Guest post by Roger Courville, Principal at 1080 Group, LLC, blogger at TheVirtualPresenter.com, and author of The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook

There’s a design philosophy in the world of gaming first coined by Atari’s Nolan Bushnell: “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.” The good news for webinar producers is that the software is easier to use and has more features to get the job done than ever before (imagine hand-coding registration pages by hand and sending reminder emails manually…that’s what we were doing when I started).

The bad news?  Software is only part of the game.  You’ve still got to master the art and science of getting people there.  Whether trying to persuade a crowd in an ancient Greek amphitheatre or using web conferencing or web casting, you’ve got to get them there.  And once they’ve shown up, if they’re not there from the neck up, arguably you’ve lost part of the battle.

The good news?  You don’t have to learn everything through trial and error.  Here are three things you can do to accelerate your webinar mastery.

Get beyond email

I recently completed a study with Bob Hanson at Quantum Leap Marketing entitled How to Promote and Deliver Engaging Webinars. Among the findings: email is still the most popular and valued means of inviting people to register for webinars.  No surprise there. Social media is popular, yes, but creativity with other tactics is getting higher satisfaction ratings.

Solution: In today’s multi-channel, multi-touchpoint world, you don’t have to spend a fortune to drive traffic.  Don’t limit yourself to single channels, and certainly take advantage of free or inexpensive resources like our gracious blog host.

P.S.  If you’re interested in a copy of paper that resulted from study, register for the webinar that Bob and I are delivering for ReadyTalk and you’ll get a copy).

Deliver value, not stuff about you

Webinars are a communications medium, not a topic.  Regardless of where you use them in the customer lifecycle from prospect to renewal, the surest way to get attendees to check out from the neck up is to deliver something other that what’s promised.  In fact, in a 2008 survey by Marketing Sherpa, the number one reason someone leaves a webinar early is, you guessed it, “content not as advertised.”

Solution: Deliver clear, benefit-laden promotion/registration content.  Then be sure that content delivers exactly what you’ve promised…unless you don’t care if they actually listen to your message, that is.

Note, this doesn’t mean you can’t also use a webinar to directly share features/advantages/benefits about your product, service or company, you’d just better be clear up front with prospects that that’s on the agenda.

Get beyond the facts

People don’t need more data…they want context and meaning.  And the research bears this out.

One of the key findings is that a critical component to keeping attendees engaged isn’t just content, it’s delivering stories or illustrations that enhance understanding and their ability to see how the facts apply to them.

Solution: Don’t just use webinars as a broadcast medium.  “Talk” with your audience using webinar tools before, during, and after the webinar.  Get to know them well enough so you can deliver relevant and compelling stories.

The Bottom Line

As we quip here at 1080 Group, “Microsoft will teach you how to use Word, but they won’t teach you how to be a writer.”  Success goes beyond reading a blog post that says “Don’t forget to send a reminder email.”  Like video games, it’s easy to put up a link and host a “level one” webinar, but don’t stop there.  Keep growing your webinar-fu skills, and you’ll increase your ability to not only get people there, but have them leaving you great reviews at the end.

(Photo credit: Atari, false advertising, talk)

What other ways can you improve your webinar mastery? Any comments on the above?