Once you’ve mastered everything else, ask questions that make people think. We all love to get a little smarter without too much effort, and a provocative question does that for us.
An example might be to say, “When this webinar ends, you can talk to your coworkers about these questions, or, if you like, you can talk to us about them. Here’s how to arrange a zoom meeting with us.” This helps make the CTA seem like the most logical– maybe even the easiest– next step.
Explaining an assumption/myth might end up confirming for members of the audience that their assumption is correct! That could be satisfying since there’s tension followed by a guaranteed no-loss result. Putting a beloved concept to the test, then watching it come out the winner, feels good. Have you ever bought something, then watched a video where it wins a comparison to something else? Why? You already own it. Because seeing that you chose the best choice feels great.
One thing many people overlook is the slides’ viewable area. Don’t make everything fit inside the slide’s viewable area. You can make your slides more interesting and create varying shapes by only showing a portion of your slide. You can do this by zooming in on your slide.
One assumption/myth idea is to show your audience three but only reveal two in the beginning. Hold back the other one as a call forward open loop. It adds a little tension and keeps people tuned in while they wait for the result.
Be sure to consider your audience and their perceptions when considering what to share with them. Something that sounds like a good thing to you might not be perceived as a good idea to your audience. For example, maybe explaining your company’s eco-friendliness is a good idea. Maybe keeping your eco-friendliness a secret, for now, is also a good idea. One might turn off certain people. The other might make more people’s lives better, whether they know it or not. (HT to Rory Sutherland)
Everything you read about webinars–all the advice–comes from thinking that people are always logical. I started with thinking people are unconsciously irrational. I then worked backward to the logical place. It resulted in insights we’d have never had. In fact, it resulted in insights that no one has ever had. Until now. Taking the people out of a people equation rarely works.
What can you do pre-webinar to improve attendance? Did you send out a nice email? Did you promote it on LinkedIn? Did you personally invite anyone?
Don’t waste the first couple of minutes of courtesy attention. Open with a bang! You get a very short period at the beginning of any meeting where the audience will pay attention out of courtesy. Don’t throw that away; you might not get them back.
Anyone can easily build a career and add considerable value to an employer on a single eccentric talent if it’s cunningly and usefully deployed. Being a great webinar creator is one example.
How should you choose the topic for your webinar? If you already have an audience, you can develop webinars that address their concerns or hopes. If you don’t have already have an audience, and you want to talk about yourself, you need to tie into some existing need or fear that your audience has.
In B2B webinars, a sale only occurs when people talk to each other outside the webinar. Your webinar’s job is to make that happen.
You can do this (I promise).
In B2C webinars, you try to overwhelm the audience by listing all the things they’d have to do to get results if they didn’t use your product. In B2B, we show how we have thought through and implemented all the (complex) pieces already, so the customer feels secure. It’s similar, but not identical.