A Platform for Webinar Series Success: Seven “Must-Haves”
We have been observing successful Webinar series for almost a decade and have participated in producing certain series for almost that entire length of time.
Many organizations and Webinar producers can create one great or blockbuster Webinar, but it requires a different set of tactics and skills to ensure a winning Webinar series over time.
So we have distilled the best practices of Webinar series into Seven “Must-Haves.” These crucial elements and strategies are present again and again in top performing series. Missing one could sabotage all of your otherwise good work on the rest of the series.
Seven “Must-Haves” of a Successful Webinar Series for Any Organization
1. A Reachable, Defined Audience with Common Issues and Problems
start with the list or audience that will be most interested in your Webinar
series. They ideally will have common characteristics, frustrations,
objectives, problems, and habits.
For example, a Webinar series could simply target your own customer list.
It could be geared towards one profession like “Independent Financial
Advisors.” It could target “time-starved entrepreneurs looking to grow their
business through marketing.” It could also be buyers of a specific product
such as all Apple iPad users or purchasers of “Product X.”
Remember, the more you are able to reach a definable audience with
Webinars that are geared to their specific needs and appeal to their
desires, the more successful your series will be.
2. Content and Speakers to Deliver Valuable Information and Education
to This Audience over Time
If you have only one topic, you generally do not have a Webinar series.
Similarly, if you are not able to deliver valuable content and education to
your audience through different events over time, you are likely not to
have a sustainable series. (See our definition of “Must-See” Webinar
content above.)
Just as the movie-going public is the ultimate judge of movies for the
studios (sorry critics and industry insiders), your target audience is the
ultimate judge of the worth of your Webinar speakers and content.
Many Webinar series producers will review their own and other market
surveys, as well as attend other popular Webinars in their market, to see
the types of topics and content that resonate with the target audience.
After all, if you produced action movies for a living, wouldn’t you attend
the summer blockbusters as well as watch past hits to get direction on
what your target audience responds to?
Many Webinar producers pick their speakers first, then try
to come up with a topic that will interest the audience. While it is
always helpful to use proven, popular speakers, more important
will be the topic of the Webinar. If the topic is not on the list of
top 5 “pain points” of your target audience, they will likely
neither register nor attend.
3. An Overarching Theme for Your Webinar Series to Tie the Webinars Together
To create a sustainable Webinar series, there needs to be an overarching,
unifying theme among your events. Many times this is similar to the “Big
Benefit” your company offers to the target market.
Your series theme does not necessarily need to be heavily promoted with
your audience when advertising an individual event since prospects will
generally evaluate each event on its own merit, but the overarching
theme will help you create and market compelling events over time.
For example, one training firm ran a series for its subscribers with the theme
of “Educating Marketers on Top Direct and Web Marketing Strategies.” A
technology vendor ran a series for years on “How to Take Control of_
(Your Specific IT Environment).” A financial services firm repeated a simple
theme, “Quarterly Market and Economic Outlook.”
If your events can dazzle, then the good feelings from the value and
excitement generated by the Webinar can be transferred to good
feelings about you, the host organization of the series. Your overarching
theme will help you define those feelings or create mind-share in the
prospects’ minds.
4. A Marketing Plan to Reach a Large Group of Prospective Registrants
over Time, Ideally through Email
Most Webinar producers and marketers tend to underestimate the level of
effort needed to gain a registrant and an attendee.
Obviously, it will be harder and generally more expensive to get a first-
time registrant for your Webinar, especially if they are not already on your
in-house email list.
Social media marketing offers a great opportunity to expand
your general list as well as drive Webinar registrants. “Tweeting”
the event and promoting it through your own and other target
social media sites is an emerging way to market.
And, many Webinar series promoters make the mistake of thinking that
the majority of registrants to one event in the series will come to all the
events. Especially if you are doing a series with marketing or selling
objectives, expect less than 15% of past registrants to register for an
upcoming event.
It is critical to have a marketing plan for each Webinar that
reaches beyond past Webinar attendees. Each event in the
series requires its own thought-out plan to get the results you
desire. (See Appendix C for a sample Webinar marketing plan.)
5. A Cost-Effective, Scalable, and Robust Webinar Technology Solution
A good Webinar series technology platform will help ensure your success
and save you time and money. In the early days of Webinars, getting
1,000 attendees on a platform could be incredibly expensive and you
would risk crashing the event. No longer.
The various features Webinar series producers look for in the technology
include:
• A management process that makes it easy to set-up, modify, and run
with multiple organizers and presenters,
• The ability to record and have on-demand Webinars easily hosted and
available within 24 hours of the live event,
• The capability to do a private pre-call for presenters and mute all
attendees and also open up the phone lines for audio questions as
desired by the presenters, along with the ability to allow attendees to
raise hands, ask questions, and participate in chat,
• A cost and technology model that makes it easy to present to 10
attendees, or scale to 1,000 attendees,
• An ability to see who is present and attentive on the Webinars,
• The capability for robust interaction, including online chat, text
questions, pre-planned and ad hoc polling questions, and post-
Webinar surveys, and
• The capacity for the speakers to share their desktop, slides, and
different files, applications, or Web pages.
Different Webinar series and organizations will have different technology requirements, but we have found that generally video for Webinars is not a high value-add for most presentations, especially if you just want to show “talking heads.” (A recent QLM survey with the 1080 Group of Webinar attendees confirmed this last, sometimes controversial point.)
Most Webinar series solutions provide their own registration management functionality. You will want one that provides “one-click” access to the registration
form and helps convert about 50% of invitation “click-throughs” to registrants for a free Webinar.
6. A Follow-Up Plan to Monetize the Series for Your Organization
Even if your monetization model (that is, the way your organization will
make money from the Webinar series) is to sell sponsorships or to charge
for viewing a Webinar, you will generally still want to sell something else to
the Webinar registrants and attendees.
As you probably guessed, the best prospects to attend the next Webinar
in your series are the folks who have registered or attended your past
events. So you will be sure to include invitations to future events in your
marketing back to this audience.
However, many Webinar series marketers stop there. Consider an
(automated) follow-up sequence of marketing and sales contacts to
convert “registrants to revenue” for your organization by promoting your
own offerings back to this audience.
7. How to Grow and Evolve the Series Over Time
No Webinar series is ever “done.” This is both a source of excitement and
frustration for many. Just as humans never stop learning and changing, a Webinar series is always in a state of evolution. So rather than fight this, look for opportunities to improve your Webinar topics over time. For example, you can ask the following questions after each event:
• What is another “hot topic” for your target audience that was not
covered in your series?
• What topic or theme can be repeated or done in a slightly different
way for great results?
• Who can co-sponsor a series and give us the resources to take this
to the next level?
• What lists and social media marketing opportunities have we not
tested for our Webinars?
• How can we get more people to each event?
• How can we convert a higher percentage of “registrants to
revenue?”
• What can we do to leverage a library of recordings and re-purpose
the content?
When it comes to Webinar series, the 80/20 principle applies. There will be a minority of individuals and companies who are doing Webinar series at a very high level and creating amazing results. So if you are not in the “top quartile” of Webinar series or not quite achieving the results you want, finding answers to the key questions above will help “take you to the top.”
Next, let’s examine a topic which is fundamental to the success of every Webinar series, but does not get the headlines it deserves. You want to flawlessly manage your series and individual events so you get repeat attendees and more results from both.
© 2010 Quantum Leap Marketing, Inc