Why Aren’t Your Webinars Performing?

You’ve probably heard that content marketing is a marathon and not a sprint. That sentiment is especially true when it comes to webinars. Getting traction and building an audience takes a lot of hard work, focus, time, and a solid content strategy.

One of the greatest missteps in launching a webinar program is the failure to plan a series of topics that interest your audiences. Instead, companies simply stumble from one webinar to the next, wondering why they aren’t building attendance. Once you get a reputation for product-centric, salesy content or webinars that don’t provide value in the form of actionable insights, it will get harder to convince your audiences to attend future events.

Sometimes, simply not having an established audience of people who have interacted with other content limits the reach of your promotional efforts—and your audience size. Even when a company has a well-established database and a decent social media following, getting people to attend webinars can be a challenge.

4 reasons you might not be getting better attendance for your webinar:

1. It doesn’t follow the first rule of content creation?
2. It’s a yawner?
3. You haven’t built trust or authority
4. Low visibility

1. Speak to your audience

The first rule of content creation is to know your audience, speak directly to their challenges, and answer their questions. Why then do so many companies turn webinars into sales pitches for their products? ??

It’s tempting to shout your product features and solutions from the rooftops at every turn. At first, you might get some interest if you have a unique approach and product/market fit. But, over time, only hearing about your awesomeness will get boring, and you’ll lose your audience.

The worst webinars I’ve attended are those that feel more like a product commercial than an opportunity for me to learn something new, solve a problem, or discover a new trend. Fool me once into coming to your product-focused webinar, and I’m not likely to return next time—no matter how catchy a webinar title you choose. This is true for most audiences.

Webinars are not intended to be sales presentations. Webinars, like other content, are a tool to engage and grow audiences. If a prospect is looking for a demo video or a video with more product information, those assets should be easily accessible from your website. Lead audiences there to learn more about your product specs and leave your webinars to help tell your brand story, solve problems, give advice, or unpack a recent trend.

2. Give your webinar personality

Why are TED Talks so popular? Because they feature people talking to an audience. Popular TED Talks often include humor, but most importantly, they tell a story. Your webinars should incorporate some of the elements that make TED Talks successful. For instance, be sure to engage your audiences and entertain them while providing useful information. Most of all, your approach should be personal and “human.”

What does being “human” mean? It means that your presenters, panelists, and other participants are not reading from a script or simply presenting a PowerPoint. Use your webinars to form connections with your audience, beginning with showing your face and the faces of your co-presenters or panelists.

Talk to your audience by looking into the camera. You don’t have to be a grinning fool, but cracking a smile once in a while will put you and your audience at ease.

In a world where in-person contact is becoming less and less a part of our daily lives, people are searching for opportunities to be part of a conversation. Talk to your audience as though you are sitting down with a friend for coffee to discuss an important topic or trend. Keep it conversational between you and the audience and you and the other presenters.

Of course, being conversational doesn’t mean that you try to participate in or lead a webinar without notes. Choose a topic and stick to it. Know the points you want to make and stay within your pre-defined time slot. Just be sure you aren’t reading your notes.

3. Build an audience with foundational content

In the content marketing mix, webinars are another medium and method to reach your audiences. However, unlike blogs or website landing pages, webinars don’t often perform well at the top of the funnel.?

Webinar content is not normally top-of-funnel content because it takes a high level of commitment to watch a webinar. Target audiences that have not interacted with your content in the past or established a level of trust with your brand are unlikely to make that commitment for 2 main reasons:

1. They have to register. Attendees are aware that the business contact information they provide will be used to follow up with more content and communications. While no one wants to deal with more spammy email content, we tolerate outreach from companies, technologies, and products we are interested in learning more about.
2. It’s a time commitment. While 30 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot of time, most professionals are still trying to eke out a few productive minutes between meetings every day. They will make the time if they feel they will get value out of the time spent.?

If the target audience for your webinar is not already familiar with your brand, and if you haven’t built trust by creating helpful content that addresses their challenges, they don’t have a reason to trust you with their information or take the time to attend your webinar.

Importantly, if all the content that the audience has seen from your brand includes a product pitch, they may avoid your webinars for fear of getting hooked into a sales pitch with lots of PowerPoint slides.

Treat webinars as part of the content hub you’ve created on your website. Get some foundational content on your topic published and start growing a following and a database of people who have shown interest in your content in the past.?

If you don’t have an established database, you might consider partnering with an analyst firm that covers your industry or one of the popular publications. Depending on the agreement, someone from these better-known entities can appear on the webinar either as a panelist or as a moderator. They will also provide a promotion package targeting their more established audiences that can help you create a more qualified lead list.

4. Use all the channels available to you

Webinar production can be costly. To get your greatest ROI from a webinar series, use a combination of paid and organic promotion before, during, and after the webinar to improve visibility and attract more attendees.

Which of these promotional channels are you using to promote your webinars?

Email promotion

• Create a series of emails specifically inviting audiences to attend the webinar
• Include on-demand webinars in your regular email newsletter

Organic promotion

• Promote registration on all your social media channels at least once a week for 3-4 weeks before the webinar
• Promote the on-demand version of the webinar as part of your evergreen social media strategy
• Include a link to register in related content—such as blogs—or landing pages on your website
• Use a banner or other element to promote your latest webinar on your website homepage
• Write a blog summary about the high points of the webinar and invite audiences to get the details in the on-demand version

Paid promotion

• Place paid ads in target publications
• Use LinkedIn and Google ads

Co-marketing promotion

• Create an email footer for your sales team and other external-facing roles that includes a link to register
• Make webinar promotion part of your employee and executive social engagement strategy
• Create social media posts for your webinar guests and panelists for them to share with their social media followers
• Offer to write emails and social media posts for the company your webinar guests and panelists represent

Preparing the content is only a fraction of the effort required to launch a successful webinar. Making sure you are taking advantage of every promotional activity available to you is key to getting enough attendance to justify the cost.

Marketers serving a company that wants to sell products and services can lose sight of who they are creating content for and why they are creating it. Put your audiences at the center of your strategy and create webinars that focus on their challenges and interests. Leave the sales pitch for another time. Use as many channels and tactics as you can to promote the live webinar, and don’t forget to leverage the on-demand version as part of your evergreen promotion strategy.