On a recent radio interview with business expert Barry Moltz, I was posed the question “why do most webinars stink?” To phrase this question another way, “why do the results of most webinars fall short of expectations?” – Why didn’t we meet our registration goals? Why didn’t many people show up? Why aren’t they BUYING?
If you’ve ever produced a webinar before, I’m sure you’ve had these same questions, as have I. There are many reasons why your webinars stink, and I’d venture to say I’ve seen them all. After the trial and error of producing hundreds of webinars, I’ve seen all of the pitfalls and developed a methodology that finally cracks the code. To start, here are three reasons why your webinars stink and what you can do about it:
Your topic is boring & so are your speakers.
People are busy! If you are going to ask them to give up their time to attend your webinar, your topic better be a “must-have”, meaning it must address a pain point they’re having in their business and how you can help them get better outcomes. “Nice-to-have” topics get deleted or ignored in the inbox.
Must-have topics often emerge from market disruption. If there is a lot of change and confusion in your market, such as the Affordable Care Act changing much of how the healthcare industry does business, there is an opportunity for your speakers to tell an inspiring story with demonstrable business outcomes.
Ask yourself: what will the audience get out of the webinar, and how am I helping them solve their challenges?
Read more about ways to keep your audience engaged.
You don’t prepare.
Do you think you can just start talking and people will listen? There’s reason number two why your webinars stink.
At WebAttract, we meet 3-4 times before the go live webinar date. First, we hold a table read meeting to brainstorm structure and flow. Then we hold 2-3 dress rehearsals where speakers walk through their slides. The final dress rehearsal is always a timed run-through so speakers know how much they should say for each slide.
It takes practice to be able to connect with the audience and it takes time to perfect your message to ensure that you are giving your audience something of value. If you expect people to stop what they’re doing and listen, you better have a good story and be able to tell it well.
Read more about planning a webinar that people want to attend.
You think the work is done once the webinar is over.
After a successful go-live webinar day, absolutely take a moment to celebrate! Thank everyone on your team and give yourself a pat on the back, but then it’s time to get back to work.
Not many people realize the real work of a webinar is not when you plan and produce it, but the day after you deliver it because now you need to follow up.
In order to convert webinar attendees into customers and future advocates, you need to mine lifecycle intelligence, i.e. all the metrics and analytics you collected before, during, and after the webinar. This will allow you to identify which of the attendees might be sales ready, which are going to need more information, and which of them aren’t qualified, so you can nurture them accordingly.
Read more about improving your webinar conversion rate.
Next steps
Start by addressing these three pitfalls on your next webinar. Make sure your next webinar presents a must-have topic, practice your presentation timing and delivery, and use lifecycle intelligence after the webinar to identify leads.
If you’re still feeling stuck and not getting the results you want from webinars, let us show you more pitfalls and teach you our best practices for avoiding them. We put together an online training course that teaches you everything you need to know before, during and after the webinar – how to plan, how to attract the audience, how to keep them engaged during the webinar, and how to use lifecycle intelligence to convert them from an attendee to a customer and future advocate. You’ll walk away a certified Master Webinar Producer with a playbook for producing successful webinars every time. We guarantee it.
Here’s to your webinar success!
Agree Mike, fixing a compelling webinar topic is the most important to driving registration rates, then comes the compiling of the email-invite, then comes the building of relevant prospect lists.
Most marketeers find that they have time to spend to create compelling webinar topic and a compelling messaging. But just fail to spend time to build a relevant prospect list to market to.
The advent of social media and contacts everywhere, tatgeted LinkedIn groups – all offer a great way to build very targeted prospect lists. But that requires work. So most marketeers short cut that, by just buying an off the shelf list – and get poor response rates
Once the registration rate is bad, it doesn’t matter how great the speakers and all follow-up steps are. The webinar simply fails>=.
I find its important to work to improve each stage of the funnel from top to bottom. the weakest link in the funnel defines your webinar success rate.
All the best
Chandra
CEO – eGrabber
We develop B2B Sales Tools for LinkedIn & Web prospecting; Bought by 100,000+ companies