How Many Different Pre-Templated PowerPoint Slides Does Your Company Need?
If your company makes presentations, whether they’re for use internally or externally, it’s important they look professional and are consistent. People need to know they are in safe hands. Consistency and professionalism are two ways to communicate this and inspire trust.
Professionally designed pre-templated slides can transform both how your company comes across and how you communicate. The right slides will help teams save time and stay on brand when they need to create a new presentation. And a good PowerPoint template helps presenters stay on track and makes things easier for them, not harder.
There are various pre-templated slides your company is likely to need. Let’s take a look at what they are and how you’ll know what’s likely to be right for your business. If you already know you need a PowerPoint template, get in touch.
Why your company needs a PowerPoint master template
As a general rule, all mid-sized companies of 50+ employees will need a professionally designed presentation template. This is especially true when you have departments with different needs, like sales and marketing, or internal presentations to make like board meetings. They help you:
Stay on brand with fonts, colours, and layout locked in
Speed up slide creation and reduce errors
Give everyone a consistent, professional look, no matter who’s presenting
Prevent ‘design drift’, where each department or team member does it slightly differently
How many pre-templated slides will your company need?
The golden number for pre-templated slides within a master template is around 30. If you have more than 30, the way the window viewer for templates in PowerPoint is designed means you’ll have to scroll to search for the one you want. This can be irritating for the person creating the presentation and lead to mistakes.
Some companies will have over 100 pre-templated slides. In reality, this can become more of a problem than it solves. It can be difficult to find and work out which slide to use, particularly as at that point a lot of them will look very similar.
Things to remember when deciding how many pre-templated slides you need
There’s no magic number – it will depend on the size, structure and presentation needs of your company. (We can advise!)
Although there’s no magic number, it’s still advisable to stick to 30 or fewer
A small business may only really need one core template
Larger companies might need department-specific pre-templated slides
The 16 most commonly pre-templated slides for presentations
There are some basics you’ll probably want, although every company is different and the slides they use all the time will differ. We can design any template you require.
Title
There are two types of commonly used title slides. One is a heavily company-branded introductory slide with the presenter’s image, a larger title, a subtitle, and the presenter’s name. The other type of title slide includes an interchangeable image background for different topics.Agenda
Structure is important in your presentation. A good Powerpoint presentation designer will recognise and play into the strategic value of structure. Your agenda is your viewer’s first glimpse into what will be covered within the presentation and it’s important to get it right.Who's in the room/presenters
Sometimes there might be one or two presenters, sometimes you might have 20 or more people on a call. A pre-template allows you to consistently ensure everyone knows what’s going on.Section divider/chapter slide
This links to your agenda. An agenda slide can be used as a section divider, or you can use a large photo and a big heading for your section divider. Section dividers, or chapter slides, need to be clear - and they should be powerful.Closing/CTA/Thank You
A slide that covers questions, a call to action, or ‘looking forward to meeting again’. The look and feel here should relate back to your title slide.Basic title and title + body text slides
These are basic slides that allow you to create content without a template.Charts and Graphs
Depending on how data-heavy your presentations tend to be, you can create pre-templated slides giving you 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 options on how to present your data.Timeline/Roadmap Slides
These slides are used to showcase a timeline - for example, where a company wants to be or their journey so far with a client.Key takeaway/summary slides
This recap pre-template gives a summary of all the slides from the presentation and typically involves three or four points.Quote
A pre-templated quote slide is a ‘nice-to-have’. They don’t tend to be used a lot and for multiple quotes are often made by hand on a basic slide instead.Statement slides
Statement slides are secondary to the section divider. They tend to be more to make a point.Case study
These slides can showcase a short case study with problem / solution / result scenario and key imagery. Alternatively, you could have two or three slides of long-form text and more imagery.Point slides
These typically include 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 key points on a slide. It’s easier to have a preset design than to have to keep designing the same thing.Mockup slides preset for phone, laptop, tablet, etc
It can be useful to have easy-to-drop-in content to make it look more professional, especially for screenshots. You'd also have a title and body-text box available.Image + text slide
Some companies have an image placeholder in various places on a slide to help lift the words.Credentials
Some companies pre-template credentials slides. This saves people from using old slides. You can adjust some content on the top (text and logos).
Getting your PowerPoint presentation slides right
Creating a professional PowerPoint master template goes far beyond matching fonts and colours. It requires expertise in PowerPoint, graphic design, master slides, layouts, branding, consistency, and so on. We also use the right file format to make sure you don’t mess up your master templates (.POTX not .PPTX). Files that are .POTX open as a new, unsaved file that you can then save as a .PPTX to edit or deliver.
We’ll advise you on how many pre-templated slides you’re likely to need, and we can obviously edit or add to them as your company grows and evolves. We offer a training session when we hand them over – we don’t expect you to just know how to get the most out of them. Each slide also has instructions on how to use it, and the deck has preset upfront slides that answer frequently asked questions.
A set of strong PowerPoint pre-templated slides is a low-cost, long-term investment in your brand and your team’s efficiency. Get it right and your presentations will be consistent, feel professional, and take a fraction of the time to create. At power your point we’re experts at doing for this for our clients – why not get in touch and find out more about our presentation design services?