When you have a high ticket product or service that you want to promote, then a webinar is one of the most effective ways to do so. When people are in their information acquiring phase, they love webinars to help get them the info they need to take the next step.
If you’re not including a webinar in your digital marketing campaign then you are missing out on a great opportunity. They are one of the best ways to increase your lead generation efforts. However, this is only when they are done correctly. A lot of webinar hosts miss the point and create a forgettable webinar that leaves people tuning out within minutes.
To make sure that this doesn’t happen to you, you should avoid a number of mistakes that many webinar hosts make. In this article, we will go over what the most common ones are.
1. Too Much Text
All too often, a webinar is just a rehash of a blog post or some other content. The host takes the easy route and just puts up a lot of text on the screen. This is not only boring, but it is also not the way to present information. People can choose to read a blog post or white paper on their own time and at their own pace and don’t want to read it on a screen.
You need to have something exciting for people to latch onto. There should be movement and action in the webinar from the very first moment. You should be talking about important points without much text. Include some bullet points to give people something to write down quickly, but that should be about it.
Throughout the webinar, you should sprinkle in some music bits or a well-made video from a professional video production company like Zipinmedia. This breaks up the webinar and keeps the flow going so people don’t tune out. Try to time these interludes at points in the event that would normally be when things get dry.
2. You Didn’t Do Enough With Social Media
Although you should put the same amount of effort and enthusiasm into a webinar whether you have one attendee or a thousand, it can be a downer when nobody really shows up.
It takes a solid social media marketing campaign to make sure there is a buzz around the webinar. Then you can parlay that buzz into high attendance and really feel good about putting your heart and soul into the event.
Find out which social media platform your target audience is spending their time online and focus your efforts on there. For instance, if your audience is young creative types, then you should be building up your presence on Instagram to get them. If you were to use Facebook, your results may lag since Facebook is used mainly by older users these days.
[See related post: 11 Tips For Advertising On Social Media]
3. Too Much Of A Sales Pitch
A webinar should be entertaining and engaging. Making it a long-form sales pitch is going to turn people off very quickly. They didn’t sign up for a long advertisement. They signed up for some helpful information. They usually have a problem that they want to solve and are looking for a solution.
Your webinar should point out how you are aware of the problem and offer ways to solve it. Or, you could simply tell the story about your brand and build awareness of what it is that you do.
The purpose of the webinar is not to make a sale. It is to generate leads so they can be converted into customers later on. It is usually one of the first phases of the sales funnel so it is not the time to push for a sale at this time.
4. You Didn’t Create Any Value
Even though a webinar is free, the audience should feel like they are getting something of such value that they might have wanted to pay for it if you had asked for money. Make sure that the webinar is not just exciting and engaging, but also provides a lot of value for the audience.
It should be very informative and on its own be a resource that somebody could use to help them solve a problem or create something of value themselves. This will generate the enthusiasm necessary to ask them to take action at some point in the webinar.
5. No Calls To Action
No matter how valuable the information was in your webinar, if you don’t ask the audience to take action at some point they will simply sign out and move on with their day.
The whole point of the webinar is to generate leads so you have to have some clear calls to action that direct the audience on what to do next. It could be filling out a form for more information, leaving you their email address, or even making a purchase. Whatever it is that you want them to do as a result of the webinar should be clearly communicated.
Make sure that you use buttons that help them take action quickly rather than ask them to do something that involves multiple steps. You should also give them some notice at some point that there will be something for them to do later. Mention a few times during the webinar what they are expected to do at the end.
6. Your Webinar Is Too Long
Webinars are long-form content, that’s true. There is a limit to how long it should be though. At a certain point, the attendees will tune out and maybe even back out of the webinar.
Try to make sure that there is a good flow of information and that it is concise at the same time. Practice the webinar a few times to see where there are points that lag and cut them out. Stick with the essentials and then end with a convincing call to action and your webinar will do what it needs to do.
[Image credits – Main Photo by Canva Studio from Pexels; Woman with a hat: Image by Vic Padilla from Pixabay]
Salvatore Presti is an American writer living in Italy who enjoys the fine art of living well. His interests include anything wine, food or nature related especially when enjoyed with friends and family.