Tip 27 – If a Webinar isn’t necessary, don’t have one

Recently, I saw some new trial e-learning materials by a company. They were fine but I couldn’t help thinking – what’s the audience and purpose of these?

They were essentially a cut-down version of one of the main products sold by the company. I suppose the intention was to use them as tasters and lead generators.

Unfortunately, they were quite sterile, despite having fairly friendly cartoon-like graphics and audio from different people. They didn’t really draw me in, so, if they were meant to attract customers to the full product, they fell a bit short and felt a bit flat. There was definitely something lacking.

I realised I felt this way because I wanted to know who was speaking.

I wanted a recognisable person to connect with, someone I could form a relationship with.

This was particularly important because the product was a coaching one.

Then I started to think about how this might apply to Webinars…

Webinars are great – I wouldn’t be doing this blog and podcast if didn’t think so but a Webinar is not always the answer to every question.

If the purpose of what you are doing is better served by a YouTube video promoting your product or service why not make one of those?

Webinars shouldn’t be a ‘default setting’. They should be used as part of a portfolio of approaches. They are excellent for:

• building community
• answering live questions
• demonstrating and responding to queries and suggestions
• using experts to present and give authority
• adding the excitement of a live event or even a recording of a live event
• live streaming face-to-face events
• many others

…but Webinars aren’t the answer to every question.

So overall…

…work out how Webinars best fit into your overall strategy and concentrate on when the strengths of Webinars best suit your purpose. It’s tempting to use as many Webinars as you can, particularly if your system is very expensive or you are growing in hosting confidence but a poorly-targeted Webinar, not used for its strengths, can be very counter-productive.

Creative Commons image credit:  garybembridge  | Copyright music credit (used by permission): Mike Murphy