Webinar Wire

Survey Results - Live Webinars Aren't Worth The Time

Posted by Ken Molay September 29 2009 5:40 PM EDT

2 comments

I listened to the eg3.com webinar mentioned in the previous post. Host Jason McDonald presented findings from what he called a "virtual focus group" of 73 screened and qualified engineering respondents.

For me, the most significant findings were those related to what type of presentation vehicle the respondents preferred. Jason said that live webinars scored low on preference compared to other options. Archived (recorded) webinars scored highly. But then the same question was asked as a hypothetical, "if time and money were of no importance."  This time, live webinars scored highly!

My take on this is that audiences have come to anticipate and expect bad webinar practices. There's going to be some good information in there, but you're going to have to listen through uninteresting and time-wasting fluff such as introductory comments, marketing information, backgrounder material you already know, and so on.

I am not here to do a hatchet job on eg3.com or Jason. I appreciate their work in assembling and sharing the information. But I noticed several practical examples we can learn from just in this one presentation. This may end up sounding negative, but it's symptomatic of 99% of all business webinars that get presented and probably applies to your webinars as well. I'm just using specifics from this webinar as illustration. (Sorry, Jason!)

First of all, nobody started talking until five minutes after the scheduled start time. That's five minutes of my day I could have saved by watching the recording. Then we heard a standard script from a moderator, including the recommendation to call in on the telephone instead of using the computer audio that comes up as the default way to listen when logging in. The script also included the baffling line: "By now you have probably downloaded and installed the conferencing software..."  If I'm watching and listening, that's probably true! And how does it help me one way or the other? Try to cut down on your introductory scripts.

Then Jason started his presentation with a backgrounder pitching eg3.com. He also shared his personal background in a format that looked almost like a resume. Unless it's a key part of the information you promised, your audience most likely doesn't care about your educational background... Take the benefit of your perceived authority and gain their trust by presenting the information they want and need!

Then we moved on to some background information about webinars and virtual events in general. That was followed by information about what vendors generally consider their own priorities in promoting and benefiting from webinars. Then we heard about the survey methodology and profile of the respondents. Finally, at slide 19  - and 23 minutes after the scheduled start - we heard the first statistic about how people responded to a question about webinars.

If I represent a "typical" listener who knows what webinars are and has read through the event description, the information that was advertised and interested me enough to sign up has come after 23 minutes of less important, less interesting presentation. That makes a strong case for watching the recording and forwarding, forwarding, forwarding!

A secondary issue with all this preliminary material is that it was written out verbatim on the slides. Each bullet point was animated with a fly-in effect. And Jason basically recited the information we could see on the screen. Since I can read faster than he can talk, it makes another strong case for watching the recording and speed reading through the slides.

What if eg3.com had launched straight into the survey results they had promoted and pitched as a benefit for the listener? They could have written out all the background material on those first 19 slides and made it available as a handout, nicely formatted and branded with eg3.com identifiers. They could have told attendees they would receive the materials in an email, giving them an expected and desired additional communication opportunity. They could have made the online session shorter or made more time for Q&A. Once you start making your presentations in that style, people begin to trust you and feel that it's worth their time to show up for the live event.

The next time you create a business presentation, add one last step after you finish your slides... Go back and read the marketing promotion that went out. Highlight the key promises made and the reasons given why people should attend. Now go back and look through your slides. How long is it before you deliver on one of those key promises? If it's more than 5 minutes, you need to do some editing and reordering.

You can make live webinars something worth looking forward to. One of the key ways to do it is to give your audience what they want. Do it fast. Once you have them hooked, you can take the time to add the rest of the things you wanted to say.