We run tons of webinars for engineers. Some are good. Some are truly excellent. Here’s what separates the greats from the also-rans.
- Planning. The best webinars begin up to 3 months in advance. At this stage, be realistic about the sort of engineering audience that you want. Decide what’s most important. Is it volume of registrants or highly qualified leads?
- Choose a topic that suits your audience goals. Very specific topics tend to attract relatively few, but highly qualified leads. Focus first on giving information that will solve engineer’s problems. Leave the product pitch to the end.
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Choose strong speakers. Ideal speakers in descending order are i) industry analysts, ii) your customers and (distant 3rd) iii) your brand representative. Since a webinar is highly dependent on audio, your ideal speaker will bring lots of energy while still maintaining a very clear speaking voice.
- Bring more than one speaker. Our engineering audience stays more engaged when there is the variety that comes from multiple speakers.
- Keep the slides moving. When you watch a TV show, you’ll see that the camera moves every 5 seconds or so. That’s too fast for your slides, but 3 minutes on a slide is too long. You can spend longer on highly technical slides that require more explanation.
- Practice. No matter how confident your speakers are in their abilities, you need a dry run to confirm that the slides are working, how to deal with any hand-offs between speakers, and that everyone’s audio is loud and clear.
- Promote it to get attendees. First write an excellent landing page and then promote it through email, social media and through your media partner.
- Record the webinar. Less than half of the registrants will attend, so you should send them a link to view it after the fact. And if you leave the recording up, it can keep on pulling new registrants for years.
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Thanks for reading. Comment if you have more points to add.
And let us know if you want to learn more about ENGINEERING.com’s webinar program.
Thanks,
John
