How to Create An Amazing Webinar Experience For Your Attendees
Do you know the key elements to producing a successful webinar?
Is it a virtual room filled with highly qualified prospects? (This helps).
Or is it an attentive audience? (Also, a plus).
How much does your lighting, your background, or your tech affect your results? (Well, it is important, but not the make/break point).
These are the three things we hear most often when webinars are not producing results. But these are not the biggest elements to evaluate.
When you are in a room full of investors looking for the right advisor (that’s you) to come along and give them the advice they need… the most important element is…
Your Presentation
It is not rocket science. Just because you have a lot of attendees doesn’t mean they’ll love your presentation.
In fact, if you bomb your presentation, you will most likely leave an impression that is VERY difficult to overcome. That whole “first impressions” rule is as true today as it was when the phrase was coined. Which leads me to…
How to Make a Good Impression
Captivate your audience from the beginning. Engage them. Focus them on your well-prepared material. If you are unprepared, uncomfortable on camera, babble about random facts that are disconnected from your topic, and tell bad jokes, you won’t get the appointments you need to keep yourself in business.
On the other hand, if you are well-prepared, and your webinar topic is relevant and interesting, you interact with your audience, then you will get appointments.
So as promised, here are 7 tips that will help you create an amazing webinar experience for your attendees.
Tip #1: Start on Time
Your attendees are busy.
Don’t waste their time.
If your webinar is scheduled to start at 2 p.m., then make sure that everyone (and tech) involved is ready to go by 1:30 p.m. Do your sound checks and make sure that all your gear is ready to go. In our experience something almost always goes wrong. Don’t wait until 15 minutes before go-time to try to work it all out.
For your audience, there’s nothing more frustrating than that hold screen. It is as bad as the Blue Screen of Death or the Mac® equivalent of the Spinning Wheel of Eternal Punishment.
Hold screens will lose you attendees. Those prospects and potential clients will go to the competitor whose presentation is a little more put together. Don’t let your competitor eat the steak dinner that is rightfully yours.
Be on time.
Tip #2: Hook ’em Quick
Remember, it takes one click to leave your webinar if it stinks.
To keep your audience around:
- Be enthusiastic but avoid anecdotes or banter that is unrelated to your topic. People have more interesting things to do than listen to your childhood tale or your favorite ice cream brand (or any other irrelevant, unneeded information). However, if it relates or ties into your topic, then, by all means, bring the personal. The more relatable you are as a human being, the more your audience will relate to you.
- Get to the point.
- Bullet point the key ideas you will cover. This is what your audience wants to learn/solve.
- Press hard on the pain points. They will feel it deeply because it’s why they showed up.
- But, make it clear, working with you can take away that pain.
Tip #3: Accept That Things Might Go Wrong
No matter how much planning you do, you do not have control over every single detail.
You could lose electricity.
Your WiFi could go out.
Your laptop may present you with the Blue Screen of Death. (Or the Wheel of Eternal Punishment).
While irritating and stressful, these issues are not as serious as they may seem at the time. Certainly, they are snags. And certainly, they do not create a good first impression.
However, if you are prepared for the emergency, then the emergency does not become a disaster. Count on things going wrong, and you will remain calm enough to fix them or find a workaround. Your attendees need to see how you calmly control the unexpected.
So, an hour or so before you’re scheduled to go live, do a quick pre-flight checklist.
- Confirm your equipment works by testing it at least twice before the event starts.
- Confirm that your slides work and link to each other, and the transitions are smooth and sync with your script.
- Do a mic check.
- Confirm that your recording settings are ready to capture your webinar.
If you don’t have this pre-flight checklist already, get one in place that covers all the specifics of your webinar.
Tip #4: Outline EVERYTHING
A script can do wonders for your webinar.
Your script is essentially your road map and will help keep you on course.
With a script, you address your main points and leave your audience with the satisfaction that you covered every point you promised
Tip #5: Practice Makes Perfect
There is no such thing as too much rehearsal.
Some people can just “wing it.” These are superstar presenters. But the truth is that behind these presentations are hundreds of hours of practice.
In all honesty, the “wing it” webinars typically result in “OK” performances, not fantastic or even memorable presentations.
Do a dry run of your presentation in front of a few people. The less they know about the industry the better. Ask for feedback.
If you plan to record and replay a webinar, we recommend that you do two webinars and record them both. Some days are “off” days. So, if you have two webinars to choose from, you get to use the best one. Take that into account when prepping and scheduling your next presentation.
Tip #6: Plan for Interaction
The fastest way to lose an audience is to have a “lecture-inar.”
People get bored, distracted, tired, hungry, thirsty, interrupted. There are a lot of things that can (and will) disrupt your webinar on the other side of that screen.
Your job is to be so interesting and present such good material that no matter what sweeps in to capture their attention, you will be able to wrench it back.
And the best way to accomplish that is to encourage your audience to interact and participate (as your platform allows).
Be conversational. Explain complex financial concepts in simple words. Use pictures. Use humor. Ask poll questions. Provide challenges.
You are trying to build a relationship with them, and you want these people to feel comfortable giving their opinion, asking questions, and sharing information.
Take advantage of the interactive tools – the most common of which being a chat area where your attendees can communicate with you easily.
Tip # 7: Teach and Sell Simultaneously
You should teach and sell at the same time.
Most people make the mistake of teaching and then selling.
This mistake leads to a very awkward transition when it comes time to make the offer.
Throughout the webinar, you need to bring your audience around to what they want. This is done by teaching and selling working together in perfect harmony. (Kinda like Sonny and Cher, minus the matching bellbottoms.)
When you get to the offer, your product or service will be exactly what they want! You have just educated them on this and now they know it with certainty.
Don’t make your audience feel tricked or manipulated to buy or sign up for something they don’t really want. You won’t get them back again for your next presentation if you do.
Offer a no-pressure, free consultation or portfolio review to incentivize the appointment and give them an EASY way to book that. Either a link onscreen to your Calendly®, or through a short URL or follow-up survey.
Say goodbye and leave them satisfied they got their time’s worth of education, but still wanting more information from you.
Invite them to return to your next presentation and have your topic already in mind. This will keep them interested.
Some of these people will not be a right fit for your business. That’s okay. Put them into a drip campaign and provide them resources so they know where to go when they are interested later on!
So, that’s all I have for you today… Use these seven tips to be sure that your attendees not only stay engaged but want to set an appointment with you the minute you close the webinar.
