The Truth Behind Webinars
There has been a trend over the last 3 years for companies to organize regularly (weekly, bi-weekly or monthly) webinars in order to interact with clients and potential customers.
Web-based seminars usually form part of a marketing strategy, and helps companies position themselves as experts or leaders in specific topics, re-connect with current customers, establish the first link to prospects and also give training on the solutions they offer.
In theory, it sounds simple and brilliant. The reality is that after discussing with more than hundred companies, most of them SaaS, I haven’t come across one team that manages to get regularly more than 5 people in a session, and often webinars need to get canceled because no one shows up.
There are a few things that we should consider here, like the cost of a webinar, strategies to increase the number of participants and alternatives to webinars.
The cost involved in a webinar is mainly driven by the resources allocated to prepare it. The cost of the tools used, such a GoToMeeting and Webex, which are among the most popular, is insignificant considering the hours of work that a team needs to spend putting together the materials, storyline and marketing. If we consider that a webinar takes place at a specific point in time and that potentially not many participants attend, then we should re-think if we are allocating our efforts in the right strategy.
Some companies are offering webinars without stating specifically the topic that will be discussed. This strategy has shown some sort of efficacy as it increases the number of people registering to the webinar, intrigued by the surprise effect.
Another strategy is to invite current customers to attend a webinar like if they were going to attend a conference call. In a conference call, the communication usually tends to be balanced instead of being a monologue, which makes participants commit to a higher level.
One of the main barriers that webinars present, is that the participants need to commit to be online at a specific time, which makes it difficult, specially when these participants could be anywhere around the globe. Another thing to consider is that having people attending, it does not really mean that they are participating, as often attendees just mute the microphone and do several things at the same time.
Offering “canned” content, or pre-recorded sessions, is a win-win situation for the companies, that only need to allocate the right resources once and then offer scalable content, and also for the participants, as they have the flexibility to determine when is best for them to attend.
It is, however, extremely important that these on-demand sessions offer some kind of interaction in order to avoid high drop out rates and keep the participants engaged. These interactions can be from quizzes and assessments to live communication with instructors or other participants.
In summary, before developing an entire strategy to offer webinars, be aware of the pros and cons, and evaluate if offering on-demand content would not have the same or even a better effect with lower costs involved.
