Always end with a call to action

What do you hope your presentation will achieve? Or: what do you want your audience to do? This is your so-called call to action. Put it on your final slide! During the follow-up discussion and question round, this slide remains on screen the entire time and is therefore viewed for longer than all your other slides. Use that slide, for example, for a QR code that leads directly to your paper. Or say you’ve conducted research into healthy eating — your final slide could read ‘Eat at least 200 grams of fresh vegetables every day and stay healthy for longer’.

Be specific

Do you want to collaborate with people in the room, or receive feedback on your ideas? Then make that appeal as specific as possible. It’s tempting to simply put your contact details, such as your email address, on a slide and leave it at that. But then your audience still has to figure out for themselves what exactly they might email you about and whether that’s even what you’re looking for. So say literally what or who you’re looking for, and use your slides to do so. For example: ‘Wanted: data specialists and synthetic biologists’.

Make it easy

Think in advance about what people need to do concretely and make it as straightforward as possible. The more people have to think and the more choices they have to make, the less likely they are to take action. An example: you’re watching television and an advert comes on about stray dogs in need of a shelter. Images of pitiful dogs follow and you think to yourself, ‘Oh, how sad — I’d love to help those animals.’ The advert then ends with an appeal to donate money. Even if you’re the biggest dog lover around, the chances are still slim that you’ll actually give any money. After all, you still have quite a few choices to make: How much is an appropriate amount? Do you donate once or set up a regular payment? How do you even go about donating — do they have a website with a bank account number? What a faff, I’ll do it later. And later quickly becomes never. That’s why these sorts of adverts often end with a small and concrete call to action: ‘Send a one-off £5, text now to 1234’. All the choices have already been made for you. Donating money has become far simpler.

A low-threshold request

You can apply this principle in a presentation too. If you’re looking for collaborators, don’t say ‘Email me if you’re interested in working together’. Your audience then has to work out for themselves what that collaboration might look like, on what timescale, what to write in the email, and so on. Keep the barrier low: ‘If you’d like to contribute ideas or collaborate, I’m organising a half-hour video meeting next week for anyone interested. Scan this QR code, leave your email address, and I’ll send you an invitation.’ People only need to enter their email address — you take care of the rest. That makes your request so accessible that the chances of success are considerably higher. On the final slide, you display that QR code. Throughout the entire question round, people have time to decide whether they’re going to scan it.

In short, think about what you’d like your audience to remember or do after your talk. Make it as simple as possible and put it in one, or at most a few short sentences, on your slide. Who knows what this new approach might bring you at your very next presentation!