Category — Web Seminars

Many web seminar invitations inevitably go to somebody’s equivalent of anonymous@hotmail.com, which means that often they end up in in-boxes that are checked infrequently. 

This means that as lead times have gotten shorter, there is a greater chance that infrequent anon checkers get your invitation too late – either too close to the event date to act upon it, or just plain too late.

Make sure the ‘register’ link in your invitation redirects to the web seminar archive.

In the world of connectivity, one digit out of place in a conference call number, PIN number, or login URL can spell disaster for many…and therefore your event.

When copying instructions such as a conference call number and PIN or a web conferencing URL, lower your risk by not typing except as necessary.

Copy/paste, don’t re-type.

Two old project management adages ~

“A poorly-planned project takes three times as long as expected.  A well-planned project only takes twice as long”

“On time, cheap, and good.  You can have any two”

The problem for live web seminars?  There is no pushing the date, and there is almost never any extra budget.

Result?

Yawn.  Online slideshow.

Web seminars are, by most definitions of project management, projects.  Unlike ‘normal work,’ projects (and web seminars) bear three distinct characteristics.

Finite duration
Web seminars, like projects, have starting and ending points.  The end point, of course, is the event itself.  Projects are not ongoing, recurring work (e.g. ‘get the TPS report out every week).  Web seminars may get strung together into campaigns, but I’d still argue that that’s one big project made of several little ones.  The goal is to end it all…successfully.

Goal-oriented
Projects have stated objectives, and web seminars should also.  And don’t say ‘to get the word out.’  You’ll get shot by some disgruntled, unemployed marketer looking to get a real job by decreasing the labor supply.  A key characteristic of projects is that they can be broken down into tasks that can be sequenced from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B.’

Unique/non-routine
If you do it all the time, it’s probably not a project, it’s a job description.  Web seminars typically have unique problems or situations, unique people and messages. 

Web seminars are projects.  Learn project management. 

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes:  Have you ever dialed into a conference call and find that the passcode is longer than the Mississippi? 

Web seminar producers and promoters should be intimately concerned with the details of an attendee’s user experience.  When they have to dial a long passcode to access the conference call, they have to look back and forth between the source (e.g., the confirmation email, the calendar invite, etc.) and the telephone. 

Result:  more chance they fat finger it and have to do it again.

Solution:  break it up.  Note how these numbers look…

746 278 62    instead of    74627862

Add spaces to your conference call passcodes to make them easier to read.

Dateline:  17 March 07

Pub:  Business Week

Quote:  (Microsoft) SVP Mich Matthews told attendees at a recent marketing conference that over the next three years Microsoft will move most of its ad buys into the digital realm.  “Interaction,” said Matthews, “is even more valuable than exposure.” 

I forgot that I saved this quote, but I remember being struck by it.  Remember he previously stated adage, “The power of the live, interactive web seminar is dialogue”?  Here’s somebody in the ad space saying something similar. 

Here’s why:

To hone a message for a marketplace, I need to research that marketplace.  I begin to try to play to the largest averages.

But if I can ask you a question, your response (whatever it is), eliminates a whole pile of options and let’s me focus my response (the next question or message delivered) with a lot more accuracy.

Deliver a web seminar without asking and answering questions, and you’re broadcasting. 

Dialogue is even more valuable than exposure.

Web seminar promoters are missing a big opportunity:  post-event emails, IF they go out, are rarely strategic or campaign driven.

What’s the value of any given communication?  To advance someone a nudge more from Point A to Point B.  Anything else is just noise and a disservice.

 Here are some ideas for getting strategic…

• ONLY use ‘sorry we missed you’ or ‘thanks for attending’ as a starting point, one of personalization that starts the conversation in the right place.  To the negative, avoid looking stupid because you sent all registrants something saying ‘you recently attended our webinar…’
• Align the purpose of the communication to the purpose of the web seminar.  Turn lurkers into prospects?  Develop thought leadership in the midst of a long sales cycle?  Increase adoption of your product through education?  Get specific.
• Create a call to action, and the associated content, that is relevant to the aforementioned purpose.  Should you send a link to a recording or not?  Should you include a pdf of the slide content or not?  There is no one-size-fits-all answer.
• Think ‘campaign.’  How does this event, and then these communications, fit into the bigger picture.  Could you invite recipients to another webinar?  Could you say ‘thanks for attending, and BTW, there’s a customer conference in your area soon’?

A couple other tactical tidbits…

• Don’t send out the presentation slides.  Really good slides from great webinars make really bad handouts (see my other posts if you don’t know what I mean).  If you want to really take advantage of the content, create a one-page handout summarizing the key points that someone will actually hang onto and refer to later. 
• Before investing time and effort in recordings, think about the nature and life of the content?  Is it going to stick around and be useful for driving to the traffic to the archive, or is it going to evaporate in a few days and be dead weight?  Does getting a link to the recording in a post-event communication delay that communication?  Given it’s value, is that delay helping or hurting?

Don’t create more noise.  Use post-webcast emails strategically.

I’m sitting, at this moment, on a web seminar where Ann and Stefan of MarketingSherpa are presenting.

Stefan admits to being very surpised by at least one finding…  that of the decision makers within the decision-making committees are much more likely to attend web seminars as a means of infogathering.

Funny, we did a study at EnvoyGlobal in 1999 that found the same thing…  

One sure way to lose audience members is if they can read your slides and know entirely what you’re saying.

They can read faster than you speak. If they can read it, they don’t need you. They’ll check email until you change slides. Or they’ll ask for a copy of the slides. Or all of the above.

As my friends Janine and Lee at The Presentation Company teach, one way to combat this is to ‘think visually when presenting virtually.’

Your goal is to represent concepts visually. You don’t have to be a great artist or Jedi PowerPoint Warrior. And I’ll be the first to say that this doesn’t mean you’ll never have a slide that has bullet points.

Just be continually asking yourself, “Could a diagram, a few boxes and an arrow, or (fill in the blank) illustrate this point?”

Think visually when presenting virtually.

On average, most people who register for a web seminar do not attend. While there are many potential reasons, consider the most common scenario.

Prospect receives an invitation. Since the event is three weeks away, their calendar is open.

The day before the event, they receive a reminder… ‘don’t forget that you’re registered for tomorrow’s web seminar.’ Oops, that calendar is now full.

The biggest problem is that they usually don’t remember why the registered. And the reminder rarely, if ever, reminds them.

We go out of our way to have registration pages share ‘why you should attend this event’ benefits. We should go out of our way to re-sell/tell them why they shouldn’t miss it…especially now that your event is competing with a schedule a lot more crowded.

Be sure your reminder emails not only remind registrants when and how, but also why.