If you're in business, you need to know how to create captivating presentations. Whether you're trying to convince your boss to support a new campaign, talking with a prospect to close a deal, or building a new piece of marketing collateral, you need to know how craft a presentation that won't put people to sleep.
The best (and easiest) way to do that? Use the right tools to create and deliver your presentation.
If you're not sure which tools to use, look no further than this blog post. We’ve compiled our list of the top presentation tools for sales and marketing professionals. They’re listed below, in no particular order. But first ...
Canva makes design easy -- even for marketers and salespeople who feel like they're design-challenged. The platform gives you a bunch of presentation templates to use right away, and it's very easy to customize them to your organization and presentation objective. Plus, a variety of apps that integrate with Google Drive, Instagram, and YouTube, to name a few.
Pricing: Free; Pro, $12.95/month for up to five people; Enterprise, $30/month per person
Often, being different is what attracts prospects, and Powtoon can help you do that in your presentations. Powtoon’s animation software lets you easily create videos with props, characters, and more -- which can help you differentiate your company when talking with prospects.
Pricing: Pro, $19/month; Pro+ $49/month; Agency, $89/month
For years, PowerPoint has been the standard in presentation software, but it hasn’t remained static. PowerPoint is full of features to make sales and marketing presentations dynamic and engaging. (Here are just a few ways you can do that.)
Pricing: Business Basic, $5/user/month; Business Standard, $12.50/user/month; Business Premium, $20/user/month
Slidesgo is your creative companion in the world of presentation design. This website specializes in crafting visually stunning Google Slides and PowerPoint templates that breathe life into your ideas, making them shine on any screen. With a wide variety of templates ranging from business and marketing to medicine and education, Slidesgo empowers presenters of all backgrounds to engage, educate, and inspire their audiences.
Pricing: Free plan, $0; Premium, $4.99; Education, $2.99
A PowerPoint add-in, Oomfo helps sales and marketing pros create those oh-so-important interactive charts for presentations. Specialized charts, live charts from multiple files, data from cloud applications, interactive options, one-click conversions -- it’s all possible, and more, with Oomfo.
Pricing: Free
Apple’s Keynote allows users to work between their Mac and iOS devices, as well as with people who use Microsoft PowerPoint. With easy-to-use visual tools, drag and drop functionality, interactive charts, and more, Keynote is a popular choice among sales and marketing professionals.
Pricing: Free
SlideModel contains thousands of ready-made and 100% editable presentation templates to help any presenter save time creating engaging and aesthetically pleasing presentations. Their collection of presentation templates covers a variety of business purposes and even gets updated periodically to add new business and education templates. You can find a collection of visually appealing slides on the site including dashboards, creative infographics, editable Maps, funnels, timelines, mindmaps, and presentation slides depending on the need of your presentation. Their slides templates are easy to edit and are compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides.
Pricing: Free plan, $0; One-Day Access, $24.50; Annual Unlimited, $199.90/year
Create beautiful slides, pitches, and proposals without a team of designers. AI applies design rules in real time, and a library of free photos and icons are at your fingertips.
Pricing: Basic, $0; Pro, $12/month; Team, $38/user/month
Power-user is a productivity add-in for PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. It's packed with many smart features designed to empower advanced PowerPoint users, reducing formatting time and elevating their presentations to the highest professional standards.
Some of the tool's key features include a library with thousands of templates, icons, pictures, logos, and more; advanced charting options; a robust Excel-PowerPoint; an agenda builder; and a presentation cleaner.
Available for the web or iPad, Haiku Deck has become a favorite of sales and marketing pros. With Haiku Deck, professionals can quickly create presentations that can be "easily projected, shared, posted, embedded on a website or blog, or viewed on any web-enabled device." Though it's another tool that helps you create presentations from scratch, its ease-of-use sets it apart from the rest.
Pricing: Pro, $9.99 - $19.99/month; Premium, $29.99/month
Vyond is an online animation software that allows you to create animated videos for marketing campaigns, sales enablement, or even human resources. Use their library of customizable templates or create your own from scratch.
Pricing: Essential, $229/year; Premium, $649/year; Professional, $999/user/year; Enterprise, contact for pricing
With templates for all the most popular business use cases, Storydoc is an interactive presentation maker built to help sales teams and marketing professionals engage more prospects and boost conversion rates.
