As you know I’m a big fan of webinars. I use them a lot in my own marketing.
I use webinars because they are extremely effective in delivering edcuation-based marketing presentations. Usually, webinars are about 60 to 90 minutes in length and include some form of training.
BUT, if they aren’t persuasive and relevant to the viewer, you’ll experience a LOT of “drop off” during with webinar.
I’ve attended probably about 30 plus webinars this year already and I see a growing trend of BORING, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH webinars.
Very few people know how to entertain and educate AND also be clear and get to the
point…
…which leads me to what I want to talk about next.
Lately, I’ve Been Watching a Lot Of…
…what are called “TED Talks.”
TED talks are brief, 18 minute talks given by thought leaders about whatever ideas they want to spread. I’ve always wondered why the founder of TED, Chris Anderson, decided to force all TED talks to be only 18 minutes long.
Here is a direct answer from Mr. Anderson…
“It’s long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention. It turns out that this length also works incredibly well online. It’s the length of a coffee break. So, you watch a great talk, and forward the link to two or three people. It can go viral, very easily.
The 18-minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write. By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you get them to really think about what they want to say. What is the key point they want to communicate? It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline.”
So I’ve Been Thinking…
…why not apply the TED talk, 18 minute discipline to webinars?
Why not create webinars that are brief, to-the-point, yet informative and interesting (maybe even fun.)
How many more people would you get to sign up for a webinar if it was only 18 minutes long, versus a 60 to 90 minute webinar?
Time is at a premium now days and people don’t want their time wasted.
I don’t know because I haven’t tested it, but I have a hunch that if you cut your webinars to 18 minutes, and if the topic was relevant to the viewer, you would get a LOT more registrations than normal.
Here’s a Good Example…
…of a brief video that I could turn into an automated webinar using an automated webinar
system like www.MyAutoWebinarPlayer.com, and have it play multiple times a day.
This video is about 22 minutes long, but you get the idea.
It’s called, “The Major Announcement.”
http://www.TheMajorAnnouncement.com
You’ll notice in this video or mini-webinar, that it…
1. Tells a story to engage the audience
2. Educates and informs
3. Makes an offer or invitation
I’m Thinking Of…
…breaking down several of my longer webinars into shorter, more brief, to-the-point webinars.
Sometimes, less is more.
For instance, suppose you had a product to sell and you had about 10 ways to use that product.
Why not create 10 small education-based mini-webinars that give one specific and powerful tactic and then an offer to purchase your product. And then you can give a mini-webinar each week to sell your product without rehasing the same content over and over again.
I hope this gets you to thinking.
HINT: If you really want to supercharge this process you can set up an autoresponder series and use an automated webinar player like www.MyAutoWebinarPlayer.com to play each mini-webinar every day so that ALL your new leads would be exposed to all the mini-webinars over time. (this is what we are doing).
About David Frey
David Frey is the Founder, MarketingBlogger.com. He is also the author of the best selling book, "The Small Business Marketing Bible" and many other marketing courses. To find out more about this author, visit www.WhoIsDavidFrey.com.
