The Best Free PEST Diagram PowerPoint Templates

Doing a PEST or PESTLE analysis is hard enough on its own. But presenting it is another matter altogether. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of good quality and free PEST diagram PowerPoint templates online. However, the good news is that in this article, you’re going to learn the top places where you can download these kinds of templates for free!

But before I share these details with you, let me show you first why PEST or PESTLE analysis is necessary for your business (if you already know this, feel free to scroll down the page).

The Importance of PEST or PESTLE Analysis

No company or business is an island. This means that everyone and everything is affected by external and internal factors. While we may have control over internal factors, it’s going to be near to impossible to influence external PEST factors.

PEST diagram
Image source: By HelpinghandVK [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

According to the Brighton School of Business and Management, PEST refers to the  Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors that can impact a business or company.

It’s important for businesses to pay attention to these factors so they can take advantage of various opportunities. By failing to conduct a thorough PEST or PESTLE analysis, a business runs the risk of falling victim to any number of threats which could compromise their company’s success.

I think it’s safe to say that most, if not all, businesses would eventually like to grow or scale their operations to a much bigger scale. However, dreaming and actually doing something about it are two different things.

Taking action is important, but as you can probably guess, not all action leads to the same thing. This is where smart businesses stand out from the pack – they actually take the time to study these political, economic, social and technological factors, and incorporate their findings in their business plans.

They assess if their businesses are going to be adversely affected in one way or another (threat) and if they can do something to take advantage of these external factors (opportunity).

How To Do A PEST Analysis

Conducting a PEST analysis isn’t exactly for the faint hearted. You can, of course, brainstorm and come up with some possible factors. However, for best results, it’s actually best to have some solid data on hand. After all, it’s your future that’s on the line. You want your decisions to be based on solid research and data.

In this section, I’m going to give you a rough guide that you can follow to help you do your own PEST analysis later on. For reference, you can check out this image below:

PEST analysis
Image source: By BronHiggs [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Let’s begin with the Political factors:

Look for any political factors or issues that may have an effect on your business. For instance, if an election is coming up, how is it going to affect you? What happens if the candidate leading the polls are opposed to your industry? Are they likely to introduce laws and regulations that can eat up your profits and lead to massive losses? Should your business support candidates who are more likely to support your type of business? These are but some possible political factors you may wish to look at. Take note of the factors which stand out and write them down.

Next, we’ll take a look at the Economic factors:

How’s the economy going? Are unemployment levels high? What about inflation or the exchange rate? Is it favorable for your business (this is especially useful if you have clients from different parts of the world)? What’s the economic status of your target market? Are their disposable incomes rising or not? Will they continue to be able to afford your service? Or do you need to adjust your prices?

As for Social factors, you can ask the following questions:

What’s the culture like in places where your business operates? Are majority of the people there educated? What’s the most commonly spoken language? Do you or your team know the local population well? Are you targeting a specific ‘class’ of people, that is, are you targeting blue-collar workers or the white-collar executive-type? If you intend to do some marketing later on, knowing these factors will help you come up with a marketing plan that will help address your target audience’s pain points.

Lastly, this is what you do regarding Technological factors:

You can look at new technology that may have a direct or indirect effect on your business. For instance, you can investigate the latest tech trends and determine which can possibly hurt your business. Brainstorm on possible technology which will help make your business run more efficiently. Are your competitors currently using any of these technologies? If yes, what do their customers say about it? Would it help improve your worker’s productivity if you allowed them to work remotely a couple days a week instead of going to the office? Do you need to roll out a mobile app to help improve your market share? Many businesses have failed because they didn’t keep up with the latest technology, so make sure you do your research carefully.

Depending on the nature of your business, you may also wish to do a PESTEL analysis instead of the ‘simpler’ PEST analysis. You simply need to analyze two more categories, namely, Legal and Environmental factors. Again, go through all possible factors which may have a positive or negative effect on your business.

The Second Part Of The Analysis

The next step is to go through every single factor you’ve written down. Then add a column for Opportunities and Threats. Write down what opportunities and threats are brought about by each factor. When you finish this task, the next thing you need to do is to carry out the last leg of your analysis.

For the opportunities you’ve identified, create an action plan to help your business take advantage of these opportunities. For the threats or risks to your business, identify the steps you need to take to mitigate or avoid these risks. If you’re headed towards a collision course with these threats, then figure out how you can minimize the damage to your business. Determine what you can do to bounce back from such an unfortunate situation.

Presenting Your PEST Analysis To An Audience

Now that you’ve done the hard work of identifying the different external factors that may affect your business, it’s time to present your findings to your audience.

The good news is you don’t need to present every single factor you’ve identified in your preliminary analysis to your audience – they’re not going to be interested in all those details! Rather, they’d only want to look at the results of your final analysis. They’d be more interested to hear about your findings and your conclusions.

With that said, prepare a list of the PEST factors which will directly or indirectly affect your business. If you’ve managed to identify a few hundred factors, present only the most relevant and the most impactful factors.

