Online Pitch: How to pitch your idea

Delivering a live pitch online is not the most common of all business practices. We’ll grant that. However, it’s getting more and more common for people to sort their lives online, which lately includes diverse reasons why someone might forcefully need to give or send a presentation via the web versus pitching live on stage or at a potential business partner’s office. 

If giving live pitch online is unfamiliar to you, stick around! We’ll share events and diverse tips on where and how to pitch online. 

Online pitch competitions - for businesses

These are real. Valithea, for example, an online financial & valuation consulting firm, hosts an event called Online Pitching Competition. In it, participants can try out their pitches and get peer feedback. If you’re looking for activities to do some pitch training, their event might be of use to you! 

The winner also gets a prize! The win is a fundraising website to help with what is a mandatory fundraising stage for your company. You need to be in that sort of scene before you can even apply to be a part of this 6 EUR entry event.  

The time allotted? 5 minutes. 

Are you up for the challenge? Let’s see what other options you have, first. 

1- Can U.Pitch in 1.5 min? - for college students

Are you thinking like a college student or recent grad that these online pitch competitions might be a bit out of reach at an early business stage? 

Well, there’s a prestigious national elevator pitch competition aimed at U.S. based college student or recent graduate businesses precisely. And it allows founders to showcase their most recent business ideas to seasoned entrepreneurs and potential investors. 

What do you get here? First, you better have practiced your elevator pitch, as you only get 90 seconds worth of time as your shot. After that, if you’re the winner, you’ll walk home with $10K in your pocket. 

Now, granted maybe winning at an open 90-second race (let’s call it that as it will most definitely feel that way) requires some mean skills, you should also value how these events expose you to a network in an entrepreneurship-driven ecosystem. 

The event promises feedback from its judges. What that means is that you’ll get a valuable share of insight not only from potential investors but high-ranked entrepreneurs and leaders in the business world.

Open to almost every industry and business idea, check Future Founders’ U.Pitch website if you’d like to learn more. In advance, know you’ll need to upload a video with your 90-second pitch to YouTube or Vimeo. So get on it!

To help, we’ll now be moving on to our tips on where and how to pitch online.

2- Cold-emailing demands mastery

You may need to rely on emailing your pitch deck for plenty of reasons. And we imagine cold emailing might be a part of your needs (or at least considerations) list. It’s very commonly the case. 

If the above applies to you, make sure you produce a highly effective business email. When you send cold emails to potential investors, you’ll be a drop in a large bucket. Sorry to break it as such, yet it’s very likely to be the case. Investors get sent dozens of emails daily, and many ignore, delete, or never even read many of them. Hence, you need to stand out with an engaging email as part of your cold-emailing attempts. 

The best piece of advice on how to get through to an investor this way is thorough research. That factor is needed to accurately determine how you’ll get them to be interested in what you have to say. 

Hoping you recognize the need for personalized emailing, please take some time to polish your intro emails for a bit of a more hopeful return on your efforts. 

And, while not entirely ineffective, also be ready for a low percentage of responses to stem from your email forwards. 

3- Why stunning visuals are fundamental

Exceptional visuals are always paramount to a winning pitch deck. Yet, if you cannot be present to introduce your audience to it and you need to pitch online, excelling on the visual side becomes especially important. 

Consider what 3M Corporation has stated about people being able to “process visuals 60,000 times faster than text.” When you pitch online, your visuals will moreover be doing most of the talking for your company. Therefore, make sure you send presentations with top-notch design.  

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4- Use the best technology possible

And best doesn’t mean complicated. On the contrary, make sure you rely on formats and presentation tools that provide easy access to the audiences of your interest. If you send a pitch in a complicated platform that requires sign-in, your potential investor will most likely not go through the effort of reading what you posted. 

If, on the contrary, you use a format to pitch online that is very commonly agreeable with most users’ technology, you reach an increased likelihood of receivers opening your file. This truth is why we offer PDF downloads as much as link-sharing. And also why we offer the tracking feature for Slidebean users to be able to see which slides made it to an investor’s view and which are still unread. 

All of this information is vital. And also why you should make sure you resort to an online pitch software that lets you track your audience’s response this way. 

Also, the latest technology (such as our AI-powered tool) gives your presentation a nudge.  

5- Make the best of screen-sharing

If allowed or asked to pitch online per se, then the above is even more critical as you need the most dependable equipment to make the best impression. 

We don’t mean heading out to buy the most expensive video camera in the store or the latest microphone. What we point to here is being exceptionally on point concerning the resources you choose for this unique opportunity to pitch online. 

Integrate video to your presentation and use your screen-sharing option to control your online business pitch slides. Make it the easiest you can on the person at the other end to be able to hop on board with you and follow what you present. 

6- Kiss it goodbye

Remember to keep your presentation short and simple. KISS it! Which stands for keeping it short and simple. If inserting or going on video will demand more than the recommended simplicity, drop it. If using the latest tech will cause your user not to be able to connect, go for a more uncomplicated resource. Do whatever it takes to make sure your interested party can build much-needed rapport with you. 

We hope these tips on where and how to pitch online are of help. Let us know if you have any questions or if you need help with your pitch deck design!

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