Boosting your webinar ROI involves a mix of strategic planning, relevant content, and effective engagement techniques every step of the way. Here are seven engagement tactics that will help your webinars stand out from the crowd and deliver the ROI you’re looking for.
1. Targeted Pre-Webinar Promotion
- Segmented Outreach: Tailor your promotions to specific audience segments to ensure they receive content relevant to them. Personalize your promotions through as many channels as possible – email marketing, website, social media, press releases, 3rd parties, call outreach – to generate maximum response.
- Compelling and Concise: Your registration page and all marketing materials should clearly highlight your brand and the value of your webinar. Why should your prospects attend? What’s in it for them? What will they learn? If your registration page and promotions don’t answer these questions, you’re doing it wrong. This should all be done in a concise manner…don’t be long winded with your value proposition and call-to-action (CTA).
- Incentivize Your Audience: Offer free trials or consultations, access to exclusive content, or entry into a prize drawing to encourage registrations and attendance.
2. Choose Dynamic Speakers
- Expert Presenters: Choose speakers who are not only knowledgeable, but also engaging and charismatic. Lively presenters can significantly boost attendee engagement.
- Practice and Preparation: No matter how good your speakers are, don’t overlook the importance of practice, practice, practice. Be sure to schedule dry runs so your speakers maintain a smooth flow throughout the webinar. Also be sure they are comfortable from a technical perspective. The last thing you want is a technical mishap the day of the webinar that could’ve (should’ve) clearly been avoided.
3. Increase Your Registration to Attendee Ratio
- Confirmation and Reminder Emails: Registrants should receive confirmation emails instantly, providing them with their login information and details about the webinar. Automated reminder emails should be sent leading up to the event, including a final reminder on the day of the webinar to maximize attendance.
- Nurture with Content: From the time they register up until the webinar date, nurture registrants with relevant content that will provide additional value. This will get them even more familiar with your brand and increase the chances of them attending.
4. Webinar Timing and Duration
- Optimal Timing: Schedule webinars at dates and times when your audience is most likely to engage. In terms of days, Tuesday and Wednesday are best and Thursday is good as well. For times, we’ve found that 1pm Central/2pm Eastern is the ideal time to host a webinar.
- Concise Content: For the most part, the days of the 60-minute webinar (or longer) are over. Your prospects want to get in and out quicker, but still receive the value they signed up for. Keep your webinar duration manageable to limit attendee fatigue and drop off. We’ve found that anything around 45 minutes is ideal.
5. Live Webinar Engagement and Interaction
- Live Q&A: Be certain that you allocate time for a live Q&A session where attendees can ask questions and interact with the presenters. These Q&A sessions can provide valuable insights for attendees that they wouldn’t have otherwise received.
- Chats and Polls: Use live chat and polling features to encourage attendee participation and gather instant feedback during the webinar.
- Downloadable Assets and Resource Sharing: Offer downloadable assets and resources such as slide decks, whitepapers, reports, eBooks, videos, and blogs to provide additional value and keep the audience engaged beyond the webinar. And if you’re using the right webinar platform, you’ll be able to see who downloaded and engaged with these assets.
6. Webinar Next Steps and Additional Interaction
- Clear CTAs: End the webinar with clear, actionable next steps, such as scheduling a meeting or demo, signing up for a free trial or consultation, or providing them with a link where they can get additional valuable information.
- Breakout Sessions: Use breakout rooms for smaller group discussions or interactive workshops after the webinar to enhance attendee engagement and provide a more personalized experience.
7. The On-Demand Engagement Plan
- On-Demand Access: Provide all attendees and those that registered/couldn’t attend with on-demand access shortly after the webinar, preferably within 24 to 48 hours. Then promote the on-demand webinar to generate additional registrations and attendees. It’s all about extending the shelf-life and value of your hard-earned content.
- Feedback Surveys: Send follow-up surveys to gather feedback on your webinar’s content, delivery, and overall user experience. Leverage the data you receive to improve your webinars moving forward.
- Repurpose Your Webinar: Webinars can create a treasure trove of additional content. Beyond the on-demand recording, you can use your webinar to create highlight reel videos, blogs, case studies, and webinar briefs. You can also use audience engagement data as the foundation for future webinars. This is why, when done properly from beginning to end, webinars are the ultimate lead generation tool.
- Take Immediate Action: Follow up with attendees and registrants through personalized call, email, and social media campaigns. Use your engagement metrics and analytics to market more efficiently and sell smarter to your webinar participants. This will increase conversions and take your webinar ROI to the next level.
Implementing these tactics can help you create a more engaging and valuable webinar experience from beginning to end, ultimately increasing conversions and greatly improving webinar ROI.
Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com