Most of Australia is currently in lockdown and we don’t even have the option of face-to-face events, so we are heavily reliant on webinars to get our message out there to current and prospective customers. Even if you are not locked down, it’s likely that the nature of your marketing acitvities are still much more online than they were previously.
With digital fatigue setting in, however, it feels like it has got harder to acquire and retain audiences for webinars.
I know that for myself, if my day job is largely spent on virtual calls, the idea of attending another online event is not appealing. As a vendor, if we are to get value out of these online events, they need to be highly engaging and deliver value to the target audience.
While planning and organizing webinars may be owned by Marketing, as Presales professionals we will have input into the planning and are likely to be responsible for the delivery of content. In the paragraphs below, I’ve briefly explored some ideas and tips around the following Webinar themes:
- Audience Acquisition – Content, Incentives and Brand
- Engaging Delivery – Variety, Interaction and Energy
Attractive Content
It’s important to advertise a speaker or a topic that is relevant, interesting, and is perceived as valuable by your target audience. My experience is that we’ve had the best attendance when we have advertised an external speaker, such as an industry analyst or a customer. As the vendor we can still do a pitch, but it should be the minor part of the presentation.
Another approach is to focus on a specific problem or use case, as people are more likely to attend if they believe they will learn something about a challenge they are facing, rather than a general overview or update session.
Incentives for Attending
As with any marketing event, you can provide incentives to attract people, such as providing meal delivery or an Uber Eats voucher, branded giveaways or even an attractive prize draw. These can all help with getting the initial attention and attendance of your audience.
One of the training vendors I have worked with has taken the approach of “paid” webinars where your token payment (eg. $50) goes to a charity. They use the session to preview and promote their content and it provides a nice approach to social action. I have been very willing to pay and because I’ve spent the money, I prioritise attending the session.
Brand Recognition
Developing a brand for your webinars will take time and persistence. Your company brand will help here, but I am also talking about the association people make to your online marketing events. Branding is about consitency in the naming, format and artwork/design of your sessions, as well as building a reputation for delivering useful content. It’s good to think about how you can develop a webinar brand that has audience pull, rather than approaching each session as a one-off.
At my company, we have built an effective brand of internal webinars for sales by structuring different “series” of 2-3 webinars that align to a theme, such as industry use cases, but also have consistency in the program name (Reasons To Call) and regular speakers.
Speaker Variety
A new face and voice coming on catches people’s attention, so have multiple speakers and switch between them regularly.
The simplest version of this is to have two speakers: a host who can introduce the agenda, moderate the Q&A and connect with the audience, and the main presenter.
A more sophisticated approach is to run sessions with four or five speakers, each one only speaking for 2, 5 or 10 minutes. This can take more effort to manage and ensure consistency of the content, but pays off in more effectively keeping the audience interested.
Audience Interaction
There are a few simple ways to interact with your audience, including Chat, Questions and Polls and these are available in most of the webinar platforms.
Live chat can be good because questions and chat coming in contributes to the feeling of activity. Even for people not participating, they can read the comments and questions of others. However, as a host, it can be hard to keep track of the questions coming in on a chat stream. For a customer webinar I prefer a platform that provides moderated questions as it’s easier to monitor and manage.
Another best practice here is to have a colleague on the call whose job is to monitor and write answers to the questions as they are coming in. That reduces the presenter’s workload and also helps contribute to the “live and interactive” atmosphere.
The other main tool I like to use is audience polls. It breaks up the flow of slides, gets people to think and take an action, and then you can talk about the results of the poll. A simple “what’s your biggest challenge with X?” poll can provide insight for you and additional value to attendees.
Voice and Energy
When you are presenting online, you still need to project and put energy into your voice. A dull monotone is a sure way to put your audience to sleep. If you can, try not to read a script, as this is harder to energise and may sound less natural.
Don’t speak too fast, and while it’s important to pause, those pauses should be shorter online compared to when you are in the same room. Use of polls and changing speakers is a good way to build in pauses where a question could be asked.
How do you make your webinars engaging?
Thoughtful Presales 