A market plan usually has the following components below
1. Value Proposition
2. Market Size
3. Environmental Analysis
4. Differentiation matrix
5. Growth Path
6. Product Positioning
7. SWOT Analysis
8. Expansion Plan
9. Revenue Model
10. Phased Development

Marketing presentations are meant to impress. Here I am going to show you how to translate boring text describing the above into colorful eye catching graphics using new inbuilt features of PowerPoint 2007 has. They are called smart art and they are every easy to use. You can also find the smart art feature in Word 2007 which means you can use the skill you learn today over there too. To insert a smart art, Click on insert, then smart art (It looks like a green arrow)

1. Value Proposition- The Benefits of your product

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Cycle->Radial Cycle

The Product at the center and the benefits of your product are the surrounding circles. The audience gets an instant feel of what benefits your product brings. You can also replace the words with pictures if you have professional created art. Do note that transparent gifs are better if you intend to insert pictures. Pictures with white background ruins the smart art color.

2. Market Size & Segment

Where to find this: This is NOT a smart art. Instead it is a 3D pie chart. Click on Insert->Chart->Pie Chart.

You can choose either the 2^nd or 5^th pie chart for this effect. Clicking on chart will open MS Excel. You have to edit the data of the chart from Excel. Also remember to change the headings so that word also gets your new headings.

Pie charts are simple to understand and usually used to show market segments in part of a larger market.

3. Environmental Analysis- The Trends

Environmental Analysis shows the background of why the time and place is right for your product.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Hierarchy->Table Hierarchy

The tops shows the heading “Environment”. The second level shows the areas that make up the environment. The third layer shows what trends are happening in that environment. If you like animations during your presentation, you can use the show 1 level at 1 time option. This slowly shows 1 box at a time giving your audience time to read and digest your information.

4. Differentiation matrix

Differentiation matrix is used to set your product away from competing products based on feature set.

Where to find this Table(After clicking on Insert, click Table)

This is just a simple Table. But PPT 2007 has made it easy to make the rows and columns banded. To do this,

a. your table

b. Click on Design under Table tools

There will be a list of checkboxes (Header Row, First Column Etc). Check those that apply to your current table. Meaning if your first row is different from the rest(i.e. it is a row where Titles are in) check that box. Every time you check a box, PPT will make that row/column look different.

Also change the color of the column that your product is in. This will visually enhance and set apart your product from that of your competitors. I like to increase the font of my column too.

5. Growth Path

There are 2 components in this slide.

The first is the heading “12.7% market share…”

a. To do this, click on Insert, WordArt.

b. Choose a nice looking font you like

c. Type the words you want.

The second is the Growth Curve

a. Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Upward Arrow

b. For each phase, type in the text title.

The upward arrow should inspire confidence in the growth of your market while the eye catching word art will highlight the size of your market.

6. Product Positioning

Product Positioning usually is used to show that your product is occupying a position that is superior to your competitors.

Where to find this Smart Art (After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Matrix->Grid Matrix

Enter the Text you want. Usually your product should be on the top right hand corner. Right-Click on the rectangle that is there and select “Change Shape”. Choose a star as it is eye catching and delivers an impression.

7. SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis should show the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats of your organization.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Matrix->Basic Matrix

Enter the text you want. This Slide should be pretty texty as it is basically a descriptive slide. I haven’t really thought of a way to make it easy to understand without reading.

You might want to manually change the colour layout(i.e: Threats = Red, Strength= Green)

8. Expansion Plan

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Gear

Basically, you can enter text or you can paste a picture of the country flag you are entering into.

I chose gears as it is symbolic of a movement to greater things and having more effects. The upward arrow chosen in Growth Path will do too, but I will try to avoid using the same Smart Art in one Document.

9. Revenue Model-Revenue Model shows how money is coming into and going out of our organization.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Relationship->Converging Radial

Simple, Just add in text. You can adjust the size of the arrow to match the proportion of the money flow. I had some trouble with this smart art though. The arrows do not behave well. You need to flip the arrow around manually as it is meant to all point in ward.

10. Phased Development

Where to find this Smart Art (After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Chervon List

This slide shows what steps you are taking in each phase. In my case, it is the promotion methods we are using in each phase. It is like a very pretty Gantt chart.

This one is pretty complicated, but here goes.

a. Once you have inserted the Smart Art, enter a space in all Level 2 Text

b.Level 1 Text corresponds to the first column text.

c.Level 1’s 2^nd level text is the top row text.

d. Fill in the top row (Phase1, Phase2, etc) and the first column(magazine, TV etc) with the appropriate titles.

e. Create as many rows as you want. For every row that you create, also create an equal number of columns.

f. Now click on the column you would like to be on. Click on Smart Art Tools->Format. (Smart Art Tools is at Top Row of PPT)

g. Change the look of the chevron by choosing a colored template.

h. You can select multiple chevrons by holding down shift and clicking on all the chevrons you want. After selecting all the chevrons you want, you can then choose a color and all of the selected chevrons will share the same new color.

Ending note

After you finish your PowerPoint slide, choose a theme that you like. Use Themes to make everything consistent. Most of the smart art will change color. If you do not like these colors, you can click on the color tab under design. The colors are color coded for you so you do not end up with conflicting colors that are horrible to look at.

