenue. Based off of my modeling, I've concluded that our 2019 revenues will be around 1.2 million. So I'll go ahead and type that in, as you're seeing me do here. And finally, I want to gauge our position in the accessible analytics market. My research suggests around 6% for our first year, I'll enter that in. And as you can see, we've built a clear and concise model of financial justification. Your numbers and metrics will vary based on the space that you're working in. But you do need to spend some time making some estimates. Now I'll continue by simply repeating those steps for the next three years. Skipping ahead, you can see that data supports an ongoing trajectory of growth in all three categories. Building out this growth forecast can help your other employees within the company understand where you've been and where you're going in the future. Okay, I've built a strong case for future success. But no matter how good it looks, most savvy people will want more. They'll expect a financial justification based off past performance, as well. It's time to give them a slide that showcases just that. I'll skip slides to this one, which focuses on achievements we've already captured. This title is actually perfect for our purposes, so I'll leave it alone. This slide is built to highlight numerical gains and successes that are already in our company's history. Looking at the placeholders, I'll compare with my own story. Everylytics has had multiple venture capital investors, raise funding, hired clients, and is signing deals with even more. Now it's time to reflect these victories on our slides. I'll click on this first placeholder here in the top left corner. Let's say that our firm has attracted funding from 14 VC firms. I'll key that in, as you're seeing me do here. I'll repeat these same steps, dropping data milestones into each of the placeholders. And finally, I'll update these year titles by changing them to 2017 to 2019 in order to reflect the period since our founding. As you can see, the best pitch in the world just simply isn't enough without financial justification. Templates like this one from Envato Elements make it easy. You can put your best foot forward and convince everyone of your winning strategy. Better yet, now you have data to back it up. And it only takes a few clicks to showcase it, thanks for watching.