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Where is Everybody? Why Webinar Attendance Doesn’t Matter

By: Guest | June 7, 2012 | 
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Today’s guest post is written by Tom Bishop. 

Ever been to the theater?

There’s a feeling of anticipation as you enter the dimly-lit theater and find your seats. Your eyes adjust, and you notice that half the seats are empty. The orchestra tunes up, and on stage, you see the curtains part just a hair as somebody peeks out.

Behind those curtains the air is thick with anxiety. Chorus members stretch nervously. The lead man hurriedly recites lines. The diva is tossing lunch. The producer, peeking through the curtains, is wondering one thing:

Where is everybody?

He sees the same thing you did. It’s only five minutes to showtime and the house is less than half-full. If you’ve ever produced a webinar, you know exactly how this beleaguered producer feels. 

It happens every time. You have more than 1,000 people registered for your webinar, and as you near the zero minute, only 300 or so have logged in. It’s a disaster. What should you do?

The show must go on!

With webinars, you are the producer and the performer. Seasoned performers learn to imagine performing for just one person, so it doesn’t matter if the house is nearly deserted or packed. But as producer, you have to worry about the crowd. What is the right ratio of registrants to attendees? Is that something you should worry about?

You’re going to hate the answer: It depends.

If you hold similar webinars often enough, you shouldn’t expect high attendance, but everyone in your audience has a chance to see it. If you hold webinars rarely, and your topics are always new, you’ll have higher attendance rates.

Why people don’t attend your webinar

  • People forget. This is the biggest reason people miss your webinars. It’s not hard to register for one, but it does take some doing to remember and attend, so the ratio tells almost as much about the organizational skills of the attendees as their interest level.
  • Timeliness of concept. “Typewriter Advancements You Should Know About” is probably not going to get much interest in 2012, unless it’s meant to be ironic.
  • Time of quarter.Early in the sales quarter is better. Even the company’s important internal meetings are bagged when the quarter is ending.
  • Holidays. When everyone is away for a holiday or school vacation, it will affect your attendance.
  • Day of week/time of day. This is important if your target audience spends Mondays in meetings, middays working, and Friday afternoons golfing.
  • Advance notice. An announcement more than two weeks out may be too soon. Announce the event within two weeks and send reminders the week, the day, and the morning before.
  • Industry news. Say you’ve announced a webinar on using a software tool, and then it is discontinued, like a webinar on “Using Google Wave” a week before Google killed it.
  • Unrelated events. A natural disaster somewhere in the world or a sports event will keep people preoccupied.
  • Weather. If the northeastern U.S. is inundated by a snowstorm on the day of your webinar, it’s a safe bet attendance will be down.
  • Economic and political. A stock market shakeup or breaking election scandal will keep people glued to the news feed rather than your webinar.

For these reasons, it is nearly impossible to find benchmarks for attendance. If anybody can reliably tell you “Tuesday at 1PM is always best” it may be true for them and their business, but not yours.

The real questions you should ask:

  • Which attendees are really interested?
  • Which attendees lost interest, and why?
  • Which non-attendees were just busy?
  • Which non-attendees changed their minds?

To find the answers, survey your attendees and non-attendees with unique sets of questions. Why didn’t they attend? Was the webinar what they expected? Did they get enough reminders? Was the webinar too long? Did it answer their questions?

The goal of a webinar is to help people discover your company through a medium they prefer. The people who register and attend have self-selected to learn something from you. So as the performer, you forget about attendance and deliver as if they are the only people who matter.

Break a leg!

 Tom Bishop is the director of marketing and communications for KnowledgeVision, an online presentation application. You can follow him on Twitter at @myleftone.

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4 comments
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mylefttom
mylefttom

 @TopherJRyan  Thank you for that! I also get frustrated at webinar breakdowns, both on the inside and out, but a webinar that works perfectly yet is impressively boring can also make me want my hour back.

 

I've written about the importance of doing live webinars, despite the potential for technology problems, because I think the live aspect, where attendees are given up-to-the-minute information, feel like part of an event, and are given the opportunity to converse directly with the subject matter experts, is critical. In that same piece, I point out that webinar attendees are the most important people to talk to about the success of webinar programs, and they should not be treated like just another database segment, nor as sales prospects, but as consulting partners. This, as you state, should be pursued more personally than it tends to be.

 

Not to appear self-serving, but I'm also an advocate of pre-produced webinars that avoid the breakdowns, followed by a live discussion conference, maybe using video, and hosted on open platforms like Google+ hangouts.

 

 

TopherJRyan
TopherJRyan

 @myleftone  Bravo! I wish to send you digital roses, but I'll a Twitter follow will have to do. As an aspiring talent interested in content life cycles, social media, and marketing and business I rarely pass-up a webinar hosted by an organization I'm loyal to (which you address, in closing through qualitative analysis). I believe I'm the exception, not the rule here.

 

One reason I tend to not show up for a webinar is if they have consistent difficulties with broadcasting their message. Sound checks, video streaming, etc.

 

I very much enjoyed your closing questions. They are very incisive. I am interested to hear, from you, the strategies behind the Qs to engage your ... Webinarians? I've received automated messages (repeatedly) that seek this information, but I'm not interested because I don't see effort or direction on their behalf.

 

@spinsucks , will you invite Mr. Bishop back for an encore?

TopherJRyan
TopherJRyan

 @mylefttom Eggcellent points. I like to think of the webinar as a "digital" equivalent to the media pass. Webinar hosts frequently offer deals or giveaways (pending participation) to promote quality and engagement. Yesterday I went to @radian6 's webinar: From Boring to Story - How to Make Your Content Rule with @MarketingProfs . It was great--right in my wheelhouse.