You will also notice that your smart art do not look as nice as they are not 3D and have no gloss over them. It is actually every simple to enhance them. Select your Smart art (your diagram), click on Design(it should be on the right hand side of the highest bar of PowerPoint). Now you should see an array of 3D perspectives and gloss you can choose from. Click on one and your diagram will instantly get a facelift.

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Copyright : TodaysTen.com

1. Copernic Desktop Search

This is really one software that I use once or twice a day. The basic premise of this software is to let your computer organize your documents for you. It works like Google desktop except that no browser is required. The interface is spizzy and searches are quite fast. The most common use is when I need to find a certain document or name. Just typing in the term will allow me to find the documents. An example will be when I receive a call from a client regarding his invoice. I just have to type in his name and the matching documents will show up. This software really saves almost everyone precious time.

Mass Appeal: 4.5/5

2. Office 2007

Well well, if you are still using older versions of MS office, this newest edition is really going to be a sure upgrade. The basic functionality of MS office is all still there except that now, you can ACTUALLY find and use them. There is a funny story at Microsoft when they were developing this edition of Office. They did customer surveys and focus groups to see what new features they wanted in the next edition. 90% of the features that customers then requested were actually already in Office 2003. Of course Microsoft realized that their software was powerful enough. Now they just had to give us a way to get into the features.

And Office 2007 does that really well. The User Interface has been revamped. It’s kind of hard to explain it. There is a trial version online. Do give it a spin when you have time.

One more thing I really really really like is the ability to easily make your documents/PowerPoint look much more professional. The text effects/PowerPoint themes have been spruced up. A few clicks and the boring layout, color scheme is replaced with something more professional looking. Get office 2007 early and impress your colleagues with a wonderful looking PowerPoint.

Mass Appeal: 4.5/5

3. Antivirus

Oh my god! If you do not have anti virus, please get one now! Personally I try not to use antivirus software from large branded companies. Now this is really quite against intuition. But just think about it. Being a large antivirus vendor means that you have a lot of customers. Which means that if you are a hacker/cracker/adware, you will be more likely to test your malicious program against the largest antivirus software so that you will be able to reach as many innocent unsuspecting users as possible. This is the reason why large antivirus software frequently fails in virus detection test. Its not that they are incompetent, it is because the hackers are making sure their software can get around them.

I have Avira Antivir on my desktop (http://www.free-av.com/). It’s free and its virus detection skills are above par. My friend recommended this software to me when he was trying to clean away a virus that spread via USB memory sticks. He was the first person to introduce the virus into our computer lab and soon, everyone in my engineering module had the virus not only in their lab computers (which had a big name antivirus on it) but also on their laptops. Well at least AntiVir managed to get rid of the virus. Phew!

Mass Appeal: 3.5/5

4. Timesnapper

I found this software through www.lifehack.org (a Personal Development Site). This software runs in the background, automatically taking screenshots and saving them. It’s a great recovery software if you are writing a word document and your computer reboots. You can just open up timesnapper and see what you had been writing when disaster struck. It is also useful for reviewing the day before you go to sleep. You can run through the screenshots like a movie and basically see what you did all day.

Mass Appeal: 3.5/5

5. CutePDF

I get really irritated when I see PDFs with watermarks on them. I was reading quite a few executive summaries for a business plan competition. Horrifying, some of the summaries had watermarks on them (e.g. Created by PDF factory. www.pdffactory.com). This is a national business plan competition and you can actually submitting a plan that has a watermark on it? Do not allow the same mistake to happen on you.

CutePDF acts like a printer. You can convert any documents to a PDF as long as it has the print function. It’s free and there is no watermark. What more can you ask for?

Mass Appeal: 4/5

6. Opera

Nope, this is not some multimedia software. It is probably the 3rd largest internet browser in the world. (And probably the largest mobile phone browser). I know a lot of people using Internet Explorer (at least upgrade yours to IE7 ya?) and Firefox. But I prefer opera as it’s really fast. And there is a zoom function which resizes the page that you are viewing. Sometimes I just want to lean back and read a long article leisurely. Other times, I want to watch YouTube videos when I am on my bed. The zoom function tries to fill up the screen as much as possible.

Mass Appeal: 5/5

7. http://www2.blogger.com/www.mediafire.com

The only internet software in this list. This is a site like many others where you can upload a file that is too large to send via email. Really useful for those large PowerPoint that everyone in my group has to vet before we go for presentation.

Mass Appeal: 4/5

8. RealVNC

This is software that allows you to remote control to another computer. The software has to be installed on both computers and there is a password authentication when you connect. It is really useful when you want to control the computer in the other room or when you are at work and need a file from your home computer. Bundle this with hamachi and you will have your personal file server.

Mass Appeal: 3/5

9. FoxIt reader

Simply put, this reader opens PDF file in 1/10 the time required by Abode’s Reader. How many PDFs do you open a day? Think of the time you can be saving by not watching the adobe reader splash screen.

Mass Appeal: 4/5

10. Super

This is a super video encoder/decoder. Mainly I use it to encode videos so that I can watch them on my PDA. To my knowledge, there isn’t any other encoder/decoder that supports such a large variety of codecs and is free.

Mass Appeal: 3/5