MackCollier.com

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The One Thing You Can Do Today to Make Your Webinars Better

Make your webinars better

Webinars are an incredibly powerful tool to train your employees, to cultivate leads, and provide valuable content for subscribers. They are also very popular because they offer a chance to learn from subject matter experts from the comfort of your home or office.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong with webinars. With many webinars, you’re dealing with three sources that all need to be coordinated live:

1 – The webinar platform

2 – The webinar host

3 – The webinar subject matter expert

 

If there’s a technical issue with any of these sources, the webinar will hit a snag. Here’s a worst-case scenario I had to deal with a few years ago: I was contacted by an organization to do a webinar for them. They were using a webinar platform that had to setup and facilitate the webinar for them. On the day of the webinar, the organization hosting the webinar learned that the webinar platform that was facilitating the webinar had made an error, and hadn’t scheduled the organization to be able to use their system on that day. So we had to resolve that. Then the person that was going to introduce me was late and no one could find her. Then when the webinar finally started, the platform kept crashing as I tried to move through my slidedeck. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very good experience for the attendees, for me, or for the host organization.

Another problem with most webinars is the live Q&A that starts immediately after the webinar in most cases. Typically, attendees will submit questions during the webinar, then afterwards, the subject matter expert will answer a few that have been selected. The problem arises in the screening process. Since the subject matter expert is performing the webinar live, he or she can’t screen the questions coming in. So that duty typically falls to the people at the host organization, who often aren’t familiar with the topic of the webinar, and as a result they are forced to guess at what questions should be answered.

Here’s the One Thing You Can Do to Greatly Improve Your Webinars

As you can see, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with the average webinar. But here’s one simple thing you can do to greatly improve the quality of your webinar as well as the survey results you get from attendees: Let the speaker record the webinar and don’t force them to deliver it live.

Here’s why it makes so much sense to let your speakers deliver a recorded webinar vs a live one:

1 – Live technical snafus by the speaker are eliminated. Instead of relying on the speaker’s computer to work properly, and their internet connection to remain stable, you just hit Play on a video, and it’s done.

2 – The speaker’s quality of delivery is greatly enhanced. By giving the speaker the freedom to submit a recorded webinar, you let them polish their delivery and better explain the topic. Also, it avoids the possibility that something might happen during the speaker’s live delivery to cause a disruption. Such as hearing the speaker say “And in the process, this leads to higher customer retention rates, and that…Fluffy! Don’t drink out of my coffee cup! NO! NO! NO!”

3 – If the webinar is recorded, the speaker can screen questions while it’s playing. This allows the speaker to select better questions and also gives the speaker time to research her answers to improve feedback given.

4 – A recorded webinar means the speaker is free to interact directly with attendees in the webinar as well as promote it to others. The speaker can address questions or confusion with the attendees, or even work directly with them on a specific issue. Trust me, this makes a HUGE impression:

5 – Better engagement from the speaker during the webinar means higher satisfaction from attendees. Let’s be honest, when we attend a webinar, we don’t expect the speaker to engage us DURING the webinar. It’s a big surprise, and often a big thrill. It makes us feel better about the webinar, better about the speaker, and better about the host. It also makes us more likely to attend future webinars from this same speaker and host.

 

I’ve recorded my webinars for years, and I’ve been free to engage directly with the audience during the webinar.  This has resulted in much higher satisfaction scores for my webinars and much happier clients who hire me. If you want to learn more about why my webinars are so successful, click here.

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Study: 4.7% of Your Customers Generate 100% of Your Online Word of Mouth

Word of mouthIn 2013, EngageSciences analyzed online interactions with and from over 400 brands and drew a conclusion that’s not that surprising: A small fraction of your customers are driving all of the online word of mouth about your brand.

The startling figure from our research was that typically only 4.7 percent of a brand’s fan base generates 100 percent of the social referrals. So to put it another way, it is 4.7 percente of your social media following that generates all of the word of mouth results, and by results we mean conversions, not just reach. These are the advocates that can actually influence their friends to convert directly onto your campaigns, to connect with you as a brand or take up an offer.

Not that we are ignoring the other 95 percent, there is still plenty of value in this large segment. They’re connecting to you as a brand, the active fans are consuming your content and they are 20-30 percent more likely to buy from you as a result. But if we are looking at social media through the eyes of marketing and we want to improve our acquisition metrics, then it is the top 4.7 percent  that generates all of the earned media results and organic growth

This is exactly why it’s so important to engage with your fans.  So many companies view their marketing campaigns as the chief channel for customer acquisitions, when in fact its your fans that are driving new customer referrals.  The end result is that companies end up spending massive amounts of money on creating marketing messages that are designed to connect with potential new customers.  People that have little to no interest in hearing that marketing message.

The Loyalty Graph

The biggest takeaway for me in writing Think Like a Rock Star was studying how rock stars create fans and learning that they all pretty much have the same marketing strategy guiding their efforts.  While companies create marketing messages designed to acquire new customers, rock stars across the board purposely ignore new customers, instead focusing on their biggest fans with the understanding that those fans will acquire new customers for them.

The problem is most brands don’t know who those 4.7 percent are and don’t have programs in place to work with this elite group of advocates. Marketers are often seduced by trying to pay for access to influencers – celebrities, bloggers and industry analysts. However everyone else is trying to do the same thing, which negates the value of this approach.

I also noticed this when writing my book.  I interviewed dozens of top brands, and asked them about their programs for connecting directly with their fans and advocates.  Every brand told me the exact same thing: We don’t have any program in place to do that.  So much of the marketing focus is on customer acquisition that brands don’t realize that their existing fans are a far more effective mechanism for customer acquisition than any series of commercials they can create.

