Webinars

I’ve already mentioned my love for in-person trade shows and events, but I don’t want to leave webinars out of the mix. Whether done in-house or with a content syndication partner, webinars can help organizations reach new and existing audiences and drive leads.

Live or Recorded?

Before COVID hit, I would have said the most stressful thing about putting together a live webinar was making sure the speaker (or speakers) were well-trained on the webinar platform, had a good internet connection, a good camera/microphone, and did at least one practice session so there were no technical hiccups to contend with during the live event. I think most people have these things today…save for the 22.3 percent of Americans in rural areas and 27.7 percent of Americans in Tribal lands who don’t have good broadband according to the FTC.
(I am reminded of a time when I planned a webinar and one speaker was traveling and did not have a reliable internet connection and looked asleep because they were frozen for 75% of the hourlong webinar).

Now I think the biggest hurdle is getting people to show up and engage in a webinar. I’ve found that there is often a 60 to 70% no-show rate for webinars, which isn’t great. So you need to have a really solid plan for marketing the webinar to get good registration numbers or a great content syndication partner who both guarantees attendee numbers and the type of audience you’re looking for.

The good news is when you do a webinar you have a recording that you can repurpose for:

• Blog or website content: write up a summary of the webinar discussion for your blog, and edit some snippets to embed into the post itself.
• Social content: edit the video to use as snackable content for social and drive people to like, share, and watch the full version.
• Targeted emails: share with customers and prospects who did not register/attend.

Engaged Attendees or Passive Listeners?

So for marketers looking for actual engagement (not just names to throw over to sales), the content needs to be amazing to get people to attend and participate during the live event. There are a few ways I think you can do this:

1. Use a combination of internal and external speakers: Webinars should be about thought leadership, not a sales pitch. Touch on timely, relevant topics, and bring in customers or other influencers to join your speaker to tell a better story. One talking head can be fine, but a healthy debate among speakers is usually much more interesting.
2. Send a series of pre-event emails: Tease the live content with some pre-event emails that help remind people why the event should be a must-attend and not a “watch the recording later.” For example, send registrants an email a week before allowing them to submit their questions ahead of time.
3. Use poll questions during the event: Using poll questions during a webinar can be a useful tool to keep people engaged and learn more about them, but they should be related directly to the webinar material.
4. Leave lots of time for Q&A: People always appreciate the opportunity to ask questions when they come up. Have someone monitor the chat and chime in with questions as they get asked. It makes it more conversational
5. Do a post-event survey: Post-event surveys can be useful to get a sense of what other topics people might like and also, if asked in the right way, help qualify leads further for sales.

Slides or No Slides?

If you are doing a webinar with more than one person it’s really important to decide upfront if each speaker will walk through slides or not. I find it so disjointed if one speaker has slides and the other doesn’t. Pick one. If the decision is no slides – run a practice session for the speakers to go over the key points they want to make.

There are a lot of moving parts to webinars both before and during, but with some thought, they can be a great way to reach customers and prospects.