A successful marketing Webinar series can educate your prospects on your company’s uniqueness, create a competitive advantage, dramatically increase lead flow, and drive sales. Sadly, most Webinar producers who try to create a series for the first time make common mistakes, and the series fails to reach its objectives. Their company misses an opportunity for advantage in the marketplace, and the Webinar producers look bad in front of their peers and managers.

Whether you want to produce a marketing or training Webinar series, there are certain strategies and tactics that work time and again, regardless of your target audience or size of your organization and budget.

This series, Create and Run a Winning Webinar Series, will help you get things right virtually every time and make sure your Webinar series is a continued success.

Key questions answered include:

• What are best practices for creating and maintaining a successful series of Webinars, and what are the common mistakes to avoid?
• How can you get more interest and increase attendance to your Webinar events by using social media marketing?
• How can you tap into the strategic power of a series to accomplish more?
• What is the easiest way to build better, more engaging content so attendees come back again and again?
• What’s working for leading organizations that are doing Webinar series? (Learn from specific examples, tactics, and strategies.)

A note to the reader before we get started: we focus primarily on live Webinars, one-to-many seminars delivered online for marketing and sales purposes.

We recommend recording those Webinars and promoting the on-demand version as well. Recordings can boost the total number of Webinar viewers by 40% or more.

PART 1: Stepping Up Your Game with a Winning Webinar Series

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile-driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time.”
- Sir Winston Churchill

There has been a marketing revolution over the past 1 0 to 15 years. In our world of 24/7 media and Web 2.0, the old marketing strategies don’t work, and those that are early adopters or fast-followers of a strategy like a Webinar series will gain more sales leads, clients, and, potentially, even a competitive advantage.

Consider these recent successes with a variety of Webinar series.

A Technology Products Firm Becomes the Leader in Its Niche and Grows
Sales 70% per Year over Consecutive Years

A small products company wanted to cost-effectively position itself in a defined marketplace and generate new contacts in its marketing database with opt-in email addresses. So it collaborated with complementary vendors and media firms and created a monthly Webinar series.

The company was able to achieve its objectives with its series, including creating a list of 40,000 email names and also followed up with more product-focused Webinars, which fueled the compound growth of the company for years.

A Small Services Firm Becomes the Market Leader with Quarterly Thought-
Leadership Webinars

A small services firm desired to get beyond its lead service and demonstrate its expertise by featuring its full range of services in the marketplace. It created a quarterly Webinar series targeting decision makers with content on diverse topics that matched its new areas of competence.

The result: it added new clients for all its services. It also broadened the positioning of the company to diversify its portfolio of offerings in the market.

A Mid-Size Global Products and Services Company Repositions Its Firm from a stagnant Market to a Growth Sector with the Help of a Multi-Faceted Webinar Series

A geographically dispersed communications management firm with clients in Europe and North America had gone to market with the same message for 10 years. Additionally, its core target market stopped growing and even started to shrink, so the company knew it needed to reach new markets.

It decided to reposition the company around a rising global trend in communications and developed a benchmarking study of market use, issues, and management. To relaunch its products and drive thought-leadership around this new position, the company launched an aggressive Webinars series with as many as three Webinars a day. Fueled in part by the series, the company now has new momentum and-greater sales – in short, a whole new life. As these three success stories suggest, a Webinar series, if done well, can literally be a game-changing strategy for your organization.

Consider that others have used Webinar series to:

• Launch a product, service, or company,
• Move a product, service, or company into a new market,
• Reposition a company in the marketplace,
• Generate more sales leads, sales opportunities, and sales,
• Transform the way a company communicates with its clients,
• Turn training into a profit center or company asset,
And many more.

While a single Webinar can offer significant benefits to your company, creating and managing a Webinar series can help you gain significant advantage in the marketplace and boost your company’s profits.

© 2010 Quantum Leap Marketing, Inc

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omNovia keeps quietly slipping features into their web conferencing software without making much noise about it. They don’t announce version numbers and new releases. Every so often I’ll log into my conferencing room and notice a new option. Then I go out to their Product Enhancements page to see what the heck is going on.

Today I noticed that after uploading a slide deck to the conference room I now have the option to show or hide a thumbnail display of the slides in my presentation. The display is local to my computer as a presenter. Other presenters can choose to show or hide it for themselves. The audience never sees it. I can click on a slide to immediately move to that point in the presentation (I still have the option to move forward or backward sequentially as well).

This is not a big new innovative feature for the industry. It’s more like something I simply expect a major webinar tool to have available. But I do like the fact that the option to show the thumbnail images is local for each presenter. I’m delighted that omNovia has moved beyond the rather primitive method of direct-accessing a slide by typing in its number. As a presenter, there are times when being able to see what slide comes next is a huge benefit. It keeps you from being surprised by your own presentation!