Your fans are special customer that thrive off interacting with you.  When you connect with them, it simply validates why they love your brand and encourages them to create more positive word of mouth about your brand.

The most positive, long-term impact you can make on your business is to build a program within your brand that allows you to connect with your most passionate customers and they with you.

Period.

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Three Emerging Technologies Will Revolutionize Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Emerging Technologies Impacting Your Digital Marketing Strategy

So many digital marketers focus on understanding every shiny new tool that pops up. And so many CMOs are scared to death of missing out on the next Facebook or Twitter. So every time a new social tool pops up, every marketer rushes there in a sort of cyber land-grab, which often ends up turning into a ghost-town within weeks.

This is why I always say don’t focus on understanding the tools, instead aim to understand how and why people are using the tools. Understanding customer behavior is far more important than understanding tools that may be totally irrelevant in a month. Here’s three emerging technologies that will impact your digital marketing strategies in 2017 and beyond.

 

WiGig – The next generation of Wifi, known as WiGig, promises to greatly widen the internet bandwidth available to devices that access its networks. Theoretically, speeds on WiGig networks could surpass current Wifi by up to 300%. Of course, there will be rollout issues as the market won’t begin to see a plethora of WiGig-capable devices until Summer or Fall of 2017. The good news is that gives you time to plan how this will impact your digital marketing strategy.

WiGig will impact the types of content that customers will consume on their devices. A bigger pipe opens the door to streaming content such as video and more live-streaming from apps such as Periscope. Also, keep in mind that the line between smartphones and tablets is blurring quickly. An iPhone 7 Plus has a viewing screen size of 5.5 inches, whereas the iPad Mini’s screen size is 7.9 inches.

What You Should Do Now:  Start by examining your existing digital marketing strategy and deciding how or if WiGig could impact it. First, WiGig is effectively a bigger pipe for connected devices, especially mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. So a more robust network means you can more easily deliver content that requires more bandwidth, such as video. If you’ve already seen success from your existing content(such as podcasts) being consumed on mobile devices, it could be time to shift to video, as it is going to be huge for digital marketing in 2017.

 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) – One of the more controversial Super Bowl ads of 2017 was a spot for Google Home that accidentally set off customer devices across the country when the commercial aired. While funny (or annoying if you were affected), this is another sign that such digital assistants are becoming more commonplace. Amazon has been experimenting with devices such as Echo for years, and moving forward these devices will continue to improve, and eventually go from being inconsistently weird tech toys to valuable parts of our everyday lives.

Keep in mind that the rise of digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo means a change in user behavior. If a customer uses their laptop and goes to Google to perform a search, the terms they use will likely be more exact and precise. But if that same customer interacts with a digital assistant they will ‘search’ for the same item, in a different way. Devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are being marketed as ‘assistants’ moreso than devices, because these companies want customers to be more conversational with the devices. This leads to more conversational search terms.  The user could search for the same thing in slightly different ways based on the device being used.

EX: Search while on laptop: “Best Italian food in San Diego”

Search with Google Home: “Ok Google, what’s the highest-rated Italian restaurant within 3 miles?”

What You Should Do Now: Consider the impact that devices utilizing AI is having on your business now, or could in the future. A good starting point is to get a handle on your existing mobile traffic. What percentage of your search traffic is from mobile devices, and what type of keywords are people using to find your content. If you feel customers will be using digital assistants to search for terms related to your business, then you want to incorporate that into your SEO efforts. As mentioned above, customers use more conversational commands when using digital assistants, and this translates into more conversational search terms being used. As always, a big part of SEO success comes from incorporating user habits into your content creation. The rise of digital assistants is no different.

 

Augmented Reality: Pokemon Go was one of the hottest crazes in 2016, and it introduced many of us to the world of Augmented Reality. AR utilizes a device’s camera to show you objects with additional content overlaid that has relevance to the user. A consumer example could be looking down a downtown street with your camera and having a coupon app that overlays notifications that show which stores currently have sales. A B2B example could be a company utilizing AR with its field technicians when they perform service calls.

For digital marketers, augmented reality offers a way to improve the shopping and research experience for customers, especially on mobile devices. Customers are increasingly using their smartphones to conduct research at the point of purchase that can often decide whether or not a purchase is made. AR apps can provide content that aids in that research phase, and helps close the sale.

What You Should Do Now: As always, the best marketing solves a customer problem. Before you rush off to research creating your own AR app, instead research the customer problems that an AR app could solve. Here’s an example, last year I was shopping for a new car. I would go to car lots and look at the cars by myself, then when I found a few I liked, I would go back and talk to the salesperson about those vehicles. When I found a car I liked, I would pull out my iPhone and bring up reviews and ratings for the car. It would have been much easier if I had an AR app on my phone that would allow me to look at the cars on the lot with my camera, and superimpose the ratings next to each vehicle. This would be a great idea for a car review site like Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book.  It would have solved a problem for me and it would have simplified my research. And it would have made it easy for me to endorse the app to other car shoppers.

In addition to researching AR app options, also consider the type of content that could be delivered via these apps, and the type of customer that will be using them. For example, B2B buyers may want access to more in-depth technical information than a B2C customer would. A B2B customer may want to see the technical manuals, whereas a B2C customer would rather see user reviews. As always, consider the core problems that you will be solving for the customer by leveraging AR.

 

Remember that it’s better to focus first on the macro-influences on your digital marketing efforts, then hone in on the tactics that are only relevant to your strategy. If you have additional questions about how these and other emerging technologies will impact your digital marketing efforts, feel free to leave a comment or email me for a specific answer to your questions.