A lot of performers can attest to this – one of the worst things that can happen while one is performing on stage is to see people leaving their seats never returning. Not only is this a blow to one’s ego, but it also makes the one performing/talking feel like they are just wasting their time.

When doing webinars, it’s not rare to see people dropping off every now and then. Oftentimes, you’ll see them come back in especially if their connection is unstable. But when you see people dropping off your webinar on a consistent basis, then something has to change.

But what can you do to keep people from joining and leaving in the middle of your webinar? We’ve asked a number of webinar veterans on their tricks to keep people in their webinar until the end.

5 Tips to Stop People From Dropping Off Your Zoom Webinar

Target the right audience

Finding the right audience for your webinar is the first and arguably the easiest way to stop people from dropping off. One of the biggest reasons why people leave a webinar is because they realize they are not interested after all. This is probably because they misunderstood what the webinar was about or didn’t have enough information to see whether or not they would be interested in the webinar upon signing up.

To do this, you need to be more clear with the purpose of your webinar. Send invitations only to people who might be interested in attending. Include as much information as possible so readers will know what the webinar will be about and what they should expect from it. You also need to fine-tune your marketing to ensure you reach your intended audience.

Be interactive

Assuming you already have the right audience signed up for your webinar, the hustle does not stop there. Even if the people attending your webinar are interested in the topic of the webinar, they will still drop off if they find it uninteresting.

Nothing gets people bored than listening to a monotonous presentation and seeing slide after slide. When your audience gets bored, they will be more likely to leave the webinar earlier even if they are interested in the webinar topic.

Various studies have shown that most people can actively focus on a presentation for 7-10min. That’s why experts suggest changing up your presentation every 7-10min. In order to make your webinar interactive, incorporate some of the following ideas:

• Create polls for them to answer
• Let attendees ask questions and tell them that there will be a Q&A session at the end to answer their questions.
• Ask them to write their opinion in the chat
• Interact with your attendees in the chat: If you are a speaker, ask a colleague to manage the chat and the questions.
• Create small interactive challenges. For example: Take 2 minutes to write down X
• Choose a random attendee and engage with them 1-1. This will change up the flow of your presentation and give it a more authentic feel.

Create a unique and beautiful presentation

Nothing will make your attendees leave faster than a boring set of PowerPoint slides. Always aim to make the presentation visually appealing. Add some beautiful graphs, images, or even gifs to change up and keep the audience visually engaged. Don’t be afraid to be quirky with your slides if it means getting the audience interested.

Get them excited about the speakers

One good way to ensure your audience is interested in your webinar is to get great speakers. Speakers and guests are always a big draw and they also help in ensuring you get the right people in your webinar. If you have industry experts or popular speakers in your webinar, promote them to get your audience excited about hearing their thoughts.

Learn to space the speakers so that people always have something to look forward to. It’s also good practice to save the best speakers for the latter portion of your webinar to ensure people stay on.

Add a surprise or promotion at the end

Another tip you can use to keep people from dropping off your webinar is to save your gifts/promotions at the end. These may not necessarily be stuff they can get like a free membership or some promotional items.

One good “surprise” that really works is an unannounced open forum where your audience can ask questions to the speakers. If you know your target audience well, it will be easier for you to craft a great surprise for them. You have the option to tease the surprise at the start of the webinar or even during the registration.

Some of the tips mentioned above may not work for your webinar or for a certain target audience. You have to understand that as you create more webinars, you will slowly get a feel of what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to explore and try to mix and match different solutions to get that sweet spot.

If you are interested in reading more webinar-related blogs, you can check out our blog at Predictive Response. Predictive Response specializes in marketing automation for Salesforce. We also create Salesforce native apps such as ZFusion. Zfusion seamlessly integrates Salesforce and Zoom Webinar so all your webinar data gets recorded on a CRM for future use.