Webinar Wire

After Your Webinar: Follow Up Techniques That Work!

Now that you have held a successful webinar presentation, what comes next? It is critical to maximize the leads you have generated from your webinar presentation. Disregarding this part of the process is wasting the time you put into developing your presentation and leave lots of money on the table!

So here's a simple formula for follow up after your webinar...

Every webinar should have a "call to action" and I usually attach a reward or consequence to those who "act" before my deadline. But after the deadline, is there anything else you can do to generate sales? You bet!

After week after your initial deadline expires, consider emailing your webinar registrants (who did not buy during during the first offer) with a slightly different offer than the offer you proposed in the webinar. It can be a $1 trial for 30 days, then the balance is charged at the end of the trial period. Another variation of this is offer the product for the cost of shipping and handling for 30 days, then charge the remaining balance at the end of the 30 days.

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Summary Of Web Conferencing Vendors Available

Posted by Ken Molay March 4 2010 11:47 PM EDT

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A big tip of the hat and thank you to Susan Matkov who alerted me to a report from business-software.com. It is titled "Top 10 Web Conferencing Software Vendors Revealed" and has a copyright from this year.

There isn't much explanation on how they picked the highlighted vendors. Just a single sentence saying "we’ve featured ten of the leading Web conferencing vendors in this report." The big market share leaders who you would expect are certainly included. But there are also a couple of service provider/resellers in the list, which seems a little strange.

As is often the case with compendia of web collaboration vendors, it can be hard to compare products within use categories. This report includes products targeted at e-Learning, structured web seminars, and unstructured group web conferences. About the only thing they didn't include was classic webcasting products with streaming audio/video as the primary goal.

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How To Record Your Webinar!

It's really not that hard to record your own webinars. All you will need is just two computers and a few tricks of the trade.

You will need to use your primary computer (pc or mac) to broadcast your webinar. If you are looking for a cheap webinar service to get started, then I recommend GoToWebinar by Citrix to avoid the inflated costs that other companies will charge. This company will allow you to accommodate up to 1000 participants. The best part is that they allow you to be able to test yourself by having practice webinars.

You will also need a recording computer with Camtasia installed. You can login to your webinar on the recording computer as an "attendee". Once you open Camtasia, you should set the recording box on your recording computer to 640 x 480. You will then be able to broadcast and participate in your own webinar from your broadcasting and recording computer respectively. Make sure that the audio is set for manual input.

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Webinar Gets Terminology Approval in NY Times

Posted by Ken Molay February 27 2010 5:46 PM EDT

I had to follow up my last post about "webinar" as useful vs. unuseful terminology when I saw a story in today's New York Times by Bryan A. Garner. Part of the Times' "On Language" category, the article is simply titled "Webinar."

Mr. Garner starts his article with this paragraph:

Webinar (Web + seminar) seems like a fine neologism for a seminar offered online. A blend of two common terms, it’s immediately understood by most people. I’ve been taking Webinars lately; I like them and appreciate having a handy word for them — even though I’m often inclined to object to linguistic “innovations.”

The battle over the use of the word has spurred various parties to fits of vitriol over the past few years. I have reported on the controversy both seriously and with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Here are some links if you really enjoy the subject:

What's The Matter With Webinar?

Legal Status of "Webinar"

Trademark Controversy Followup

You Can Say Webinar

Webinar Webinar Webinar... Nyah Nyah!

Webinar Is Not A Marketing Term

I have received both blog comments and private emails from people convinced that the term offers concrete evidence of the decline and fall of the English language, as if our language is a static, unchangeable absolute. I direct these people to the following sentence from Mr. Garner:

Once a word acquires general currency, only a hopelessly out-of-touch pedant would take up quixotic arms against it.

Nifty.

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Webinar Is Not A Marketing Term

Posted by Ken Molay February 24 2010 8:47 PM EDT

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Anne Holland put up the results of an A/B comparison test between two web site navigation menus. One site used the phrase "Webinars" to indicate a page of available sessions. The second site used the phrase "Online Training." Anne invites you to guess which navigation bar resulted in more click-throughs to the target page.

I don't think I'm spoiling the fun when I tell you that the results are completely unsurprising. "Online Training" resulted in significantly higher clicks to the page, but also attracted more attendees to the webinars promoted on that page.

You might think that I would be dismayed or defensive about these results, writing as I am on the "Webinar Wire" and being closely associated with the word "webinar." But not only would I predict such a result, it backs up advice I have given companies for many years... You need to promote benefits, not mechanics.