I also finally took the time to play with a feature that they added at the end of July. Presentation Manager is a tool that lets a presenter or moderator pre-load a sequence of content items to show during the webinar. Consider a complex webinar that includes the following steps:

1. Show slide deck #1 with introductory slides
2. Show slide deck #2 for first presenter
3. Conduct audience poll #1
4. Show movie clip #1
5. Show slide deck #2 for second presenter
6. Show movie clip #2
7. Conduct audience poll #2
8. Show slide deck #3 for summary and wrap-up

This requires someone on the presentation team to be very familiar with all the loaded content. Each time you want to bring up the proper slide deck, movie clip or poll, you have to open a presentation dialog popup window and select the appropriate content piece from a list of all loaded items. Not rocket science, but it can add a few seconds of distraction from the content and delivery. And if you accidentally select the wrong content item, you look disorganized.

With Presentation Manager, you do all the selection ahead of time and save the sequence under a name of your choice. During the live event, you bring up the sequence list and click each item’s play button at the desired time. The selected content immediately displays for the audience, without requiring you to go through the search and select process.

Although the Presentation Manager actions are presented in a sequential list format, you still have the ability to arbitrarily select them out of sequence if desired.

The one thing that seems to be missing is automatic tab switching. omNovia uses a tabbed display to show different kinds of content. The presenter chooses whether the audience should see the Application Sharing tab or the Slide Show tab or the Movie Player tab or the Live Video tab, and so on. If you are sitting on the Slide Show tab and click the Presentation Manager action item to show a movie clip, it faithfully loads the movie in the conference room and starts playing it. But nobody would see that video unless the presenter manually changed the view to the Movie Player tab. I can’t imagine a situation where you would want to start showing a new piece of content but not actually show it! Adding an automatic tab switch when appropriate seems like a good enhancement here.

Admittedly, in many simple webinars Presentation Manager would be overkill. If you just narrate over one PowerPoint deck, there is no need for the functionality, in which case you simply ignore it. But I can definitely see this coming in handy for more complex productions.

Reposted from Ken Molay’s article on The Webinar Blog

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Remember those “old days” of online marketing, when your strategic marketing goals determined your content strategy? Times have changed, and the social world we live in has flipped that model upside down. Instead of relying on corporate “push” messages, the most successful marketers of 2010 are giving prospects the ability to “pull” fresh, human, relevant content via search engines and social networks. This whitepaper will help you:

• Understand the shift behind the new age of content creation and distribution
• Rethink content in a way that aligns with what your prospects want
• Provide tactical advice on how to generate an abundance of content

Download @ http://www.box.net/shared/69cr1khadb .

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Join us this September 23rd and learn how to drive maximum post-webinar value from your registrants…both those who attended and those who did not.

One of the most common complaints from those producing and delivering marketing webinars is the lack of planning for development and nurturing of registrants into richer opportunities. Reasons for this issue include “skinny” sales & marketing organizations who don’t have the “bodies” to follow-up, lack of a CRM or lead-nurturing system and cultural obstacles for lead sharing within the sponsoring organization.

In this webinar, you’ll learn best practices for not only planning for, but executing upon, a solid plan for developing interested registrants into more valuable opportunities, via post-event nurturing tactics from voice prospecting to email marketing and more.

Post-Webinar Opportunity Creation is part of our webinar Thought Leadership Series. You may view the inaugural event, The Business Value of Informational Webinars, by going to: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/852641187

Additional webinars in our Thought Leadership Series include: Living Case Stories, Leveraging Analytics & Metrics, The Nuts and Bolts of Impactful Webinar production, and more. Stay tuned for additional details!

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So, we’ve identified the group we’re going to recruit our audience from, and we’ve developed some highly-impactful messaging.  We’ve developed or acquired a list.  We’ve conceived our invitation strategy.  Now it’s time to deliver the messaging to market.

Clearly, there are many ways to deliver invitations to your group.  However, the most cost-effective by far is the one which best leverages the Web itself…email or, as I call it, e-broadcasting.  And this really is the context I’ve been talking in all along.

Again, in using email 1) start inviting 2.5 weeks prior to the webinar, 2) send 3 invitations and 1 list-wide reminder, 3) send the invitations in a rhythm of 3 business days, instead of once a week AND 4) interpolate plain-text and HTML content for optimum outcome.

