#INBOUND22 They Snooze, You Lose: How to Take Your Webinars from Boring to Buzzworthy

Since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, webinars which were once considered outdated, have made a tremendous comeback. They allow businesses to host webinars as CPD, product placement and even thought leadership pieces, all hosted from the comfort of your own home or office space.

A constant theme during INBOUND22 was digital fatigue; the audience wants to feel like they’re attending an in-person event instead of what feels like their 15th Zoom meeting of the day. Audiences are tired of the same static experience when watching webinars, and expectations have changed post-COVID.

At INBOUND22, Emily Dick, Director Cvent, Alyssa Peltier, Cvent Senior Manager and Trigger (Alyssa’s dog, but I consider him a host) break down their top ten tips on upscaling your webinars and creating a real buzz for your audience.

They outline their tips as:

1. Put your audience first
2. Try new formats
3. Start with a plan
4. Use the right tools
5. Brand your space
6. Use graphics and videos
7. Interact with your audience
8. Give away great content
9. Repurpose your content
10. Create “can’t miss” moments

In this blog, I will be discussing my top five takeaways from the session

Let’s dive in.

Put Your Audience First

Probably the most obvious tip, but it’s easy to forget about your audience when you’re busy with the other organisational factors of your webinar. Prioritising your audience in the first stages will help you in the long run.

A few critical factors from this tip:

Identify your audience

Are you targeting business owners looking to watch a thought leadership piece, prospecting customers wanting to know your latest products and services or industry experts looking for CPD? Either way, your audience type will need to be factored in when deciding your webinar's format and time length.

Make it known to your audience what they will gain.

If your audience is unclear about what you are offering in your webinar, the likelihood of them not attending is high. Remember, time is precious; you want to clarify what is to gain from taking their time out to attend your webinar.

Try New Formats

Once you have identified your target audience, you can decide the format of your webinar.

If you’re pitching a product, you want to consider keeping your webinar short but with enough content to keep your watcher’s attention. With a thought leadership session or CPD, you can afford to have a more extended webinar as long as your audience knows what to expect.

For CPD and thought leadership sessions, consider partnering up with other organisations or industry experts to switch your format from a standard webinar to a guest panel or Q&A. Audience interactivity is vital, so don’t be afraid to try something new and utterly different from webinar norms.

Emily recommended trying out small, moderate discussion groups for webinars with capped attendance, giving the audience a set of topics, or questions, you want them to think about and discuss. Just like a roundtable discussion, this will get your audience engaged and interacting, and you can speak to your audience directly about how they are feeling.

Start With A Plan

Having a clear plan to follow for your webinar will allow you to deliver a clean presentation without worrying about awkward pauses and wondering what you should say next. We’ve all been there, but with a clear plan to follow, you can talk with confidence. 

Consider doing a few practice runs of your presentation to check your timing and slide order and find out which spots in your webinar lack content or conversation. You can fill out any blank spots with the following:

• Taking a minute for questions
• A poll for your audience to engage with
• Interacting with the chat

Your audience will appreciate the time and effort you have taken to plan your session when you successfully delivered your webinar with little to no hiccups. They will also enjoy the extra interaction and will be keen for more.

Give Away Great Content

There is a constant argument on whether you should charge for your content. Many will argue that you should at least gate your high-quality content via a form to get an email address or other contact information.

But, if you are in a position to, consider giving away your content to your audience for free. This could be your presentation slides, an eBook or a checklist for your webinar.

Giving content to your audience will position you/your brand as industry experts. They will likely come back to you for more based on their experience with the content given at the webinar. It may seem like you are just handing your content for free, with no promise of a result. Be assured that your efforts won’t be wasted, and the return will come sooner or later.

Repurpose Your Content

This tip is all too familiar. Content takes time and effort to create. Why throw it away once your webinar is finished?

Increase the life of your content by repurposing it into:

• Social media posts
• Highlight reels
• YouTube videos
• On-demand, gated content
• News posts
• Blogs

...And much more.

Your content will allow you to spread your message consistently and reach a wider audience through different channels.

Repurposed content can also help your business’s SEO. Increasing domain authority will help your website and pages containing your content to rank higher on search engines and gain more website traffic from your newfound audience.

Conclusion

Webinars have come a long way since they became popular, and their usefulness has been demonstrated significantly during and after the pandemic. It’s a shame they were never challenged pre-pandemic. Instead, they were allowed to slip through the cracks.

But by taking on Emily’s, Alyssa’s (and Trigger’s) tips, you can make your webinars more meaningful, relevant and engaging. Hopefully this is just the beginning for webinars, and we can expect to see many new and exciting sessions in the future.