Make Your Presentation Memorable – The Structure

To be effective communication needs to have some repetition – so that the audience has more than one opportunity to hear your message. (Work on the basis of tell em what you’re going to tell em, tell em, and then tell em what you’ve told em).

The Introduction
In the introduction tell them why it’s in their interest to listen and act on the presentation (these are benefits – what’s in it for them). Be concise here and grab their attention – some significant statistic or fact to grab their attention is good. Equally something that challenges what they think they know should also get their attention!
Also in the introduction let them know how long your presentation will last for, so they can scope this in their mind. There is nothing worse than not knowing how long something is going to last for – at the very least it’s very distracting – and you telling them is also a sign of professionalism  in that you know. This in itself gives you some credibility straight away.
Don’t tell them your life and career history – quite frankly they don’t care about you – it’s what’s in it for them that they want to know. If you want to give them some info on yourself have the person who introduces you give 30-45 seconds absolute max. on your credentials / expertise / experience – but nothing else.

Main Body
At the start of each main section of the presentation tell them what you’re going to cover there – keep this to very short bullets, or visuals that represent them is even better. Then deal with each section in a factual manner – avoid giving them lots of detail (unless this is absolutely fundamental to the argument) as they will forget most of this anyway.

Summary / conclusion
When you get to the end tell them by saying something obvious like “in conclusion, or to summarize” then give them 1,2 or 3 – absolutely no more of the strongest arguments you’ve used during the body of the presentation and leave them with these. It is these that they will remember.
You can refer back to where you started, by saying that I said I was going to tell you x, y, z well that’s what I’ve done (it should be blindingly obvious).