ALSO using email, first and foremost, means being CAN-Spam compliant.  Many of us are acquainted with the requirements of CAN-Spam.  But did you know that, irrespective of quote unquote best practices, the CAN-Spam Act does not require you to have permission to communicate with your prospect?  It does require you to use a legitimate “from/to” email address, to include a physical address, to use genuine language that is not misleading and that, above all, you provide an easy means to unsubscribe.  It does not require you to have permission to communicate with your prospect.  It does require that you honor an unsubscribe request within 10 days of the request being made.

Many of our clients are professing lessening outcomes from fatigued permission-based lists.  Meanwhile, many well-known large enterprises have invested in broad licenses of tools like Zoom Information and Jigsaw.  Why?  Because you can reach a much larger audience…one with fresh perspectives and interests.  This is a very important topic to consider when conceiving your integrated marketing strategy for 2010 and beyond.

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In a post at Email Marketing Reports, Mark Brownlow presents a screenshot that looks like a page from a 19th-century novel: lengthy paragraphs filled with sentences of uniform length.

That, he notes emphatically, is not how your email messages should look.
“In fact, you wouldn’t read the words if that was an email,” he says. “The wall of text is a barrier that few will bother scaling. No matter how good the writing, how valuable the information, how trusted the source, response is sacrificed because the paragraph length demands more reading effort than some are prepared to commit.”

It’s all psychological. The same information that looks ponderous in two paragraphs appears easy-to-digest when broken into five paragraphs. In other words, the rules you learned at school about fully developed paragraphs simply don’t apply to online communication.

Here’s what you need to do:

Write paragraphs that occupy as little as one line but don’t exceed six lines. “This … issue becomes more pressing as screen displays narrow, thanks to the spread of smartphones, netbooks and other mobile devices,” Brownlow notes.

Reduce the sense of monotony by varying the length of your paragraphs and sentences. “Throw in the occasional one-line paragraph or a three-word sentence and you may annoy your English professor,” he explains. “But you give the reading landscape contours and diversity. The content looks like a melody of words, not a dirge.”

The Po!nt: Write the words and the music. Engage your readers with lyrically arranged text that gives your message visual appeal.

Repurposed from MarketingProfs posting earlier today, with proper attribution to Mark Brownlow of this organization.

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When you step onto that stage, or into that boardroom, or in front of those students, or behind the mic for a webinar,  or the many other circumstances that precede a presentation, you’re never presenting alone.  Now, that may be true simply because you’re part of a group of people presenting, but even if you’re solo, you’re never really alone.  That’s because you’re just one part of the presentation equation.  The audience is the other HUGE part of that equation.

It’s no secret that having an audience on your side will make a presentation seem easier, less stressful, and even fun!  But with so much effort put into learning the content, designing the presentation, and practicing the delivery, the audience is often overlooked.  The presenter is seemingly “head down” as they start their presentation, focusing only on the one-way communication coming from them.  However, great presentations are conversations, and the audience is 50% of that.

What’s important to note is that the “conversation” doesn’t have to be verbal.  While presenting, especially virtually, the interaction with the audience is done through other means, even if it’s a supporting nod, a raised hand, a submitted question, or an interested stare.

The audience is so important, and making sure your audience is on your side is key to ensuring a smooth and interactive presentation.  While the key to my heart is through my stomach (feed me!), offering coffee and donuts isn’t enough to ensure that your audience will remain engaged and interested throughout.  So here are three sure fire ways to win over your audience.

1. Greet your audience as they arrive
   This is one of those “sneaky yet effective” tips because I really don’t see a lot of presenters doing this.  Obviously it lends better to live, in-person presentations, but even on a webinar you can make some announcements and interact with the audience (to an extent) prior to the webinar.  In order to do this effectively, you have to arrive early enough to set up ALL of your presentation needs so you can give ample time to meet and greet your audience as they arrive (instead of using that time to test your remote or run through your slides one more time).  Greeting your audience before you present, as opposed to simply “appearing from behind the curtain.” will familiarize your audience with you (and you with them) and even allow you to find allies and dissenters you can call on later to encourage discussion.  Try to remember names for more wow-factor.
2. Offer a high-quality takeaway after the presentation
   Without exception, after every presentation at least one audience member asks for a copy of the slides.  A great way to exceed their expectations is to offer them something better than the slides.  With my standard presentation about effective presenting, I give away printed copies of my ebook.  It’s a far better recall device than trying to gaze at my slides which use far more images than works. You don’t have to write an ebook, but give them more than just black and white printouts of your slides.  This can be as simple as a well-written word document.  At Seth Godin’s Linchpin presentation, nearly every ticket-holder received a free book as well as a free poster (seen below, hanging on my office wall).  He even autographed the books as well as long as you were willing to wait in line.




