Column: Best practices for training webinars

Webinar technology is rapidly growing in both usage and capability. Although webinar sales are expected to exceed $3.4 billion by 2014, it is its rapid growth and adoption in other areas that is so noteworthy.

One of the areas experiencing such rapid growth involves education and training. Largely because of significant savings in time and money, companies are increasingly turning to online technology for education, product demonstrations and training. Even when training is performed by an outside company, it increasingly utilizes online instruction. This in turn has radically altered the training landscape by reducing the number of in-person training opportunities, instead requiring the creation of a wide range of online courses.

Online education courses can be lucrative for several reasons:

Ӣ Most important, they adhere to the basic webinar premise: the one-to-many capability. For roughly the same amount of time and energy that you expend to train one person, with a webinar you can train any number of people.

”¢ Although they are usually less expensive to attend ”“ making them more attractive, they are also more profitable because they require fewer personnel and overhead.

Ӣ Educational webinars can be easily modified or tweaked, as needed.

Ӣ They provide continuing education credits making webinars highly attractive, particularly if attendance is during non-working hours.

So how do companies generate revenue with training-based webinars? Often, it”™s by simply charging a one-time attendance fee. Some of the more successful companies are now bundling several of their training webinars together to form a series or curriculum and awarding a certificate of completion to attendees who attend all the requisite webinars.

When a company sets up a fee-based webinar, it must consider the following:

Ӣ Determine what is of specific interest to its target audience. What will they pay money for?

Ӣ How in-depth can you make your presentation? For free webinars, your audience will show some tolerance with the level of your content. However, for paid educational webinars, they are far less tolerant. Regardless of the price, they demand and expect outstanding content.

Ӣ Your promotional materials must strongly reflect your content. If a well-known speaker is providing the webinar, be sure to promote him or her. A big name can significantly increase the number of attendees. Testimonials or endorsements by well-known attendees or organizations can also be extremely beneficial.

”¢ Eliminate any marketing and sales in the webinar except for a brief call to action at the end for any additional services or products you may offer. People already paid for your webinar. They will not tolerate their time being wasted by an additional pitch. Your primary sales tool ”“ your credibility ”“ will be the quality of your webinar. Whether your attendees decide to sign up for additional webinars from you will largely depend on that quality of your material and presentation and whether or not they believe they received a high return on investment.

Ӣ Make sure you have a follow-up program in place that will enable you to get feedback and remain in front of your audience.

There are many educational webinars being offered. While their cost may vary enormously, the major point of differentiation between them is the quality of their promotion, content and presentation, all of which contribute to the bottom line: Did the webinar deliver what it promised and if so, how well? Most tellingly, would you attend another one of the presenter”™s paid webinars?

Bruce Newman is the president of wwWebevents.com, a division of The Productivity Institute L.L.C., and the creator of The Complete Webinar Training Course, an online course that helps companies create and promote highly successful webinars. He can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.