Webinars have long ago become an effective channel for the promotion of numerous products and services. Yet, along with successful webinars, there are many events, the results of which are far from what has been expected. This article considers most widely spread webinar mistakes and gives the best ways of solving them.

Ways to Solving Mistakes During a Webinar

Mistake 1. One Week for Promotion

Many companies start the active promotion of a webinar only one week before the event takes place. But the results of ON24 prove the audience could grow by 36% if the marketing campaign were started earlier than one week before the webinar.

👉 Solution

Start promotion 2 or 3 weeks before the actual webinar. A large period will allow you to become more flexible — you will be able to track the efficiency of different promotion tools, put aside less effective ones and activate some new channels.

Mistake 2. Veiled Advertisement

Users tend to visit webinars to answer the questions they are worried about and find new ideas. In case the speaker starts advertising or selling immediately, it will be very difficult to gain the audience’s trust. Nobody would like to spend time listening to ads.

If potential clients are offered new ways of solving their problems, chances are the speaker will become known to be an expert, this finally leading to a more effective presentation of your product or service.

👉 Solution

Help people. Don’t be afraid to share precious pieces of advice and working practices. This way you will form the image of a professional and will never fail to draw clients.

Mistake 3. Reading Slides

Never read slides during a presentation. This seems to be the most popular and obvious suggestion to a webinar presenter. Notwithstanding this, speakers can encounter speakers that would repeat their keynotes’ content practically on a word-to-word basis from time to time. Usually, this irritates the audience — they could have watched the keynote instead of attending the webinar.

👉 Solution

Use slides as an additional means for your presentation. They will help you draw the audience’s attention and accentuate and underline some important information and assertions, but never will it substitute your presentation.

Mistake 4. Bad Sound

The low quality of sound turns the effectiveness of any webinar to zero. When visitors hear you not well, they will just leave the webinar.

Moreover, low sound quality can cause attendees to feel an absence of professionalism, which could be transferred to your company’s perception in general.

👉 Solution

• Before the webinar, make sure you eliminated all distracting factors that might be heard by your audience — switch off the phone and entry phone, disconnect Skype and other unnecessary software.
• Be sure to test the platform you intend to hold your webinar at approximately half an hour before the broadcast start. If you notice problems with sound, try to eliminate them or use another webinar service.
• If you are broadcasting from your office, make sure you have asked your colleagues not to disturb you.
• Holding a webinar in a small room is a good idea, as the large room could cause the effect of an echo.
• Don’t use the built-in microphone on your computer. Better try a headset or a special microphone.

Mistake 5. Breaking Time Limits

Almost every webinar attendee had encountered a situation when the speaker was late to start speaking or just made the webinar last much longer than initially planned. Sure thing, nobody can guarantee unforeseen situations will not happen. Yet, keep in mind trifles influence the general impression you make.

👉 Solution

Respect the time of your listeners. If a 60-minute webinar has been announced, let your presentation last not more than 45 minutes, and the remaining 15 minutes could be allocated to the questions of attendees.

Enter your webinar room 5-10 minutes before the webinar starts. This will be enough to attach all necessary equipment and start your webinar on time.

Mistake 6. Forgetting about the Audience

One of the webinar’s key peculiarities is its interactive character. Don’t turn your webinar into a lecture. Communicate with your audience not only when the time has come to answer questions. No matter how interesting your webinar’s topic is, if there is no proper communication with the audience, your presentation’s interest will fade.

👉 Solution

Webinar services provide numerous instruments for interacting with visitors. As the webinar, ask questions, conduct polls, invite visitors to live communication, organize draws and quizzes. The more versatile your methods are, the more active and involved your audience is.

Mistake 7. Absence of Analytics

Most presenters limit their activity to counting clients they have managed to attract during the webinar. Yet, they forget to analyze the information they obtained during the webinar.

👉 Solution

One of the marketing advantages of webinars is that they provide lots of data about users. During the webinar, you can ask visitors for their age, position, companies they represent, etc. Moreover, you could gather behaviour information about the visitors, e.g., how long they followed the webinar and their questions. You can also integrate Google Analytics into the webinar room, thus obtaining much more useful information.

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