You don’t want to bore your audience to tears, so make sure your presentation is visually appealing. Here’s a guide you can follow to help you present your PEST analysis to your audience:

How to present PEST (PESTEL) analysis from Peter Zvirinsky

Now, when it comes to creating presentations, you don’t need to do your design from scratch. You can, of course, if you have the time and the talent to make your design come to life. Otherwise, if you’re like most presenters who simply don’t have the time to craft good presentation slides, then the PEST PPT templates in the next section will be of great help to you.

Free PEST Diagram PowerPoint Templates

Here are some of the best free PEST diagram PowerPoint templates you’ll find on the Internet:

  1. 24Slides.com’s PEST Diagram PowerPoint Template

This 10-slide template pack has a variety of different designs you can use to present your PEST analysis. You can choose to present your findings on a general overview slide, or you can dedicate one slide per category. You can also mix and match the different slides, and of course, you’re welcome to edit as you see fit!

So, here are the slides included in this template pack:

Slide #1:

PEST diagram template pack's cover slide
The Cover Slide of the PEST diagram template pack

Slide #2:

Overview slide of PEST Diagram PowerPoint template
PEST Diagram overview slide

The PEST Diagram overview slide – use this slide if you want to present your most important PEST factors to your audience. You don’t want to list too many factors though as doing so will make your slide look crowded. When it comes to slide design, white space is very important.

Slide #3:

PEST diagram template - political slide
Political Slide of PEST Diagram Template

In this slide, you can see that Political box is colored differently which means that this slide is for listing down your main Political factors. If you want to use this particular design for the other categories (Economic, Social, Technological), you can simply change the highlight over to the box you want to discuss. So, for this slide, it’s the Political slide that’s green, on the next slide it will be the Economy box that’s highlighted in green, and so on. You can use a different color if you wish, and just keep the slide design the same.

Slide #4:

PEST diagram template - economy slide
Economy slide of PEST Diagram Template

This is the Economy slide. This is where you list down the Economic factors which may affect your business. You can choose to clone the slide and use the same design for the other categories (Political, Social, Technology).

Slide #5:

PEST diagram template - social slide
The Social slide of the PEST Template Pack

This is the Social slide. You can use one box or two boxes, depending on the social factors you want to present to your audience. Feel free to use your imagination if you want to use the same slide design for the other categories (Political, Economical, Technological).

Slide #6:

PEST diagram template - overview slide
Colorful overview slide

You can use this slide as an overview of your PEST analysis. Or you can use this as a dedicated slide for each category. So, for instance, if you use this to present only your Technological factors, then you can identify up to 6 and add that to the boxes. What’s great about this slide is you can use icons for each factor and just add a short description below it. If you need free icons, check out the Icons section in our Template Hub.

Slide #7:

PEST diagram template with icons
PEST diagram template slide with icons

This visually attractive slide is best for conveying factors that are easily understood. Simply add a suitable, universally recognized icon and a short description to save some space. You’re free to discuss each factor in your speech.

Slide #8:

PESTEL general overview slide
General overview slide for PESTEL analysis

This slide looks similar to slide #2 (the PEST general overview slide). The difference is there are now 6 icons. If you’re looking for the perfect PESTEL analysis template to download for your PowerPoint presentation, then this is the slide you need to use.

Slide #9:

PEST Diagram maps slide
PEST diagram PPT template maps slide

If you need to show your PEST factors on a map, then this slide is going to come in handy. If you need more map templates, check out the Maps section of our Template Hub.

Slide #10:

PEST Diagram template thank you slide
PEST diagram template ‘thank you’ slide

The closing slide in our 10-slide PEST Diagram template pack. Feel free to use this slide to close out your presentation. If you need to add a call to action, simply edit the slide as you see fit.

2. HiSlide’s Free PEST/PESTEL/PESTLE Templates

HiSlide's Free PEST templates

There are 13 free templates on this page. Simply register a free account so you can download the slides you want to use. You can even mix their slides with some of our free templates. You just need to make sure the design remains coherent all throughout your presentation. Be consistent with the colors and fonts you use, so your audience don’t get confused. You’ll also avoid looking like a total amateur in front of your audience!

  1. Presentation Go’s PEST Diagram for PowerPoint
Presentation Go’s PEST Diagram for PowerPoint

The text placeholders and graphics on this free PEST analysis template are easy enough to edit. There are also 2 slide design options: Standard (4:3) and Widescreen (16:9). You can also choose to use a light or dark layout.

Final Words

Presenting a PEST analysis in front of a crowd isn’t easy. Neither is doing the analysis in the first place! But with the use of free PEST diagram PowerPoint templates, you can certainly make your life a whole lot easier.

If you want your PEST analysis presentation slides to stand out from the crowd,  I highly recommend you use our professional services instead. We’ll have our talented in-house designers redesign your slides to something that will absolutely blow your audience away!

You might also find this interesting: How To Make An Infographic In PowerPoint