You have heard all the hype about why webinars are fantastic, how they help businesses to grow, build brand, connect with a target audience, and yet your first webinar was a disaster.
Do not be discouraged!
Whether no one showed up for the event, you received lots of negative feedback, or you experienced horrible technical difficulties, all hope is not lost.
Table of Contents
You are not alone!
This has and can happen to even the most successful marketers. The key is to not let this stop you from learning and doing better. One thing is sure, you must have a thick skin to do any type of online marketing, and webinars are no different. Learning to roll with changes is an essential skill in online business and pitfalls need to be seen as stepping-stones to learning and success rather than discouragements.
Use this information to learn from the problem and do better next time, and even better the time after that.
Not Enough Participants
This can be quite discouraging, but it simply means that you did not market your webinar well enough. You might believe that your product or service is not attractive enough, but in today’s market, you can sell almost anything with the right strategy. Your webinar failed because the webinar itself was not attractive enough, not the product or service.
First, choose a topic for your webinar that draws in the audience just from the title alone. For example, “Hot Trends in Atlanta’s Food Scene” is more attractive than “New Food Truck Opens in Atlanta.” Next, think about your target audience and develop a marketing plan.
Pull together a mass email list of everyone you know of who might be interested in the webinar. Ask others in your company to provide contacts or to send an email to their contacts directly.
Post frequent announcements on social media to announce it. Scour the Internet for event boards and industry news websites related to your topic; some are free to post on and others cost money. With enough advertising, you should have no trouble finding participants.
Recruit affiliates and pay them a commission to send announcements to their lists. Affiliates are invaluable assets when it comes to promotion and they can grow your audience base exponentially.
Learn From Negative Feedback
You might be ready to give up after receiving survey after survey full of negative feedback.
Do not let this discourage you. Read the feedback closely to figure out what went wrong.
Did they leave advice on how to improve the webinar?
Do they have a problem with your product or service? If the issues are with your product and not with the webinar, then work with someone on your team to create a new product brand.
You may not have used the best language to promote the product, or you may be reaching out to the wrong target audience. Work with a marketing expert to figure out what is wrong and how to improve.
If the negative feedback is due to the webinar, try taking a different approach in your presentation. Perhaps cultural sensitivities were involved or other offensive language used. The more diverse your audience, the more issues you will encounter, so be sure to review your presentation language for anything that might have offended.
Was your presentation extremely boring? Try to liven up the language and incorporate humor as much as possible. Practice public speaking as often as you can in order to improve these skills. Watch as many webinars as you can, and see what others are doing right and wrong in this regard. Monitor the audience’s reactions to the presenters to see what works and what does not.
Technical Problems
The importance of a technical specialist cannot be stressed enough. You should always have tech support on hand in case something happens. Even though you use a computer every day with no problems, problems tend to hit at the most inconvenient times. Do your audience and yourself a favor, by hiring someone to help, or using someone within your company. You can find many inexpensive webinar assistants online who are highly experienced in webinar support.
Room To Improve
Like anything other skill, a masterful webinar presentation takes time to learn, and master. There is always room to improve, especially for first time webinar hosts. Your problems are not unique, and they are not as extreme as you may fear. Take the time to research this topic online, learn from other people’s experiences, and keep perfecting the craft.
There will always be people out there who are interested in what you have to say. Your recovery from a failure is simply a matter of being more prepared for the next round; and remember, failure is simply a stepping stone to success!
Loading...
