Webinars are a great way to reach out to your audience, build your insurance brand, and establish your expertise to the people you do business with. But not all webinar strategies are created equal, and there are a few pitfalls it’s important to know about—and avoid.
1. Using the wrong tactics to get the word out.
Not everyone will sign up for your insurance webinar. You’re looking for a very specific audience—insurance agents and brokers who sell the type of insurance you’re specializing in and want to highlight. That means it’s probably a wasted effort to promote your webinar to a general audience. Send a special invitation to your list of business partners and prospects in the insurance category, however, and you’ll likely get good results.
2. Going in unprepared.
Don’t film an insurance webinar with a plan to speak off-the-cuff. You may know everything there is to know about the topic, but you still have to make sure what you’re saying is organized and broken down in a logical way so that your audience will understand it. That means writing an outline, running it by a few people to get feedback, refining it, and practicing. With preparation, your insurance webinar will come off much more polished.
3. Not being technically prepared.
No matter how much you’ve polished your presentation, failure to prepare technically can make even the most well-prepared insurance webinar a bust. It’s just as essential to do a technical rehearsal before the real thing. Be sure your Internet connection, camera, microphone, and other technologies are working and that you know how to troubleshoot any minor issues that could crop up on the big day. Check your sound and lighting before the webinar as well.
4. Trying to cover too much.
Webinars should generally be kept as simple as possible. Don’t try to cover all aspects of a complicated topic. If you’re interested in addressing something in-depth, it might be a good idea to break up the topics into separate webinar subjects. A series of insurance webinars on a more in-depth subject will give you additional opportunities to reach out to your target audience.
5. Not making it interactive.
Interactivity and engagement are crucial to successful webinars. Be sure to leave time at the end to take audience questions, but also leave room for other interactive opportunities such as embedded polls that you can discuss at the end of the presentation. Get audience members to introduce themselves when they ask a question, and greet your audience as you would if you were giving a live presentation in a classroom or conference hall.
6. Not following up.
Webinars are a lead generation tool. The point is to get contact information from highly qualified leads—people who have demonstrated a strong interest in the type of insurance you specialize in—to contact and market to later. It’s not unusual for companies using webinars to drop the ball on collecting information and following up, however.
If you’re planning to do an insurance webinar, be sure to prepare, plan your presentation, rehearse, and work out any technical glitches beforehand. Promote the webinar to the niche market it’s specifically geared towards, and be sure to follow up afterward. Your webinar is much more likely to be successful if you can avoid these common pitfalls.
Photo Credit: Sharon Drummond via Compfight cc
