My Webinar Experience: How I Avoided the Big Mistakes

At my request, he co-hosted the webinar. He introduced me and moderated questions from the audience.

He sent out a survey requesting feedback from participants.

I found his advice invaluable. Using him permitted me to have a professional-looking webinar. I couldn’t have done it without him.

If you are thinking about a webinar, consider hiring a consultant. It’s not inexpensive ($700), but well worth it.

If you build it...

Will anyone sign up?

That’s the fear that keeps most of us from hosting webinars. It was my concern as well.

I didn’t do much marketing. I posted on social media and started to get some sign-ups. Then, I had a breakthrough.

I have almost 5,000 contacts on LinkedIn. My assistant told me there was a way to invite 1,000 contacts weekly to my webinar with a few mouse clicks.

Since we started six weeks ahead, this was ideal.

It worked perfectly.

Almost 100 firms signed up, and around 60 attended. Many of those who didn’t attend requested a link to the recording.

Pre-webinar survey

I took a very different approach to how I conducted the webinar. I encourage you to do the same.

Before the webinar, I sent a short survey asking a few questions. One of the questions was, “What would you like to be sure Dan covers in the webinar?”

Before speaking to any group, this was my practice, so it was only natural to expand it to the webinar format.

As always, the responses were interesting. There were many issues I wouldn’t have thought to include. I could have spent the entire hour simply addressing those issues.

I continue to be puzzled as to why speakers assume they know what’s on the minds of their audience without asking them.

What should I wear?

I followed the advice I give advisors.

I asked myself, “How do I want to be perceived?”

I wanted participants to view me as credible, trustworthy, and relatable.

The issue with webinars is that attendees come from all over the world. Appropriate dress to elicit those reactions differs by location.

Here’s how I solved that issue: When in doubt, dress up.

I opted for a blue blazer, white shirt, and blue tie. I was aware of the issues with stripes and patterns on video, so I avoided them.

I thought it worked well.

What to avoid

Here’s what I avoided:

PowerPoint slides

I did this, except for opening and closing slides and two slides that repeated the content of polls taken during the webinar. My consultant insisted on these slides.

Talking for more than 10 minutes

While the evidence is conflicting, my experience validates the data indicating that your audience checks out after 10 minutes. I wasn’t about to violate that rule.

Scripts and teleprompter

I know my material. You know yours. Yet we are told to memorize scripts and read from teleprompters. I won’t do it. I want to have a spontaneous conversation with my audience. I don’t want to lecture them.

I made it clear at the outset that I would tell the audience what they needed to know in 10 minutes or less. We would then open the webinar up to questions. Having my consultant convey the questions added to the spontaneity and relatability of the webinar.

We had a plan B because there’s always a concern there will be no questions (although that has never been my experience). We planned to use the issues sent to us in the pre-webinar survey as questions.

There were more questions than we had time to answer, but it was important to end on time, which we did.

Overall, I was pleased with every aspect of the webinar. I’d encourage you to overcome your concerns and try one.

Dan coaches evidence-based financial advisors on how to convert more prospects into clients. His digital marketing firm is a leading provider of SEO, website design, branding, content marketing, and video production services to financial advisors worldwide.

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