Webinar 2020 - what have we learned?

Digital transformation

2020 was the year of digital transformation - even for a digital agency. Webinars have become a big part of our everyday life here at InboundCPH. Since the arrival of COVID-19, we've been working to share knowledge with you.

Close to 3,000 people have signed up for our SEO webinars, which have covered geek SEO as well as SEO on a more strategic level. We've been delighted and surprised by the great interest in our SEO webinars, despite the fact that COVID-19 triggered a large supply of webinars.

At the beginning of the corona, we saw how some of our loyal customers felt compelled to stop their marketing activities. Many companies were in a precarious situation and chose to cut where it made the most sense for them. This trend didn't last long as companies realized that digital marketing, including SEO, Google Ads and social media, was not the right place to save.

Then came a huge wave of people who had opened their eyes to digital sales channels and eagerly participated in our webinars. Throughout, participants have been great at giving feedback and sharing their experience with us. In this blog post, we take a closer look at how our webinars actually went, how we create value for participants and what we learned to do better.

We're continuing with webinars in the new year and don't expect traditional physical seminars until the summer. So read on if you're thinking about attending one of our webinars. If you want to host a webinar yourself, you can also use this post to think about your approach - and avoid some of the biggest pitfalls.

Evaluations from our webinars

First and foremost, it's important to look at whether the webinars you run meet the expectations of the participants. When it comes to SEO, it's a difficult balancing act between the level of the participants and their SEO knowledge. We have continuously adjusted the content and thanks to the participants' feedback, it can be seen that satisfaction on this parameter has increased.

The feedback we received was that the level was too high - but also too low. It got us thinking about how to embrace the broad target group in the best possible way. It required a softer introduction to SEO, while more elaboration in concrete cases seemed to grab the participants on a different level.

When the more geeky efforts came into focus, we warned the participants that it was getting a bit technical, which made them stick around even if parts of the webinar were not interesting to them. In addition, we created specific webinars on limited topics that focused on specific parts of the SEO efforts.

Below are some selected comments:

• "You make (for me) complicated topics more accessible (e.g. The Migration Book + SEO 2020, and the webinar today) - thanks for that :-)"
• "Really useful and concrete knowledge that I will take with me. The host was a great communicator!"
• "Good graphs give a good overview and make it less boring when there are some visuals and numbers to relate to."
• "Great webinar, really good powerpoint and presentation, clear and interesting! Good opportunities to ask questions."

What have we learned?

In 2020, we learned that webinars are a great investment. It's time-consuming to get started and there can be a lot of bumps in the road - especially when it comes to technology.

At InboundCPH, we invested in good audio and video equipment, but unfortunately that doesn't mean we've been clear every time. We learned that when technology is involved, it's almost impossible to avoid minor complications - no matter how well prepared you are.

We experienced issues with people seeing a black screen that neither we, our platform nor the receiver could explain why. We experienced issues with audio and connectivity. The best way to get through the technical challenges was often to articulate it to the participants, and then it was taken with a smile. We're only human and people were willing to stick around as long as we kept them updated on what was going on.

Automated marketing was big in 2020, and we used it for our webinars. Unfortunately, it's not flawless and we experienced a number of bugs throughout the year. These include emails that were sent out incorrectly, too many emails and too few emails.

In addition, we learned that feedback from participants is worth its weight in gold. The feedback was often concrete and constructive, which made it possible for us to improve from time to time. In addition, the feedback also highlighted new topics that we could work from in terms of developing new topics.

We learned that dialog and questions take the webinar to a whole new level. By opening it up, you show that the webinar is live and not a recording, you get the opportunity to make sure that all participants understand the content while creating a closer relationship with the participants and their starting point.

Here's our best advice

1. Prepare as best you can, but don't try to imagine a perfect webinar.
2. Collect feedback afterwards (people are really good at responding).
3. Use a platform you are comfortable with (in addition, some requested that you could see the host + slides throughout, which was not possible on our platform).
4. Provide participants with concrete and useful knowledge (beware of too much focus on sales and abstract content).
5. Be personal and make sure you connect with your attendees even if you can't see them.

It's been an educational year and we look forward to welcoming you to many more webinars in the new year!