There is no doubt about it, webinars—a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web—are on the rise. I myself have attended numerous webinars over the years and there are plenty that have given me valuable information and practical “on the job” advice. There are also webinars that have left me confused, sleepy and even ones that—I hate to admit—I have dropped off after only 10 minutes into it.

Having recently worked on an award winning webinar series, this got me thinking, what’s the difference between the webinar that gave me great advice and the webinar where I just couldn’t stay engaged? The short answer is preparation. The long answer is the reason for this blog and what I believe separates winning webinars from an all out snooze fest.

First, let’s take a step back and talk about why companies even want to do webinars. In my experience, the biggest reason—and for obvious reasons—is business development. Webinars are a great way for a company to reach a geographically dispersed audience, especially if their sales force is limited. If done right, (and I do stress IF done right) webinars do a great job of building credibility and they bring value to your audience. After all, that’s why people attend webinars, because they want to learn something. This keeps audiences’ engaged and coming back time after time for more webinars (and hopefully as a client!).

In my experience in creating and participating in webinars, the simplest way to breakdown how to build and present a successful webinar is in three phases, 1) pre-webinar, 2) during the webinar and 3) post-webinar.

In this first part of a three-part series I am going to focus on everything pre-webinar. The next installment will focus on the best practices for during the webinar and the third installment will be on, you guessed it, what you should do after every webinar.

First, it’s your chance to reach out
While planning your webinar there are four questions you need to answer, 1) what’s the topic?, 2) who’s my audience; 3) how do I get people to attend; 4) what is my follow up and expected return?

When deciding on a topic, don’t just pick one that YOU are interested in. Instead, consider your audience and what it is they want to know more about. Take an informal poll of your sales and delivery teams. What questions are they getting from their clients and prospects? What value are they communicating about your products, services or solutions? What push back are they giving your team on the products, services or solutions you are selling? What challenges are they facing? Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask clients for insights either. And always know what your competitors are doing (not to do the same thing, but to ensure your topics stand out). Answers to these questions will get you well on your way to developing an interesting and engaging topic your audience will want to listen to and more importantly, learn from.

The second piece of the pre-webinar plan that’s important to the event’s success is getting people to attend. There are several approaches you can (and should) take to get attendees. First—and I really can’t stress this enough—is making sure your list is current, and contains people you want to target. I won’t go into this in detail, but check out this blog for more information on list development.

How do you get your list of contacts to attend your webinar? Try and reach them in as many ways as you can. Send a few e-mail blasts, post it on social media pages and your Web site, add a link to your e-mail signature, send a personal note along with a copy of the invitation and make phone calls. Ask any associations you are affiliated with or your partners to promote your webinar as well. This way, you leverage their database and reach their contacts too (genius)!

In your communications, tell the audience what they will get out of attending the webinar and make registration easy (1-click maximum). The more channels you use and the more benefit oriented the communications are, the more people you will get to register. The key here is don’t just rely on the e-mail blasts to get registrants, a joint sales and marketing effort is critical.

We often get asked by our clients how to get registrants to actually attend the webinar. There will always be important meetings or deadlines that come up during your webinar so it’s normal not to have 100% of registrants actually attend the webinar. However, I believe personal touch goes a long way. While you’ll want to send out a reminder e-mail one or two days before the event, or even the same day (depending on the tool you use, you can set it up so this automatically happens), consider having your sales team call the registrants the day before or day of to thank them for registering thus reminding them of the webinar. Also consider sending a meeting request to registered attendees so it appears on their calendars and they don’t schedule anything over it.

Three additional ways to attract attendees is first, think about a co-sponsorship with another firm or one of your business partners. If you co-sponsor your webinar this may help reduce some of your costs, establish more credibility and open up your webinar to even more contacts (as I said before).  Second, if it’s in your budget, include a high-prized giveaway such as an Apple iPad or an Amazon Kindle. Who doesn’t like winning a cool prize? Give the prize to one attendee and announce the winner at the end of the webinar (this makes people want to stay too). A giveaway is a great tool to use as a follow up (here’s your chance to set up a meeting, by calling the winner to make sure they received the giveaway, or bring it to them if they are near you).  Third, and this is also if it’s in your budget, hold an internal contest. The team member who gets the most registrants/attendees will receive a free lunch, night on the town, etc. This not only increases your attendance, but it increases company morale too.

Finally, come up with some metrics to measure. Figure out how many people you want to register, and how many people you want to attend. It may take a few webinars under your belt to get the desired registrants/attendees, but stick with it, if done right your numbers will increase. Your metrics should also go beyond just the webinar. Decide how you want to follow up after the webinar (discussed in detail later) and what you want to get out of it (i.e., number of meetings).

Don’t be disappointed if you get only a handful of people to attend your first webinar. Use it as a learning experience and leverage all of the follow up communications I will be talking about later to promote on your Web site, through social media, etc. The best part is that your attendees don’t have to know how many people are on the webinar!

In part 2 of Yes YOU can! How to build and present successful webinars, I go through best practices for creating your presentation and how it should be structured. Do you have any ideas on how to attract webinar attendees? Please share your best practices too.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Communication Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.