Webinars long have been a staple of an effective demand generation engine. They allow live communication with your ideal customer persona at scale—as well as the opportunity to engage directly with your prospects and existing customers.

Before Covid, 73% of marketers and sales leaders found webinars to be one of the most reliable ways of generating quality leads. But over the past 18 months, the rapid shift to digital communications and events has meant audiences are spending an increasing amount of time on screen.

Not only is it hard to capture an audience, but Zoom fatigue, mounting distractions, and up-leveled audience expectations also mean it is even harder to keep attendees engaged.

The good news is that with the right approach, you can elevate your webinar productions to new highs by driving more engagement, leads, and revenue than ever before. Cvent has created a handy eBook, which shares tools and tactics to reimagine your webinars, whether you’re a veteran or just getting started.

The eBook shares a simple formula that will help your webinars go from simple to wow-worthy:

Content + Production + Interactivity = Maximum Engagement

Quality Content

Curate and customise quality content that truly speaks to your audience. In the eBook, Cvent notes that webinars are often are static experiences that deliver one experience for all attendees. Break free from that model, and personalise the webinar experience to each attendee’s role, interests, needs, and learning objectives. One way to do this is by using an online attendee-registration and -management system, like Cvent and Cvent’s Attendee Hub. The eBook also suggests being creative and flexible with timing, duration and format. It’s also important to focus on the speaker experience. By utilising a roundtable-style format, you’ll be able to allow multiple speakers to engage in a live conversation together while attendees watch.

Upleveling Production

The eBook recommends that to cater to the 8-second human attention span, reimagine your role as that of executive producer, versus simply delivering a presentation. During the session, change up the screen layouts and views with a variety of screen dynamics. Use the entire presentation screen to your advantage, especially the lower thirds to draws a viewer’s attention to the content included there, and increase engagement.

Enhancing Attendee Interactivity

Consider using a webinar platform that allows attendees to type in live Q&A, to up-vote questions to prioritise speaker responses, and take part in polls. Cvent advises the use of breakout sessions/ rooms during a webinar will also heighten attendee engagement. By quickly splitting attendees into small breakout groups during the webinar, attendees will be able to engage around a specific topic in a more intimate setting before being brought back into the main webinar session. Alternatively, you could allow attendees to schedule meetings directly after the webinar concludes; this is the equivalent of “staying after the meeting” to connect.

The eBook concludes with a section on metrics and measurement, which it recommends should focus on engagement. With Webinars Reimagined, look beyond attendance metrics, and over time, you can build a full funnel to prove your business impact.

Download and read the full eBook here