Over the last five years, I’ve focused my energies on teaching organizations how to use webinars as effective content marketing vehicles to attract new audiences for their products and services. I want to inspire others to realize how webinars can motivate new audiences to want to talk to their company as “Nothing happens in business until you have a conversation with someone.”

Such conversations are useful in empowering potential customers to discover how an organization can help them solve a problem or fill a need. In fact, one of my clients, The Friedman Group closed a 1 million dollar deal after engaging in conversations that were spurred from their webinar. Read the case study here!

If you want to engage in money-making conversations that are spurred from your webinars, you have to avoid these webinar mistakes that 90% of B2B organizations make at least one time. Many organizations are making these mistakes over and over again.

1. Not Taking Enough Time to Plan

The most important lesson that I learned from my experiences in conducting webinars is that planning is the cornerstone and backbone of successful events. It takes me about six to eight weeks to go from the idea stage to the webinar presentation – and I’m an expert.  Too many organizations try to throw a webinar together and rush into it.

Some drag the planning phase out too long so the sense of urgency is lost, while others don’t allow enough time to plan and end up in reaction rather than response mode.

2. Failing  to balance the four attributes of any successful webinar: business drivers, logistics, human factors, and technology.

Some important questions to ask in the planning stage to avoid making this mistake are:

  • What do we want to want to achieve with our webinar?
  • Who is our target audience?
  • What do we want our audience to do? (call to action)
  • How will we follow up on the generated leads?
  • How will we measure our webinar’s success?

3. Neglecting Logistics                             

All the planning in the world is useless if it is partnered with weak logistics. Scheduling is one of the biggest challenges in pulling together successful webinars, especially if there are multiple speakers involved. You need to delegate tasks and identify speakers immediately to ensure a smooth flow from planning to implementation.

You must also be deadline-driven and get the important dates on the calendars early. All pertinent project members must know when meetings will take place, and what the meeting goals will be. Tweak or change the preliminary dates if necessary, but they must to be set to establish the deadline.

4. Not Appointing a Strong Leader

Every successful webinar is the product of a strong project champion who is able to motivate, encourage and lead the speakers – and support staff from concept to presentation. This project leader understands he or she is working with two main stakeholders: the webinar audience and the internal crew and speakers.

Leaders respect these individuals’ other time commitments, while they keep everyone well informed and the process simple. Weak leaders with little or no vision of the mission of the webinar lead to fiascos.

5. Using Inferior Technology and Being Satisfied with Mediocre Audio Quality

“Audio is the Achilles’ heel of all virtual events and particularly webinars.” Few things are more frustrating than missing a speaker’s key points or suffering with poor audio, and these frustrations prevent the audience from engaging with the speakers.

Speakers must be audible and all the technical aspects of the webinar must run smoothly or the participants may become disengaged. Being able to hear with clarity is one way the audience perceives the value of the webinar. For more information on webinar audio – download my free ebook: 5 Things You Need to Know About Webinar Audio

6. Selecting Off-Focus Topics

Is your topic a must-have or nice-to-have? Must-have topics motivate people to action; nice-to-haves do not. However, just having a solutions-oriented topic is not enough. If you target the wrong demographic, your solution will not inspire them. Audiences have unsolved problems or unmet needs, and the webinar must explain to them how a product or service will fix their problem or fill their need.

7. Ignoring the WIFM Factor

Presentations centered on the speaker’s qualifications or too many product features and benefits turn off prospective clients. They want to know what’s in it for me (WIFM), so use a balanced approach to position the product or service in the best light while highlighting the business values and rewards for the audience.

8. Limiting Audience Participation

As I explain in my step-by-step guide to hosting successful webinars, you need to think of the webinar as a radio show with pictures.  Keep it fast paced and well choreographed with no dead air and enough time at the end for audience interaction in the form of a question and answer period.

Slides should use bullet points and short phrases to get your message across quickly without distracting listeners from the meat of the presentation. Focus on value and solutions for the audience and stay away from discussing product features or pricing.

A neutral, third-party moderator is essential as he or she can bring out the best from the speakers while keeping the flow of conversation lively. Use multiple voices speaking on a must-have topic, and you have the best formula for webinar success.

9. Skipping Dress Rehearsals

As part of your webinar planning, schedule in enough time for dress rehearsals and sound checks. A good project champion persuades speakers to be prepared and to make their presentation sound natural rather than canned or memorized.

10. Using Deceptive Advertising and Failing to Promote

Did you deliver on the promises you made in your invitation? A compelling invitation that delivers on the audience’s expectations attracts, engages, inspires and converts listeners to customers.

Inadequate promotion reduces many webinars to failure.

I suggest planning an email campaign to start about three weeks before the start of the event. The campaign should consist of four to five emails with attention-getting headlines. Swap out the headlines and stagger the emails over the course of the three weeks for maximum exposure and results.

Many organizations fail to appreciate that webinars are live events just like tradeshow exhibitions, speaking engagements, and other promotional venues. Planning, strong leadership, exceptional technology and audio quality, and solution-oriented presentations are all part of creating world-class webinars that inspire audiences to select your company instead of your competitor.

In my “Managing the Cycle Ebook,” I show you the actions you need to take “before”, “during” and “after” the webinar. Click here to download the ebook.

What Are Your Webinar Pet Peeves?

How many webinars have you attended recently? Was there anything about those presentations that really turned you off? On the flip side, is there something that you think a presenter did really well? If you were going to build your own list of webinar best (and worst) practices, what would you include?