You can create amazing and engaging decks where you can embed video and social media content to tell your story the right way. Then, integrate your CRM into Storydoc decks, as well as calendars, sign-up forms, and other solutions that will make your presentation. Additionally, you have access to Storydoc's tracking analytics which shows who viewed your presentation and which components they interacted with the most.
Pricing: Free trial 14 days); Starter Plan, $40/month
Busy sales and marketing pros choose emaze because it makes creating amazing presentations quick and easy. The options abound with emaze: Choose a professionally designed template and then create a slideshow, video presentation, or 3D presentation.
Pricing: Business Plan, contact for pricing; Executive Plan, $40/month; Pro Plan, $13/month
TechSmith’s Camtasia is an amazing tool that helps you create professional videos. You can record screen movements, import HD video from another source, customize and edit the video, and then share the completed video presentation on practically any device.
Pricing: Individual, $249.99/user/year; Business $249.99/user/year; Education, $169.99/user/year; Government and Non-Profit, $223.99/user/year
SlideShare is a popular choice for sales and marketing professionals looking for a way to share their content publicly. Because it already has a built-in audience, you can easily distribute your presentation out to lots of people -- and those people can embed your SlideShares on websites and blogs, or share them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Pricing: Free
Sometimes, sales and marketing professionals need to be able to move between presentation tools, but it’s not always possible because of their technical limitations. SlideDog is the solution, as it enables users to switch between PowerPoint, Prezi, PDF, web pages and others.
Pricing: Free; Pro, $99/year; Pro Event, $49 for one-time payment
Presentation Assistant lives up to its name: It assists professionals by enabling them to annotate, zoom, and more during a presentation. Sales and marketing professionals can clarify and emphasize points more clearly to their audience with Presentation Assistant.
Pricing: Presentation Pointer, $29.95; Presentation Screen Master, $29.95
Sales and marketing pros choose authorSTREAM to make their presentations dynamic and engaging. authorSTREAM allows users to share their PowerPoint presentations publicly or privately, broadcast them, convert them to video, communicate and collaborate about them, and more.
Pricing: Free or paid plans start at $4.20/month
With Zentation, salespeople and marketers combine video and slides into a simulated live experience. Presentations created with Zentation become webinars, webcasts, and virtual events for prospects and customers -- all great collateral for marketing and sales.
Pricing: Free; Premium, $10 - $45/month; White-Label, contact for pricing
Sales and marketing professionals love Prezi because it is cloud-based. Prezi makes creating, editing, and presenting from your browser, desktop, iPad, or iPhone possible anywhere, any time.
Pricing: Standard, $5/month; Plus, $15/month; Premium, $59/month
Sales reps and marketers often choose Brainshark, a cloud-based presentation tool, because it allows them to create and deliver presentations live or on-demand (even using their iPad or iPhone), use on-demand video content, polls, or surveys for increased engagement, and embed presentations in websites and blogs.
Pricing: Contact for pricing
Vcasmo is a unique presentation tool -- it's a multimedia solution that enables users to synchronize a video and slideshow, side by side. Sales and marketing pros love Vcasmo because it supports playback in three forms: browser, mobile, and iPad.
Pricing: Free; Standard, $10.99/month; Professional, $16.99/month
ViewletBuilder is a different presentation tool; it captures critical screen updates and cursor position changes so sales and marketing pros can create presentations detailing how their product or sites work. With a plethora of features, ViewletBuilder allows for editing and enhancing and includes a variety of publishing and sharing options, too.
Pricing: Pro, $399; Enterprise, $599
Zoho Show is a top pick for sales and marketing pros because it lives online, making it possible to create, access, present, and more from anywhere, any time. The simple, intuitive interface and collaboration features are just two of its beloved benefits.
Pricing: Contact for pricing
Pricing: Free; Essential, $4.95/month; Pro, $15.95/month; Annual, Monthly & One-time plans available.
Visme is an all-in-one content creation platform with a vast library of professionally designed presentation templates, each tailored to your industry and specific proposal needs. Its beginner-friendly design platform allows you to drag and drop elements into place, use dynamic fields to update all your content in one place instantaneously and integrate your tools like Hubspot or Salesforce, and more to personalize each presentation.
Pricing: Free, Starter: $12.25/month, billed yearly, Pro: $30/month, billed yearly, Visme for Teams & Enterprises.
What are you waiting for? Pick a tool and start creating. Your prospects are waiting.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.