When you go to the movies or rent a DVD, there’s usually a series of trailers or previews to watch. The purpose of the trailers is to get you interested enough to want to “pay” and see the full production.
When you do a webinar, you are, in a sense, providing your audience with a “preview” of a success story that will demonstrate how you could help them with a similar business or technology challenge. Done right, with The Living Case Story as your centerpiece, you can stimulate their intellectual curiosity to “want to learn more” about how you can help them.
Project your points, and enthusiasm, in the following context:
• Articulating concisely and directly what you want to tell them
• Thinking about why they should care or what’s in it for them
• Remembering what do you want them to do with this information.
Sounds simple, but these are the most important elements in a webinar, apart from the content itself, and is often overlooked during most presentations. Slides, for instance, overloaded with imagery and text don't communicate well. Bulleted information, with substantial spoken narrative, is the way to go. And telling your audience, with precision, "what it is you're going to tell them", presenting it in an easily understood fashion while not oversimplifying, and describing your desired call to action, is crucial.
Think about that...in a webinar you can’t see your audience, nor can they see you, so you have to maximize the use of your voice. Changes in inflection, tone and timbre are equally important to how well you actually narrarate. Writing cues and transitions within parentheses and into your notes, capitalizing or bolding to ensure you deliver with emphasis, and using color text as a signal for delivery of the narrative in a certain way can be very helpful to you. Your voice is the guide for your listeners and, if used well, will ensure they “hear” you. It’s also your chance to inspire and motivate them to want to learn more and have a discussion post webinar.
A credible presentation helps you to rise above the noise and clutter to even invite your audience, post webinar, to extend the dialogue into a 1:1 discussion which determines if developing a business relationship makes sense. Such a conversation allows you to learn more about their needs and if they are interested, show them more of your “movie”, which could consist of a demo, a whitepaper or case study, that they are now open to learning more about.
Pre-event, during the event, or post-event, it’s important that you “connect” with your audience in such as way that they hear you. Remember, don’t sell or hype, but certainly share your enthusiasm. If you’re not excited about your topic, how can you expect your audience to be?