7 Common Webinar Mistakes (and How To Avoid Them)

A webinar is one of the most involved - and most rewarding - arrows in your marketing quiver. Because webinars include a lot of moving parts like opt-in pages, social integration, audio/visual components, and slide shows, it's no wonder that many small business owners commit these 7 common webinar mistakes when first getting started.

Here's what NOT to do when creating and marketing your webinar:

1. One-off Marketing

If it was possible to send a single email blast to your list and automatically get thousands of people to sign up for your webinar, you probably wouldn't be reading this newsletter (you'd be too busy accepting some Genius Marketer of the Year award).

Sending one email or posting on Facebook one time is NOT enough to get people to come to your webinar.

Just like gaining a new customer, webinar attendees need to be directed through a strategic marketing funnel. Take the time to develop a comprehensive plan to secure webinar attendees. Doing this involves all the best practices you use in your other marketing efforts.

2. A Lack of Integration

Many small businesses create landing pages to promote their webinars. A landing page gives you the freedom and flexibility to capture new leads, but it also helps you increase webinar attendance.

Whether you're using an application like LeadPages or have created your own landing page, make sure you have calendar and social sharing functionality installed.

Attendees can schedule the webinar on their own Google/Outlook/iCal calendars, thus increasing their chances of attending. Also they can share the event with their social networks, which will increase your webinar's overall reach.

3. The One-way Conversation

One of the biggest webinar mistakes you can make is to create a one-sided conversation where only the presenter can talk.

Turn on chat functions, integrate with social media, and let your audience ask questions. A webinar is not simply about delivering a message or imparting information; it's also about getting to know what's on the mind of your ideal prospect and deepening your relationship with them.

4. The Hour-Long Sale

A webinar is not an excuse to make an hour-long sales presentation. Instead, the most effective webinars are educational in nature, providing attendees with massive value and relevant information they can use right now.

Save your sales pitch for the tail end of your webinar and make it the final call to action. Only after digesting your wonderful content will attendees be 'warm' enough to consider making a purchase from you.

5. The Slideshow Nightmare

Your presentation slides matter. Don't make the mistake most entrepreneurs make by packing slides with large chunks of text, or by taking the 'it doesn't really matter' approach to slide design.

Invest in having slides professionally designed, and be sure to include visually appealing graphics, photos, charts, and videos as part of your webinar presentation.

6. The Never-ending Presentation

Just because the average webinar lasts about an hour doesn't mean yours has to. Many webinars seem to last forever - not because the presenter has an hour's worth of great material, but because they feel obligated to hit the magic one-hour mark.

If you only have 20 minutes of great content, it's far more effective to host an amazing 20-minute presentation than an hour-long snooze fest.

7. The One-Size-Fits-All Follow-up

Not all leads are created equal, so why are you lumping all of your webinar prospects into one marketing basket?

Make sure your hosting platform is set up to track your webinar analytics. Attendees who asked questions and chatted in the comment box should be receiving a very different follow-up email than those who remained silent

While webinars may seem like the final frontier of online marketing, avoiding these 7 common webinar mistakes will improve your presentation and increase conversions.

Be sure to...

• Create a marketing strategy that involves multiple 'touches'
• Integrate your landing page with calendar and social functions
• Listen more than you talk and create a two-way conversation
• Move the sale to the very end of your presentation
• Invest in professionally-designed slides
• Base the presentation time on content alone (webinars don't need to be 60 minutes!)
• Follow-up with attendees based on their behavior