3. Be on time, every time

There’s nothing that can turn a good crowd bad than to disrespect their time.  If your presentation is only supposed to last an hour, you better believe they are leaving satisfied with the content and their questions answered in under an hour.  Your audience is sacrificing something (time, money, productivity, etc) to listen to you speak, so you owe them at least enough respect to get them out the door when you promised to.  That doesn’t give you the right to speed through your last few slides either, which happens way too often for my liking.  They deserve all the content as well.

As posted today on Presentation Advisors

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Here’s mine. A few weeks ago, we along with our client, had eagerly awaited to start the webinar and “go live”. About 3 minutes before I was to press the start record button, I was curious why only 13 people were in the waiting room, as there should have been closer to 150 at that time?

I refreshed my browser and got a “sorry, we’re experiencing a system outage”….in doing over 100’s of webianrs, this was a first…so I took a deep breath and told my client and panelists that these 13 people could be the most important attendees, and the show must go on!

It did, and as the outage was restored, we picked up a lot more attendees. The client was very cool about this, and we decided to do an encore yesterday, and that went off without a hitch.

What’s your story?

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Sadly, the value of most conference panels is questionable, due mostly to the lack of effective moderation.

Just recently I heard that one nervous moderator asked the panelists to introduce themselves, then went directly to Q&A, providing little structured value to the audience.

On the complete opposite end, I’ve seen a self-important moderator answer questions from the crowd when it was his job to field questions to the panelists.

Below, I provide some thoughts on how to successfully moderate a conference panel.

Objectives and Approach

Think of the audience as your customers

Treat the audience like your customers; they’ve paid with money and time to come to your panel. Your job is to give them the information they need, or to entertain them, and often both.

You’ve one of the most difficult jobs, as you’ll have to set the pace, maintain some control, but know when to back off. Remember that you’re here to serve the audience first and panelists second.

Select the right panel members

Often, a moderator is asked to select the panel; that isn’t always the case, but you are likely going to be involved. Find folks who don’t always agree, and look for experts in the field.

I find that 3-4 panelists just right. Any fewer, and it becomes difficult to flesh out all the points of view; any more, and it quickly becomes unwieldy. Once, I was 1 of 5 panelists, and I think I spoke a total of 5 minutes—a real waste of time.

Find out what success looks like

Look at the context of the conference: What is it about? who is attending? what are the other panels? Ask the conference organizers what success would look like, what questions does the audience want answered, and what their level of sophistication is.

Preparation

Get to know the panelists

This is often difficult, as many panels never meet in advance; but in our social world, many folks are online and can be found. Do Google searches on their name and the topic at hand, and you may be surprised what you find.

Research the topic

The most entertaining panels have a dash of debate, look at an issue from many angles, offer practical steps to get started, and tell a few jokes. Find where the points of contention are and be sure to bring them up. That’s how you’ll bill the panel.

Properly market the panel

Successful panels will often have a title that is catchy and in tune with the conference; beforehand, they often provide a detailed summary of what the audience will get out of it. You should alos blog about the upcoming panel—and the panelists should, too.

Develop agenda bullet points

I try to establish 3-5 general, high-level bullet points to help the panelists prepare and research. Don’t get into overly detailed questions, because you don’t want panelists to be overly rehearsed. I always have some questions in store if no one asks questions, and it’s good to throw some curve balls to panelists after they warm up.

Have prepared notes

Print out the research you did of panelists’ bios, the points of contention, the high-level agenda, and the follow-up questions you may want to ask. I’m also known for requiring the panelists to bring a case study or example with measurable results.

Before you use PowerPoint, really think it through

In most cases, panels should focus on the discussion and interaction between the panelists. Presentations should be used only in the following situations: They add value by visualizing a concept, you’ve some industry stats that preface the event, there’s a funny video that gets the crowd warmed up.

Have a mental checklist: Is this going to add value? Does this give each panelist an equal response opportunity? Is this truly necessary?

Have a pre-briefing meeting

It’s really hard to get panelists to all get on the phone together; I can only think of a few times when this has worked. Instead, have a quick meeting in person before the panel actually happens; it will only take 15 minutes. This is good bonding time.

Be sure to remind them of the general structure, but make sure they’re relaxed and will have fun. Listen carefully to the conversation, as you’ll pick up interest points that will help you set up questions while on stage.

Housekeeping

Prepare all your notes, laptops; make sure everyone has water before you get on stage; in some cases, plan out where folks will sit. Remind the panelists, yourself, and the audience to turn off cell phones. Smile a lot, and have fun… OK, now we get on stage.

