Suggestions to help you keep the attention of your online audience during webinars.
Isn’t it awful when conducting a webinar and you ask the audience if they have any questions, and all you hear is crickets and you don’t even know if they are listening!
There are always challenges with knowing if webinar attendees are REALLY engaged in the webinar. If the webinar is relevant to the attendees, the hope is that they will pay attention and come back for more information. However, the best scenario is when a presenter clearly understands what the attendees are looking for BEFORE the webinar, and prepares content to keep the attention of the attendees during the webinar.
People attend webinars to:
- Research to better understand a new service, software or product to purchase
- Fulfill a company requirement for certifications
- Learn new process on services or products
- Learn best practices to help support career
- Share and leverage information
So how do we better understand our audience?
The best outcome from customers or employees is when the attendees are engaged before, during and after the webinar. If you create an opportunity for the attendees to share their voice in what really matters, then the attendees will be more likely to register for and participate in the webinar because they consider it to be a good use of their time.
Giving attendees an opportunity to share with you what REALLY matters and why will keep them coming back to webinars in the future. Here are a few tips to do just that:
- Create a survey asking what their pain points are and why. WorkOutLoud offers survey functionality that can be used to get information from attendees that will help you create a more purposeful webinar.
- Share the outcome of the survey, because there may be some ideas that others may not have considered.
- Find out what they are interested in learning more about without pressure from sales people! No one likes to be bothered by a sales person unless they are truly interested in moving to the next level of purchase.
Some additional suggestions during the registration process
Try to gather information on what is important to the attendees before the webinar to help build anticipation to attend the webinar. WorkOutLoud’s registration and email notifications can help promote awareness of their webinar.
- Strong Subject Line – With all of the emails dropping in our inbox every day, make a point to make sure that the email invoice starts with [Webinar] and a strong short description. Try to stay away from soft subject lines such as “You’re invited,” “Don’t miss,” etc.
- Emails – Best practice for email webinar announcements should be three weeks before the webinar, a reminder two weeks prior with a slightly different subject line, another reminder the week of the webinar, and the last one on the day before the webinar.
- Bullet Points – Long descriptions are NEVER read. It is so important to have a strong opening sentence, and then bullet point on what they will learn or get out of the webinar.
- Registration Questions – Don’t assume you know what attendees want to learn. Ask questions during the registration process, because it might help with focusing on what matters more to the attendees.
- Why are they interested in attending?
- What do you hope to learn from the webinar?
- How did you hear about this webinar?
- Prepare Questions – The attendees may not know what to ask during the webinar, so be prepared with thoughtful questions based on the survey asked during the registration process.
- Post-survey – Promise to provide feedback to attendees post-webinar, and follow up on your promise. It’s very important to understand if the webinar was productive, and attendees will appreciate knowing their voice was heard. It is also important to understand any negative feedback that would help improve webinar presentations in the future.
No one wants to hear crickets during a webinar, but with these simple tips, you are more likely to hear the voices of actively engaged webinar attendees!
If you would like to learn more about WorkOutLoud and how we can help you keep the attention of your audience, contact Loring.Kaveney@WorkOutLoud.com today.
