Interactivity involves attendees in the webinar. You can use interactive elements to make attendees follow the webinar more attentively and quickly re-engage with it after an interruption or distraction.

Many attendees are exposed to a lot of distractions during the course of a webinar. Unlike a classroom-based event, each individual is sitting in front of their own computer. Frequently used applications like email programs and communication tools (e.g. instant messaging) are usually running at the same time. There may also be other browser windows open for social media platforms, which issue new messages second by second. All these things, plus an individual’s surroundings, provide potential distractions.

So incorporate interactivity at key points during your webinar. This might be a multiple-choice question with clickable answers or a simple chat question inviting a brief response from attendees. With the right approach, you can return people’s concentration to your presentation and re-engage with your audience.

Examples of interactive elements:

• Multiple-choice question
• Chat question
• Whiteboard vote
• Show of hands
• Interactive drawing

Conclusion

The conclusion is vital to the success of your webinar. To inspire attendees to remember you as an expert and recall your message, you need to make an impact at the end of the webinar. Studies show that just 3 days after a presentation, people only remember a very small amount of the content: the emotional introduction, storytelling (see above) and the conclusion. So at the end of your webinar presentation, recap on the key points and explain what benefits the attendees can draw from the webinar and the action you are prompting them to take. Use further strong arguments and meaningful images. A well-designed conclusion achieves much of the overall effect.

How do I get attendees involved?

To reach your audience, you need to engage with them as a presenter and make them enthusiastic about the products or services you are telling them about. The webinar will only result in sales if your audience can see the actual added value of a solution and has developed trust in you.

Here are a few pointers to help:

Identify pain points and offer a solution.

Before the webinar, think carefully about your target audience. What challenges do they face? What kind of resources or aids do they often need? Only when you understand these ‘pain points’ can you address your audience at the right level. If you can offer solutions, even if only small steps, then you will win over your listeners.

Build trust.

People buy from people, not from companies. A customer will only choose you if you have won their trust and sympathy. But this isn’t always easy. Nowadays, thanks to the Internet and mobile access to information, consumers are extremely well informed. Studies show that it takes five-to-seven contacts for a potential customer to acquire enough trust to make a confident purchase decision.

Position yourself as an expert.

To lay the foundations of trust between you and the customer, they must perceive you as an expert. How can you support this impression during the webinar? As well as demonstrating your expertise through the presentation of the topic, the question-and-answer part of the webinar is very important in this regard. During the question session at the end of the webinar, attendees will quickly recognise whether you really know your stuff or your knowledge is limited to the content of the presentation. So we suggest preparing two or three questions yourself to go into the topic in more depth in a different direction. You can then answer these, and audience questions, with confidence.

How do I turn attendees into customers?

Put yourself in the attendee’s shoes

When you prepare your presentation, make sure you don’t lose sight of the attendee’s point of view. Presenters often make the mistake of presenting a topic too much from their own perspective. As a result, much of the content is not adequately communicated to the audience. Always ask yourself: How would attendees see this? What do they get from this?

Never give your potential customer the impression that you are only interested in acquiring them as a lead. The attendees will quickly catch on to this and instinctively resist the idea of being a record in your CRM system, even if it would mean benefits and a good solution for them at the end of the day. Always make the attendees feel that you are offering them real added value.

Increase your attendance rate.

There are tons of webinars these days; some free, and some you have to pay for. So it’s not surprising that not everyone who signs up for a webinar actually attends the event. It’s not unusual for attendance rates to be less than 50%. You can increase this figure with a few simple measures:

Make good use of email reminders. Lots of people sign up for webinars and then forget to dial in at the appropriate time. So always send out reminders the day before and one hour before the webinar is due to start. In these emails, remind the recipient of the exact content of the webinar and the benefits of participating live.

Include offers that are only available to people who attend the live webinar and not those who simply view the recording (such as a prize draw). Ask yourself whether it would be better for the target audience to offer a recording or to offer two alternative dates/times for people who can’t attend the main event.

Offer bonus material

Bonus material or other extras are an effective way of building additional trust between you and the customer. It’s best to offer this bonus material at the end of the webinar. As an added benefit, this provides an extra incentive for people to stay until the end of the event. Route people via a website that allows you to measure the number of people who access the material. This will allow you to gauge the success of the offer and optimise it for future events. Bonus material might include:

• Trial offer
• Test access
• List of further reading
• Useful links
• Self-test
• Checklist
• E-books

Make a time-limited offer

Analyses of webinars have shown that just 72 hours after a webinar, attendees recall little of the action they were being prompted to take. To achieve a good impact and satisfactory response rate, it’s important to provide a time-limited offer. This forces people to act within a certain period of time if they want to take advantage of certain special benefits. For example, you can make certain bonus material available for a limited time or in a limited quantity, or offer a special price for a limited period only.