Your Webinar failed because it was all about you.
Please don’t invite me to your next webinar. Why? Because your webinar is all about you. And, quite frankly, I don’t care about you. I care about me. So unless your webinar is going to make me healthy, successful or better-looking, I’m not interested.
And to all of you who in the past have invited me to various webinars that were all about you, now you know why I was a no-show. And now you know why no one else showed up either.
You’re not alone. Webinar registrations are way down, and actual attendance is even worse. Companies everywhere and of every size are struggling to gain interest in this overused outreach vehicle. Worse yet, constant webinar invitations have become a major annoyance to everyone that receives them, hurting your chances of ever connecting to your prospective customers.
This is where I think the idea of the webinar went wrong. The truth is that sales and marketing people got lazy. They simply used the webinar as a way to deliver their standard sales pitch to many people at once. The promise was just too tempting to resist. A venue where dozens of prospects can be reached in just under an hour seemed like a dream come true. And this dream turned into a nightmare for sales and marketing teams who tried desperately to explain why attendance numbers were so low. The reason is simple. It shouldn’t be about you. It should be about your attendees.
A webinar should never be a sales presentation. An impactful sales presentation is more intimate. It is a one-to-one conversation with a prospective customer whose needs are directly addressed during the presentation. A sales presentation disguised as a webinar doesn’t address each attendee’s individual needs. And when a presentation isn’t focused on the needs of the prospect, that’s when the prospects lose interest. And keep in mind that a Q & A session won’t save your sales focused webinar either because most attendees will already be tuned out long before the end.
Successful webinars are informational. Not commercial. In other words, a good webinar provides attendees with valuable information that can be implemented with or without the presenter’s product. This way, the webinar is about the attendees. You may choose a topic on how attendees can achieve a goal so that they can stay ahead of their competitors. If your webinar focuses on the attendees’ goals, you’ll maintain their interest throughout the webinar. Only after providing this valuable information, you will have earned the right to explain how your product can help attendees achieve this goal. This way, the webinar is still about them, not about you.
For more information on how to craft a successful webinar, click here.