We all know what we want from our webinars: more leads, more exposure for our company’s thought leaders, and more chances to share our message. But what about the people who attend those webinars? Ultimately, our webinars are only successful when everyone gets what they need — and giving your audience what they really want means understanding why your audience is attending, and ensuring that you cater to their content needs.
How do you do that? Easy! Just follow these three tips for giving your audience what they really, really want:
Create an engaging experience
Sure, you could just let your audience stare at slides for an hour. But where’s the fun in that? Instead, you should think about every webinar as an opportunity to craft an immersive, engaging multimedia experience. Put your presenter on camera and add video clips or screen sharing to your presentation. Build in time for interactive tools like polls and surveys.
Every time you can get a response from your audience — whether it’s a click to download more content or a simple smile — you’ve succeeded at engineering a valuable fan experience.
Give your audience a chance to be heard
The number one mistake people make with webinars is assuming that the presenter is the only one talking. False! Everyone who signed up for your webinar is there for a reason: they want to know more about how your products will make their life easier, they need answers they haven’t been able to find anywhere else, they want to catch up on the latest trends in your space, etc. But unless you listen to them, you’ll never know what those exact reasons are and they won’t come back for more.
Q&A is the easiest way to give your webinar audience a voice (and most of us do that already), but it’s hardly the only option you have. Integrate social media tools into your webinar environment so that attendees can ask questions and share their experiences with a broader audience, but without leaving your event.
You may even want to include idea storming or group chat tools so that the audience can share their excitement, questions, and expertise with one another. Attendees will walk away from your webinars feeling like someone was really listening. And that’s always a great feeling!
Bonus points if you pass on these questions and conversations to the rest of your marketing team so they can pinpoint common themes around which you can develop related content. Pass this information to your sales team too so that they can send related content to qualified leads.
Make sure they feel like they’ve learned something new
These days, it seems like everyone is constantly juggling a million items on their to-do lists. So when someone carves out an hour from their busy schedule to attend your webinar, they expect to get something truly valuable from it. Keep that in mind as you’re planning your presentation: are you covering the same old ground, or are you exploring new trends, revealing unexpected results, and sharing new tips to make them smarter and faster at their job.
Everyone who comes to your webinar should walk away knowing something they didn’t know when they signed up. Don’t solely use your webinars as a platform for pitching your products. Instead, focus on best practices and actionable advice that your audience can put into practice right away. Doing so establishes you as a trusted expert, leaving your audience with nothing but positive feelings about you and your webinar.
Of course, this is just the beginning!