All demand generation webinars are not created equally, period!
Some really inform, inspire and yield positive commercial outcomes while delighting their audiences. Others are covert sales pitches that simply don’t connect and are boring. To me, webinars are a high art form of content marketing, because they can breathe life into static content such as research reports, case studies and white papers.
Done right, they are very effective at raising your brand awareness, thought leadership as well as driving fresh new sales leads.
As I thought more about what separates an exceptional webinar from a so-so one, just about everything I’ve learned over the past 6 or so years from producing hundreds of demand generation webinars, can be boiled down to understanding these simple, yet profound 3 webinar myths.
Myth # 1 – Build it and they will come.
Today, attracting new prospects to a webinar is the number one challenge. It used to be mild curiosity would attract an audience, not so today.
If the topic isn’t genuinely going to educate prospects and inform them about solving a pressing issue, or how they can achieve better business outcomes, they’ll ignore your invite. And, if your content is perceived as a “nice to have” instead of a “must have” , chances are your prospects will not only ignore your email, they’ll delete it or even unsubscribe from your list.
Just having a large well-known brand isn’t enough anymore to guarantee you‘ll attract an audience. On the other hand, we’ve seen small regional firms blow the doors off with high registrations, landing page conversions, and attendance, all because they had something timely that addressed what the market was interested in.
Myth# 2 – I’m a great presenter, I’ll just show up with my slide deck and wing it
Even if you are a presentation goddess, the virtual world is a very different medium than a live in person event, and requires a totally different communication style and audio strategy.
Think of a webinar as being like a radio show, but with pictures. Dead air and awkward silences will kill a radio show, and your webinar is no different. Your job is to use your passion and that of your other speakers to inspire and engage your audience, or they will quickly become distracted and start multi-tasking to check their email or use their social media platforms.
Don’t overlook the importance of good audio. Audio is the Achilles heel of all virtual events and failing to taking the time do several sound checks, or making sure you and your other speakers are optimally “miked”, have fast enough internet connections to mitigate latency issues, or echoes is something you can’t wing.
During the live webinar, if the audio quality is poor and they can’t hear you clearly, they won’t be able to connect with you. If your slides aren’t visually appealing, you also risk losing your audience.
Being prepared and not winging it let’s you’re audience know you value their time, and they will be open to hearing what you and your speakers have to say. If your message connects, they’ll be more willing to talk with you after the webinar, which is one of the most desirable outcomes from doing the webinar in the first place.
Remember, be authentic, don’t worry about perfection, it’s about connection.
Myth# 3 – All attendees are “sales ready” to buy now
This is another fallacy that can create unrealistic expectations and disappointments up and down the organization sponsoring the webinar.
One of the most common themes I heard over and over at last year’s 2013 Content Marketing World Conference (where I spoke on creating a thought leadership webinar series), was the fact that 70% of today’s B2B buyers prefer to do their research online before they want to speak with a live salesperson.
Think of the last time you went into a retail store, and were merely starting to research a purchase, and an over friendly salesperson comes up and says “Hi may I help you.” You quickly reply, “No thanks, I’m just looking.”
The same goes for many of the people who register and attend your webinar. They are in varying parts of the buying cycle, and mostly looking to get better educated and informed. They aren’t necessarily willing and ready to speak with you after the webinar, yet alone be ready to commit to a purchase.
Since webinar attendees are in varying parts of their buying experience, I suggest you have a strategy for capturing intelligence across the webinar lifecycle so you can segment leads and identify which are sales ready, or not qualified, or those that are ripe for nurturing via content marketing.
Knowing and understanding these 3 myths – will help your organization plan and execute webinars that meet or exceed your commercial outcomes, while delighting your audiences! Done right, you’ll be able to convert more prospects to become your advocates and customers.
For more advice and best practices so you can host more successful webinars, get my Citrix sponsored ebook: “Webinar Ready: A Step by Step Guide to Hosting Successful Webinars.” It’s free, click here to download now.
Here’s to your webinar success!
Mike Agron
Webinar Demand Generation Expert
Your warnings to prepare and get familiar with one’s technology are wise. Recently, I attended a webinar that only lasted 15 min., (Too short of a time for going through all the work of registering and making a point of attending). But the big mistake was the presenter left her microphone on after she was done presenting. She screeched “I hate my life.” Very unprofessional. She then sent a recording that had no audio.
Several months ago I attended a webinar which never really got started. Myself and many other people corresponded with the presenter and we discovered that she was having problems getting the webinar platform to work. She contacted the webinar platform company and, rather than telling us that she’d reschedule, say, for next week same day and time, she asked us whether we wanted to wait for the platform company to fix the problem. We ended up waiting for 40 min. and until she decided she couldn’t conduct a webinar. Very unprofessional. A week later, she was laid off.
Thanks for your feedback, and while I’m sorry to hear about your experiences, unfortunately they don’t surprise me. Doing any event, such as a webinar,and doing it well, requires paying attention to a lot of details. It’s not rocket science, it’s following good old fashioned project management best practices. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and I’d bet with 99% certainty, that both of the above issues could have been avoided if each webinar had followed a check off list before they went live.
We have a great “free” resource, commissioned by GoToWebinar, that is our playbook of best practices, and it’s called “WebinarReady – A Step by Step Guide to Hosting Successful Webinars”, and it includes many of these checklists. Check it out along with some other eBooks at https://webattract.com/pages/ebooks.shtml
Thanks!
Mike
[…] All webinars are not created equally.Some really inform and inspire and yield positive commercial outcomes while delighting their audiences, and others are covert sales pitches that simply don’t connect and are boring. To me, webinars are a high … […]