We all make mistakes- some of them are more common than others though.
When it comes to webinars, the following are among the most frequent, especially for new presenters and developers.
The surprising thing is just how easy it is to avoid most of these.
Whether procedural or content-based, it can be very simple to drastically improve your webinars’ success, by implementing quick fixes for these 5 common issues:
Starting Too Late
It always baffles us just how often this happens.
Developing a complete and complex presentation requires a lot of work, much more than many who start off may think.
The webinar will require research, preparation of a script and a slide deck, practice and tweaking of all of the above. And that’s just the content side of things.
In order to efficiently market and sell your digital product, you will have to handle a number of organizational issues: choosing a content delivery platform, booking and setting up a location for your virtual conference, advertising your event on a number of channels.
Yes, you probably have a team to help you, but the workload is still very intense.
The easy fix: Give yourself time! Start planning and brainstorming much earlier (read: at least a month) before you even announce your webinar to your prospective audience.
You’ll be thankful later on, when you’re not forced to stay up late every night, or to cut out portions of your presentation.
Choosing The Wrong Platform
There are a lot of choices for webinar hosting platforms online.
Free and premium categories are both filled with excellent (and less excellent) options.
Choosing the wrong software can lead to a worse user experience, or a much harder time keeping track of uploaded files and slides.
You might pay for something you don’t need, or find out your presentation software is incompatible with the conferencing tool.
The easy fix: Consider your webinar, your presentation style and your audience before choosing.
It might be tempting to look at a huge feature list and decide based on that, or to throw yourself on the cheapest alternative right out of the gate.
These are both wrong, if you don’t first think about who your users are and what they will expect from you, as well as the type of presentation you are gearing up to give.
Free trials are your friends here. Choose only after you found the perfect fit.
Ignoring Your Landing Page
This may possibly be the single greatest mistake many webinar teams make.
The landing page for your conference is your lifeline to the outside world. It allows you to collect your users’ contact information, get a bearing on your potential attendee numbers, collect attendance fees and give your product more credibility- all at once! Any advertising for your webinar will eventually redirect users to this page, so using a shabby, cluttered design will greatly decrease your chances to shine.
The easy fix:Put yourself in your audience’s shoes.
What would you be looking for as you click on the landing page link? Information about the webinar and about the people behind its development.
A simple way to mark your interest and book your attendance.
An easy to understand layout and design.
Then apply these ideas into your landing page (if you need more insight, take a look at this guide).
Neglecting Your Viewers
During the presentation you will undoubtedly be very busy.
You’ll have to tackle the slide progression, remember your speech and possibly improvise in some sections, think about your delivery style and tone.
This does not mean that the audience will be fine on its own though! They will surely have issues, both of the technical variety (“why isn’t the stream working?”) and of the understanding type (“what did he mean by that?”).
Not addressing their concerns can make you seem distant and uncaring, but you certainly can’t do it yourself!
The easy fix:Use a moderator! This is a person whose entire job is to take care of the audience, and of their relationship with your presentation.
He will answer their questions and fix their issues (when possible).
The simple presence of this figure in your team will give you a huge leg up over other presenters without one.
Not Targeting Past Attendees
Another common mistake: thinking that every webinar is a beast unto itself.
If you abandon the pool of previous attendees and start marketing your next event from scratch, you’ll have to put in almost the same effort you put in the first time around.
The easy fix: Record previous attendees’ contact details and begin targeting them first.
These are people who have already shown their interest in your product.
They will make both a great core of audience for your future webinars, and excellent vehicles for word of mouth visibility.