On Stage

Be a leader (the impact of body language)

I’ve studied this a few times: When I moderate, my body language is echoed by the panelists. If I sit up straight, or fidget, the panelist will follow suit.

The same happens when you speak. Look at the panelist when you ask a question, then look at the audience. If you look at the panelists after you’ve asked a question, they will instinctively look back at you when responding.

Unless responding to another panelist, the panelist should be addressing the audience, so keep your attention on the audience.

Set the stage by providing context

As the first speaker, the moderator should set the stage by quickly giving an overview of why this panel was accepted and what you’re going to cover. I tend to avoid banter about “this panel is going to be great” or lengthy introductions about panelists. That usual pretty-talk is often low-value.

The first question should be a warm up

You should warm up the crowd, and the panelists, by asking a broad, easy question. Ask for a definition, or talk about the history of the topic, or why this topic is so interesting to the panelists.

Ask about benefits and opportunities

Some moderators let the conversation dive into the weeds too fast, focusing on ratty details, nuts and bolts before prefacing why these things are important. Guide the panelists to discuss the benefits first.

Ask about risks, challenge the panel

The audience is tired of industry zealots. We all know the panelists are passionate experts in their field, but you need to ensure a balanced viewpoint is presented.

Give an example of how something has not worked, and then ask the panelists to explore the risks. Give them the opportunity to talk about overcoming pitfalls, because your audience won’t want to make the same mistakes.

When to Assert Control

Never let panelists pitch

This one really irritates the audience; they’ve spent time and money investing in a panel, they don’t want to hear vendor pitches. Typically, when one vendor talks about how great his company is, the next panelists will need to one-up, and it never ends.

The moderator needs to pre-warn panelists that he or she won’t tolerate this vile deed, and will cut them off in public—and that’s embarrassing for everyone. BTW: If you’re in the audience and you see this happen, you have a right as a customer to demand them to stop.

…but let them cite a case study

I prefer that panelists demonstrate their expertise by showing that they’re experts in the field, or providing a case study of how their customers have been successful. There is a very thin line between this and a vendor pitch, so it’s best to remember that a panel is more like a whitepaper than a brochure.

Keep on track

Panels will often get off track and onto new discussions, While that’s certainly normal, your job is to gently bring it back into the original context. You might have to reframe a question or ask for further explanation on the topic.

Interaction Gives Life to a Panel

Listen in

Watch body language: Among the panelists, the one who wants to get a word in will be giving you non-verbal indicators; and the audience will give off vibes of paying attention, or expressing boredom, even disagreement.

You’ll find little disagreements between panelists; be sure to pick up on those to segue to the next panelists, and ask them for a contradictory point of view.

Let the panelists talk to each other

Don’t over-structure your panel by leading into a moderator question and response pattern alone; allow for some healthy banter between panelists, and let them chatter, jab, and joke among each other.

Know when to pass the mic

Don’t let any particular panelist dominate the session. You can interject between breaths and quickly pose the same question to the other panelists. I realize this seems rude—but this is your job, you represent the audience’s time.

Know when to shut up

I’ve been a panelist many times, and have certainly been annoyed when some moderators go too far, they may try to make it more of a game show, insert too much humor, or answer the questions from the audience. Don’t be that guy. Success happens when good conversation starts to take place on it’s own, and you only need to gently guide.

Field questions from the audience

Always repeat the question from the audience, so that everyone can hear it and it’ll get on any recordings being made. Summarize long-winded questions from the audience. Don’t let an overactive commentator steal the show by asking too many questions; suggest that some discussion can take place after the event.

If there are no microphones in the audience, you may need to walk down and take the mic to them. Ensure that the questions are spread among from different folks, and let a single person ask a second question only once everyone else has had a chance.

Wrapping Things Up

End the panel

Finally, at the end, let the members talk about where they can be found online, or where others can learn more about them. It’s best if you start, to set an example: “I work at company X in Y role, I can be found online at Z.”

Thank the panel and audience, then prepare for the audience to come up to the stage and have one-to-one discussions.

Encourage the discussion to move online

Often, the conversation between the panelists and members is so engaging that they never want to stop. Create a wiki, forum, or Facebook group to continue the conversation.

Also assign tags at the session so that anyone who is blogging about it will be found. If you’re a blogger, you may want to write up a wrap-up and link to anyone who took pictures. (Thanks to Zena for this suggestion.)

Don’t forget the final touches

Later, send a thank-you email to all the panelists, keep in touch with them, and always cherish how well this has gone for you.

Congrats, you’ve just moderated a successful panel!

By Jeremiah Owyang, Web strategist, speaker, and blogger/videoblogger focused on how companies use the Web to connect with customers

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