10 Ways to Ensure Effective Webinars
Posted by karenses on March 25, 2008
Webinars are a great way to generate qualified sales leads. In turn, they take a lot of planning, promotion, practice and consistent follow through. Below are 10 tips to ensure that webinars work for you.
- PLAN: Come up with a clear plan of action from beginning to end. Your plan should include; recruiting effective presenters, scheduling, seamless registration process, clear promotional tactics, tracking for success metrics and follow through.
- CONTENT: Offer valuable information that people care about. Understand your audience and develop topics that provide true value for their mindshare. Content should be informative. Get input from your sales team and marketing staff.
- RESPECT: Respect Your Audience. People take time out of their busy day because they’re interested in solving a problem. Don’t provide an obvious sales pitch. Do provide relevant content.
- SCHEDULE: Timing is everything. Schedule mostly during mid-day / mid-week (depending on time zone). Target between 30-45 minutes for most webinars with 10-15 minutes of Q&A at the end.
- PROMOTE: Be clear on promotional plan. Study your target audience and develop a focused marketing strategy. Be creative. Try new things, test and review metrics. See what works. Word-of mouth is key. Make sure you include an “invite a friend” link in all communications.
- ENGAGE: Find interesting topics, dynamic presenters and methods of communication that “engage your audience”. Ongoing distractions are always working against you. Conduct polls to gain interaction –while also learning more about your audience.
- PRACTICE: Practice makes perfect. This is no time to wing it. Presenting online is very different then presenting offline. Coach your speakers. Schedule at least one run thru covering web conferencing technology, presentation, timing and Q&A; also, how to handle loss of audio/web access.
- PREPARE: Prepare for the worst. Don’t use wireless for phones or Internet connections. All speakers should use land lines (with quality headsets) and have a hard copy of their presentation in hand.
- TECHNOLOGY IS KEY: Select a good web conferencing vendor. It should be easy to use for both you and your audience. Should just be point, click and start. EZ interface always preferred. 2-way communication via phone or chat and recording option is key. Make sure your provider can handle the volume of attendees, provide necessary support, record for future use and is affordable for solid ROI.
- PROCESS: Make sure as you develop and manage the process you automate most everything and optimize each step. With that, find ways to learn more about your audience with every communication. Continue to provide valuable offers from demos and white papers to additional webinars. Consider doing a survey at the end of your webinar.
We hope you find above information useful. If you have any additional tips, please share below.
