Webinars also allow the nurturing of prospects along their individual paths to purchase and the development of deeper relationships along the way. It’s no surprise webinars are so valuable and play such a big role in today’s marketing strategies, but one thing that many marketers struggle with is their webinar drop off rate. Getting people to a webinar is easy—keeping them there is another matter entirely. Let’s explore that, and how you can decrease your webinar drop-off rate.
The Benefits of Webinars for B2B Lead Generation and Nurturing
Whether you use webinars for B2B lead generation, lead nurturing, or to continue to develop relationships with current customers, there are many tangible benefits of webinars. Some of the most common include:
- Webinars are easy. Webinars are attractive largely because they are not only effective, but they’re an easy solution. Powered by cloud technology, today’s simple, intuitive webinar interfaces can make joining and attending a webinar incredibly simple for participants—all they need to join is an Internet connection. For a webinar host, cloud technology also makes it easy to set up and manage webinars without a need for pre-installed hardware or software, extensive training, or system configuration.
- Webinars are easily accessible. Done right, webinars and their content are easily accessible, whether on a desktop or a mobile device. The webinar host can easily share content, chat with participants, and even poll the audience and deliver results, all in real time.
- Webinars are cost-effective. With the right webinar software solution, it’s possible to hold as many webinars, online training sessions, or even internal meetings as you like, all for one low monthly rate.
- Webinars are secure. In today’s business world, security is always top of mind, and any webinar platform that you consider using should end-to-end, 256-bit encryption. Other safety measures you should seek include unique participant links and password protection services.
The Secret to Success? Decrease Your Webinar Drop-off Rate
The secret to success with your B2B webinars is simple—it’s all about the ability to decrease your webinar drop-off rate. Once you’ve successfully invited and attracted people to your webinar, the challenge is to keep them there—and that’s really all about creating a great experience for them. Don’t take them for granted—just because they show up doesn’t mean they will automatically stay. In order to keep them engaged, you have to make it worth their while.
Here are some key tips to help decrease webinar drop-off rate and ensure you keep registrants engaged in your webinar once you get them there:
- Deliver great content. As with any presentation, the content you share with participants is the number one thing that will make your webinar effective. When planning a successful webinar, prepare your content carefully and ensure that your attendees find it useful. Resist the urge to sell at all costs! Consumers today are savvy and they’re not interested in signing up for a webinar that promises valuable information only to be delivered a sales pitch or a sales presentation deck disguised as a webinar. Develop your webinar content so that it is valuable to an audience and respects the time they’ve set aside to spend with you. Great webinar content solves a problem, relieves a pain point, or answers common questions that your prospects have. Webinars that focus on industry trends and provide business growth solutions are also incredibly valuable to audiences. Do these things with your webinar content—don’t sell—and you’ll find your webinar drop-off rate decreasing exponentially.
- Practice makes perfect. When it comes to decreasing your webinar drop-off rate, another secret that should be a no-brainer (but often isn’t) is that practice makes perfect. The very worst presentations are the ones where a presenter sounds scripted, like a robot reading a teleprompter, or even worse, unprepared and stumbling around. Carefully plan the webinar content and presentation, and practice it many times before the actual webinar event. The better your delivery, the more fluid the presentation, the more engaged and interested your participants, and the lower your webinar drop-off rate will be.
- Make the webinar interesting—incorporate polling. Another way to decrease your webinar drop-off rate is to make sure the webinar an interactive experience. The more interactive the presentation, the more interesting it is, and the less chance attendees will drift away. Incorporating polling is a tactic the best webinar presenters use to keep a presentation interesting. By using polls during the presentation, it makes your audience feel more important—like they’re a part of the presentation and that their opinions matter. Even better, poll results help show what their peers think about certain topics and help them keep current on industry trends. Poll results are an added takeaway from a webinar event, so integrating them in will definitely help decrease your webinar drop-off rate.
- Encourage audience participation by way of Q&A. One of the best ways to keep an audience engaged is by letting them become a part of the program. Even though your content is (hopefully) relevant and interesting, most people don’t want to just listen quietly. People like being invited to share their questions, ideas, or comments. Some webinar hosts invite registrants to share questions in advance, which is a great way to gauge where your audience’s interest is and tailor your content accordingly. Other webinar hosts set aside a few minutes at the end of the presentation for questions, and if there are more questions than time allows, respond offline to audience questions. No matter which tactic, or both, you incorporate into your webinars, questions and answers are integral to increasing audience interest and participation and decreasing webinar drop-off rate in the process. The best advice is always to make it a dialogue instead of a monologue and your audience will respond accordingly.
Want to Position Yourself for the Best Success with Webinars?
Webinars are the gold standard when it comes to B2B lead generation, and positioning yourself for success helps ensure you get the greatest ROI from your marketing spend. One way you can ensure success with webinars is to work with a partner who is as invested in your success as you are—and that perfectly describes our team at Onstream Media. We have helped thousands of businesses leverage webinars to meet their marketing and lead generation goals, connect with customers and prospects, and build a name for themselves as trusted business assets. Cloud technology has made webinars an easy solution to offer, but there are many moving parts to producing and pulling off a successful webinar event. Working with the team at Onstream means that we handle the myriad of details involved in making a webinar successful, and you reap the benefits. Focus on developing great content and a fantastic presentation, and let us handle the rest. If you’d like to explore the benefits of working with Onstream, contact us today—we’d love to talk further.
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