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Registering For A Webinar Recording

Posted by Ken Molay February 16 2010 12:04 AM EDT

1 comment

I have been following a discussion thread on a LinkedIn group where a commenter asked whether any webinar vendors provide a special registration option for people who are interested in your webinar topic, but know they won't attend the live session. It would be a way for them to provide their contact info and tell you that they want a link to the recording and any other associated materials, but don't want to get login instructions and reminders about the live event.

I am not familiar with this feature in any web conferencing product I have tested. Sure, you can add a custom field on your registration page for "Do you plan to attend the live event?", but that doesn't accomplish the goal of not bothering archive-only registrants with emails about the live session.

I keep going back and forth on the benefits and drawbacks of this approach. On the plus side, it might help you as an organizer make a better estimate of the number of people to expect at your session versus the number of people who registered. And it gives your audience options in how they want to interact with you.

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Barrier to Entry: Adobe Connect Pro vs Webex

Posted by Matt Bovell January 27 2010 12:00 PM EDT

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Anyone who talks to me for more than five minutes about webinars knows that I am an Adobe Connect Pro bigot, big time.

Dave Walker, the self proclaimed "Connect Guru" from InteSolv illustrates one of Adobe's advantages over Webex in a painful demonstration. Check out the difference between joining an Adobe Connect meeting vs joining a Webex meeting.

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Webinars - A Waste Of Time?

Posted by Ken Molay January 21 2010 9:38 PM EDT

3 comments

Amber Avines says "...after today's useless webinar, I will never waste my time again." She's not talking about wasting her time with a single company or a single topic. She doesn't want to ever attend another webinar, period.

Houston, we have a problem.

What happened to make Amber say "Somewhere along the line, the word 'webinar' has taken on a negative connotation for me"? She's not talking about the old flame wars regarding the coined terminology. She means that webinars as a business offering have turned her off.

And the key complaint? Simplistic content that doesn't meet her expectations as an audience member, followed by a sales pitch to make her buy "the good stuff."

Having vented a little, Amber admits that quality webinars do exist. But she's unwilling to sort through all the garbage trying to find an elusive gem.

Webinar spam is much more injurious than email spam. If you get an email you don't want, you simply delete it and move on, with a net lost productive time measured in seconds - perhaps less. But if you make a commitment to attend a webinar, postpone other business appointments and tasks during that time period, figure out login and/or dial-in requirements, fidget during the inevitable introductory fluff and then find out there was nothing behind it but more fluff and an unanticipated sales pitch, the provider has just stolen from you. Business time and productivity is a valuable asset and taking it from you under false pretenses is shameful.

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LearningWare Posts Webinar Survey Results

Posted by Ken Molay December 28 2009 4:46 PM EDT

LearningWare has posted the results of a recent survey about webinar usage and perception. They sent out requests to 15,000 recipients and received over 300 responses.

You can go online to see summary results with LearningWare's comments or a full breakdown of responses including write-in responses from participants.

Participation was heavily oriented towards training and education webinars, which makes sense since that is the primary market for LearningWare and would have been prevalent on their mailing list.

One of the questions that I particularly enjoyed was asking people how they have multi-tasked while watching a webinar. It's not just a matter of checking emails or doing other things at the computer. People regularly get up and leave their desk or turn the sound off to concentrate on something else! This is one reason I cast a jaundiced eye at "attention meters" in web conferencing software that check whether focus is on the web conferencing window. I'd rather have someone listening to me and seeing most of my slide while they check their email than have the window focus exclusively on my slide while they are off getting a cup of coffee in the break room!

The final question and response summary is probably the most important for you as a presenter. "What could make webinars better?" received overwhelming responses of "More interaction" and "Better presentations." The next time you need to give a webinar, think about these answers!

Thanks for sharing, LearningWare.

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World's Shortest Webinar

Posted by Ken Molay November 19 2009 7:55 PM EDT

1 comment

I love this idea to death! A company named LogicMonitor put out a press release advertising "The World's Shortest Webinar." Sure, it's a gimmick, but a fun and novel one. They want to demonstrate how fast their product can be configured, so they say they will just start up, do the configuration in a minute or two, and stop.

If only they can carry through on this promise. Unfortunately, my experience with technical product marketing leads me to expect that the actual demonstration will be as quick as advertised, but will be sandwiched between another 20 minutes of introduction, marketing pitches, company background, and audience exhortations.

I hope I'm wrong. It would be SO fun to hear about a live interactive webinar that honestly lasted three minutes!

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