Partner Article

Engaging an audience 101: 4 tips for delivering an effective presentation

The rise in remote working tools is fostering a collaborative working approach, where office location is no longer a barrier to the spread of ideas, and remote first cultures are becoming the norm. The rise in channels through which we communicate, especially mobile and social media, has also played a vital part in the rapidly rising volume of information that we filter through every single day. With this, we’re seeing all industries become saturated with new ideas and opinions, which means cutting through the noise is becoming harder than ever. All this at a time when capturing people’s attention is more important than ever.

So how can businesses share and sell ideas, in order to win customers, onboard customers, generate leads, train staff and ultimately grow the business? One way is through delivering high quality presentations.. If executed correctly, they give companies the power to have real two-way conversations with their audience. But it’s estimated that a presenter has approximately 60 seconds to win an audience over, so there’s very little room for error.

In a world where capturing attention is so vital, here are 4 tips to help deliver an effective presentation:

Target your audience

Many businesses are eager to get their ideas in front of as many people as possible, sharing their content with their 500+ LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers, or people who have liked the company page.

But more often than not, the quality of the audience is better than the quantity. So when delivering webinars, presenters should think carefully about who they want in their audience. Instead of inviting everyone on your contact list, selecting 10 vital prospects who are on the fence, or 25 senior decision makers in an industry you want to move in to, will be far more productive. After all, knowing who your audience is makes it that much easier to engage them.

Promote on a Tuesday

When it comes to delivering presentations, promotion is half the battle; if no one knows it’s happening, the audience will be empty. There are a number of avenues through which you can promote a webinar, but nearly 50 per cent of marketers will use email in their webinar promotion, making it the number one go-to channel. Social media platforms are great avenues for promotion, but echoing the previous tip, make the most of the targeting options that Facebook and LinkedIn provide so you can reach the right audience. It’s also a good idea to test which social channels get the highest response rates and focus social budget there for future webinars.

In a recent study that explored webinar trends, Tuesday morning was found to be the best time of the week with nearly a quarter of all webinar registrations on Tuesday, with a spike in registrations between 8 and 10am. The study found a steep drop-off in registrations in the afternoon, so avoid sending emails later in the day when people are feeling burned out and have less bandwidth to open your email, let alone register for a webinar.

Deliver on a Thursday

While Tuesday may be the best day to register attendees, Thursday is considered the best day for delivery, closely followed by Monday. Unsurprisingly, Fridays are weak in terms of attendees.

It’s important to remember that you can get a lot more mileage from a webinar even after its over. Promoting on-demand webinars gives people more chance to see them when it’s most convenient for them. Instead of letting a valuable asset have a shelf life of 1 hour before it starts collecting dust, why not turn it into a constant stream of new views and leads?

The longer the better

Finally, don’t assume that shorter webinars will be more attractive to your audience. The purpose of webinars should be to educate your audience in some way, shape or form. People watch webinars with the aim of learning something new, and not because they can squeeze them in between calls. Webinars promoted as an hour long indicate greater value to registrants than shorter webinars. They signal that you, as the presenter, will be deep diving into a topic, providing actionable takeaways, and insights that may be harder to find in other forms of content.

The amount of information that we consume each day is rising rapidly, and as a result, we’re becoming more selective about what we choose to pay attention to. So knowing how to present and market your ideas effectively is becoming more important. Those who make the most of webinars as a channel to deliver information will stand the best chance of differentiating themselves from the competition, and attract the right attention from the right people; crucial for any company that wants to succeed in an always-on world.

Daniel Waas is the Director of Marketing for GoToWebinar.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Daniel Waas .