How to Set Your Presentation Goals & Objectives [A Complete Guide]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- Aug 1, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 24
“How do I even know what my presentation is supposed to achieve?”
That’s what Andrea, one of our clients, asked us while we were helping her prepare for a major stakeholder update.
Our Creative Director answered without missing a beat:
“If you don’t set the goal first, the slides won’t take you anywhere meaningful.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on a lot of decks long before slide design begins. And in that early planning stage, we’ve seen one challenge show up repeatedly: most people jump straight into content without defining a clear goal.
They confuse information with intention. And that confusion leads to decks that feel scattered, confusing, or, worst of all, forgettable.
So, in this blog, we’ll talk about how to set the right presentation goal and supporting objectives before you open PowerPoint, so your message is built to land exactly where it needs to.
In case you didn't know, we're business presentation designers. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
What Are Presentation Goals and Objectives?
Let’s get definitions straight — because they’re not interchangeable.
Your presentation goal is the outcome you’re aiming for. It’s the big-picture result you want to achieve by the end of the presentation. Think of it as your presentation’s mission. One clear, specific change you want to create in your audience’s mind or behavior.
Here are a few examples:
Get approval for a proposed strategy
Secure buy-in for a new initiative
Align a cross-functional team on priorities
Educate decision-makers on key findings
Inspire action toward a company-wide goal
On the other hand, presentation objectives are the stepping stones that help you reach that goal. They break the big idea into smaller, measurable checkpoints — the specific things your audience needs to understand, believe, or remember for the goal to be accomplished.
Let’s say your goal is to get approval for a budget increase. Your objectives might be:
Explain the rationale behind the budget change
Show projected ROI with clear data
Address potential risks and how they’ll be mitigated
See the difference? The goal is the destination. The objectives are the map.
Without a goal, your presentation wanders. Without objectives, your content doesn’t land. You need both — clearly defined, aligned, and planned before a single slide is created.
How to Set Your Presentation Goal and Objectives
Let’s not overcomplicate this. Setting a presentation goal isn’t some abstract exercise. It’s one of the most practical, results-driven steps in your preparation. It takes 30 minutes of thinking upfront, and it can save you from weeks of revising slides that never had a clear job to begin with.
We’ll walk you through how to do it, step by step — the same way we do it with our clients. The process is structured, but not rigid. It gives you clarity while leaving room for creativity.
Let’s start.
Step 1: Identify the Decision or Action You Want
This is the heart of your presentation goal.
Ask yourself: “What do I want this audience to do, think, or feel differently by the time I finish presenting?”
Most people answer with something vague like “I want them to be informed” or “I just need to update them.” That’s not enough. If the audience walks away and does nothing, your presentation didn’t work — it just passed time.
So instead, pin down the actual decision or shift you want:
Do you want approval? Then that’s your goal.
Do you want alignment on priorities? That’s your goal.
Do you want funding, feedback, support, sign-off? All of those are goals.
The key is to be outcome-specific. Think like a strategist, not a storyteller.
Bad goal: “Share product updates with leadership.”Good goal: “Get leadership to greenlight the next phase of product development.”
When the goal is clear, everything else — from your opening slide to your final ask — can be built around making that outcome easier to say yes to.
Step 2: Consider the Audience’s Role and Stakes
Every presentation lives or dies based on one thing — audience relevance. So, before you finalize your goal, you need to ask:
Who exactly are you presenting to?
What matters to them right now?
How are they involved in the outcome you’re aiming for?
The same topic can lead to completely different goals depending on who’s in the room. If you’re presenting a new project timeline, your goal will shift depending on whether you’re speaking to executives (you need buy-in), managers (you need support), or internal teams (you need alignment and clarity).
Let’s look at an example.
You’re presenting a new process for internal collaboration.
If the audience is senior leadership, your goal might be:
“Secure leadership approval and sponsorship for the new process.”
If the audience is department heads, your goal might shift to:
“Drive cross-functional alignment and assign owners to each stage.”
Same content, different stakes — which means different presentation goals and different slides.
So before you even think about designing slides, tailor the goal to the room.
Step 3: Define the Supporting Objectives
Once the goal is set, break it down into smaller checkpoints. These are your objectives — the building blocks of your presentation.
Think of them as the minimum list of beliefs or facts your audience must walk away with in order to take the action you want.
Let’s say your goal is to get budget approval for a new marketing campaign. Your objectives might be:
Show the opportunity gap in current marketing efforts
Present a strategy that fills that gap
Demonstrate projected ROI with benchmarks
Address common concerns (timelines, risk, resources)
Clarify exactly what you need them to approve
These objectives become your narrative spine. They’re not just slide sections. They’re checkpoints in your audience’s decision-making process.
If any one of them is missing, the overall goal risks falling apart.
We’ve seen it too many times — a great pitch that fails simply because it skipped the part where objections were addressed or where the actual ask was clearly spelled out. Objectives help prevent that.
They create a logic path your audience can follow. And when your presentation aligns with how they think and decide, it’s more likely to lead to action.
Step 4: Use the “So What?” Test
Now comes a sanity check.
Go back to each of your objectives and ask, “So what?”
If you can’t answer that in a way that ties directly to your goal, the objective needs work. Sometimes you’ll find that what you thought was important is just filler. Other times, you’ll realize you’ve skipped something your audience must hear to be persuaded.
Here’s how that looks in action:
Objective: “Share performance metrics from Q2.” So what? "Well… so they know how we did. "So what? "So they can see why we need more support. "Ah. That’s the real objective: “Demonstrate why additional resources are needed based on Q2 performance gaps.”
This step sharpens your thinking. It strips away passive content. And it ensures every objective is directly feeding the larger goal.
Step 5: Commit to One Goal Only
This might sound restrictive, but it’s one of the most important rules we follow in every presentation we create: one presentation, one goal.
Not two. Not three. One.
You can have multiple objectives. You can cover a range of ideas. But at the end of the presentation, the audience should know exactly what the point was — and what you want them to do with it.
Multiple goals dilute the message. They pull the narrative in different directions. They make the audience guess what matters most. That guessing game creates confusion. And confused people don’t take action — they delay decisions or default to “no.”
So pick the goal that matters most. Then design everything around helping the audience get to that outcome.
Step 6: Write It Down. Literally.
Once you’ve defined your presentation goal and objectives, write them down. Not in your head. Not buried in an email. Actually write them where you can see them as you plan your deck.
This becomes your north star — the thing you come back to when you’re unsure if a slide should be included, or when the messaging starts to wander.
We create a one-page “Goal + Objective Snapshot” for every project. Here’s what it usually looks like:
Presentation Goal: Get buy-in from leadership to launch the regional pilot of Program X in Q4.
Objectives:
Show performance gaps the program will address
Present success metrics from smaller internal tests
Outline resource requirements and risk mitigation
Clarify timing and expected outcomes
Present a clear ask and next steps
When your team is aligned on this page, you move faster. You edit smarter. And you reduce the revision loop that kills momentum in most presentation projects.
Step 7: Stress-Test It Before You Build Slides
Before you move on to scripting or design, pressure-test your goal and objectives. Ask a colleague, a manager, or even someone from your intended audience segment:
“If this was the goal, what would you need to hear to say yes?”
“Is anything missing from this objective list?”
“Would this structure lead you to the outcome we want?”
This isn’t about getting approval. It’s about clarity. You want to know early if your assumptions are off — before you invest time building a deck around them.
Great presentations feel seamless because the thinking behind them was sharp from the start. That sharp thinking begins here.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.