Meetings Online

If you are going to put on a webinar, you probably already know some of the essential keys to making it a success. But are you employing any strategies that are actually backfiring on you? If so, your online meetings could be sabotaged from the very beginning without you even knowing it. Following are seven of the most common online conferencing mistakes and how you can avoid them.

1. Lack of exposure. In today’s fast-paced world, people would forget their heads if they weren’t screwed on. What makes you think they would remember to attend your web conference if you don’t constantly remind them about it? Make sure you employ a marketing sequence that gets them interested about registering for the webinar and actually attending it. Give them reasons to anticipate the online meeting and consistently remind them to attend up until the actual time of the event.
2. Using a wrong technology. The online conferencing industry has been around for more than a decade. As such, you can find a wide variety of providers for your online conferencing or web conferencing. But all providers are not equal. It’s a mistake to only base your decision on price because, as the adage states, “you get what you pay for.” Your webinar may be the first exposure a customer gets to your business. By choosing the right provider that offers support, reliability and multiple capabilities, you are ensuring your company’s chance for success.
3. Ignoring your target audience’s AIDA (Attention-Interest-Decision-Action). These days, everybody has a short attention span. If your webinar doesn’t immediately appeal to your target audience, you might as well not even do it in the first place. Make sure you garner their attention, make them interested in your presentation, make them decide to attend and follow through (action) by actually attending your online meetings.
4. Boring your attendees. With internet conferencing, you have a greater chance of losing each attendee’s interest because they are not actually in the same room as the speakers or the presentation. That means your online meetings have to be extra engaging and energetic to keep everyone interested. Try rehearsing the presentations before the event to make sure you get the mechanics right. Also, don’t overburden attendees with too much information. The more concise and direct the information, the more it keeps the audience’s interest.
5. Using the internet conference as a standalone event. This is simply a waste of money and time if you don’t follow up with the ones who attended the event. Create a plan for post-event activities, websites and campaigns that are available immediately following the webinar while everything is still fresh in your audience’s mind. This will help the whole process be successful.
6. Utilizing the wrong method for building a list of attendees. To bring more people to your online meeting, be sure to use direct response marketing that emphasizes the benefits attendees can receive from the event as well as intriguing copy that gets them interested. Use testimonials, a call to action and other ways that make your internet conference convenient to encourage people to register.
7. Employing only the Internet to reach potential attendees. The Internet may be the best way to reach a large number of people, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use other methods like snail mail, post cards, fax machines and even the telephone. Email isn’t as effective as it once was with SPAM blockers and the fear of opening emails from unknown people. Boost your chances for success by utilizing every communication method available to you and you’ll undoubtedly see better results.

You put so much work into your online meeting and web-based campaigns. Don’t let one of these simple mistakes sabotage all of your hard work. Now that you know the most common mistakes and how to avoid them, your upcoming webinar is already off to a great success!