Choice is what really drives webinar engagement

Who Doesn’t Want Choice?

When you invite someone to attend your webinar, you are presenting them with a choice: attend, or don’t attend. People like choices. The problem is that often times, that is where the choices stop. Attendees have little say in what is discussed when the webinar takes place or what interactive content is offered.

Start integrating choice into your webinars. Increase your audience’s webinar engagement with these simple and effective changes.

Start with the When and What

In our digital age, people no longer have to join your webinar as it is happening. On-demand webinars have taken off as the preferred option for viewing webinars as they can watch on their own time. Ensure the webinar platform you use can continue serving webinars on-demand for months to follow. Especially if you have a longer sales cycle.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, choosing the right topic is also critically important to make sure your audience is engaged. Also, it is to ensure that prospects are retaining the correct information needed to make an informed purchase decision.

But what if you could put the decision about webinar content back on them?

With an on-demand webinar platform, you share access to a wealth of previous webinars with your prospects. They can choose the topic that addresses their current obstacles. Not only does this choice keep them engaged with your content, but you can track what issues are top of mind to them. This can help influence your sales process.

Use Webinar Questions & Polls

Audience members are four times more likely to respond to poll questions than they are to ask a question. In fact, you can expect to receive answers to your poll questions from a whopping 30% of your webinar audience. Harness webinar questions & polls to make sure your audience’s attention is piqued:

  • Adult education experts employ poll questions because they can reinforce learning points. Make sure your poll question supports the information you want your prospect to retain.
  • What you think might be a prime discussion point might not be for your audience. Use poll participation to gauge your audience’s interest in certain discussion points. Now you are building questions you can use for roundtable discussions in future webinars.
  • Ensure your webinar engagement platform can integrate these answers into your CRM software. This will become important for later use by your sales team. It provides valuable insights into your prospect’s individual circumstances. Also, bringing it up in a future conversation shows that your team is listening to the prospect. This helps with building trust between them and your business.

Let Your Audience Click

We are all guilty of it.

We drift off during a webinar and start clicking elsewhere the second we are not involved in active work. It may be to check sports scores, visit social media, or even move items around the desktop. We have this innate need to be clicking. When watching a webinar, this clicking habit without a meaningful outlet is a wasted opportunity and lost engagement!

Satisfy your audiences’ need to click and your goal of engaging them with these three value-added options:

  • Provide your audience with a handout (any asset) related to your topic. Much like you would if you were presenting to them in person in a boardroom. Take this as an opportunity to highlight your key takeaways. Throw in some extra information that lead audience members into asking follow-up questions.
  • Provide some background on your speakers and your respective organizations. Even if your prospect knows you and your company well, they may not be familiar with your guest speaker. Insert a bio section with website links within your webinar platform. This can be a valuable resource for adding credibility to your speakers in the eyes of your audience.
  • Your end goal with any webinar is to get your prospects to take the next step in your sales funnel. Be that taking a meeting, reading another asset, or finally making a purchase. Inserting a clear call-to-action in your webinar will help guide your prospect to take that next step.

Let’s Recap

We run webinars to generate engagement. An engaged webinar viewer is more likely to retain your information and convert to a customer. Part of engaging your webinar audience is presenting them with choices. Turn your webinar from a one-way video to a two-way interactive conversation. In summary, three of the most effective ways of accomplishing this are:

  • After the live recording, offer your webinars through an on-demand platform to allow your prospects to choose the topic most important to them, and when to view it.
  • Utilize webinar questions & polls to keep your prospects following along and to identify hot topics to delve into.
  • Add interactive content to give your audience something to click that will keep them following along.

If engagement is important to your webinar strategy (hint, it should be) you are going to want to read The Webinar Engagement eBook. Learn about the strategies we employ on a regular basis to run successful webinars and drive pipeline.

Matthew Ley

Matthew Ley

Matt Ley is the current President and co-founder of The Streaming Network. Starting his career in virtual events in 2007, Matt is an industry veteran that is passionate about helping customers stand out in their industry with compelling virtual events that people want to attend. The driving ambition for Matt is that virtual events are not a utility for information distribution but an opportunity for firms to create a competitive advantage. Matt is an accomplished speaker, moderator and a sought-after thought leader.

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