If your business is looking to webinars to reach potential customers, Bob Darabant of Astaro has a couple of tips that might keep your cast from falling flat. Hint: Making it sales-focused is probably not the answer. Darabant, VP of Astaro Americas, has a handful of suggestions for making webcasts work for VARs – but these apply pretty well to any business that might be pondering a webcast.
The first and most salient point is not to make it sales-focused. People know when they’re being sold to versus when they’re being offered useful information. Don’t give people a 30-minute lecture on what your marketing department wants them to know – provide a benefit to the people who are attending. Darabant says, “VARs should think about who they want to attract to the webinar, (titles, company size, and vertical) and then research the issues facing these industries today. Once you’ve learned about a few major problems that your target audience is dealing with, find a way your product fits in, and that is your topic.”
What if they gave a webinar and nobody came? You probably don’t want to find out. Another part of Darabant’s advice is not so much about the webinar itself, but about ensuring that the right people turn up. Don’t, he says, just use email to try to drive people to a webinar – use Google Ads, Twitter, Facebook, and other outlets.
Another tip? Bring a guest speaker. A voice from outside the organization might be much more interesting than someone from your company. If it means spending money, Darabant says to do it. “In some cases you may be forced to pay for a guest speaker. The money you spend will be well worth it because the speaker will probably want to promote the webinar for him/herself as well, helping you reach an even larger audience.”
Solid advice. The webinars I’ve taken the time to attend offered a topic I cared about and the promise to learn more on the topic that I could put to use. The webinars that I’ve left early were the ones that were sales-saturated and little more than a Web-based infomercial. Don’t be that company.
As good as Darabant’s post is, I’m sure there’s more to successful webinars. What would you want to get out of a webinar? What kind of topics and information are hard to come by?
