If you’re teaching a class online, you can enable two-way conversations. Students can ask questions, much as they would on a conference call. If you are using interactive slides, you can ask questions and have audience responses captured for later use.

But…

On-Demand Presentations have some unique advantages too. They are excellent lead generation tools that can appear embedded on web pages 24 X 7. They can be viewed and listened to anywhere in the world at no cost.

When people cannot meet the schedule of a live webinar, they can often experience the same program pre-recorded on-demand.

Presenters using interactive on-demand presentations can create self-study centers. Students or trainees can choose from multiple lessons, and control them so that they are not restricted to the pace of an online live lecture session. Their presentation may be set up so that they can go back and repeat selected slides.

On-demand presentations can become interactive videos, using high-speed transitions, background music and other multimedia techniques.

But…

Although on-demand presentations can be interactive, there is no live instructor to answer questions and build rapport. On-demand narrators can provide choices of subjects to be covered, but there is no way for a presenter to poll audiences and react to their inputs.

In final analysis the choice depends on the presenter’s objectives, the style and interest level of the audience, and the actual material to be presented. Potential audiences see live webinars as learning events. Because they are live, audiences perceive the information to be fresh and new.

Nevertheless, on-demand presentations are likely to move quickly, create immediate interest, capture new sales leads, and focus website visitors who might otherwise not digest your message.

Presenters can use both within a sales, training or marketing strategy. Either choice may be the right one, depending on the desired results.

Even when presenters intend only to educate or inform, they are selling a point of view. But moving a sale forward takes one more online step. Webinars offer a powerful way to sell a viewpoint or a product. But unlike a persuasive face-to-face encounter, a one-way webinar doesn’t offer an opportunity to bring people forward to take action.

The most effective sales professionals present an idea or a product and then solicit feedback. They test their potential prospects with qualifiers like, “Does this solution work for you?” “Are you ready to take the next step on this?” To add an effective qualifier to an online presentation, presenters need an interactive slide.

The presenter using the example above speaks to audiences of 25 or more and keeps them engaged as she explains a business arrangement. She then displays this slide as her qualifier. It’s a new form of the question “Are you ready to take the next step on this?” She instead asks all audience members to rate their interest level on a scale of 1 to 10.

Taking this approach, she accomplishes more than she would by asking the more traditional question. By moving the slider, each viewer becomes self-classified as a hot prospect, a potential prospect, or a non-prospect. The presentation system files each of these responses in a database, enabling the presenter to create a report that she can sort for follow-up actions.

All attendees who have rated their interest at 9 or 10 become immediate prospects, to be contacted as soon as possible following the presentation. People who have rated themselves in the midrange—5 to 8 may receive fresh marketing efforts. However they are not ready to enter closed agreements. People at the bottom range—0 to 4—are unlikely ever to become genuine prospects, and are therefore excluded from follow-up efforts.

By using an interactive slide in this way, sales presenters can get more out of their online PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint slides often require more than good design and presentation skills. In this scenario, an interactive slide becomes part of a strong sales closing application.

Although a presenter isn’t available to interact directly, viewers can participate in shaping the presenter’s agenda, and can ask or answer questions. Shaping the agenda—providing optional viewer choices—requires the presenter to format a presentation into multiple segments from which audience members can choose. In the first example above, viewers listen as the presenter describes the subjects that he is going to cover and then asks the audience to select the subject to be discussed first. When the presenter completes the first subject, he invites viewers to choose another subject, or to skip ahead to a summary presentation.

Throughout this process, the presenter can ask viewers to comment or respond to questions, with all answers captured for later use. Viewers may also have opportunities to enter their contact information to request a direct call or email. As shown in the second example above, audiences often demand to ask questions. The presenter therefore pauses periodically for questions, and displays a slide for question entry. The slide includes a box to enter an email address for response, and a commitment to email an answer within 24 hours. By capturing the email address along with other responses from the viewer, the presenter has an opportunity to extend a relationship beyond the program, and potentially create a new client or customer.

By developing an interactive on-demand presentation, presenters can have the best part of two worlds. They create a presentation that may be promoted over a long time period without the limitations of scheduling or time zones. At the same time, they enable viewers to select information segments according to their interest. They create an environment in which viewers remain interactively engaged, and offer the potential of direct email dialog.

Viewers quickly tire of static images, and soon stop looking at a webinar screen until the slide changes. Presenters who stay on a single slide for more than a minute typically lose effectiveness. Attendees mentally tune out.

Online Webinars are very different from face-to-face presentations. One obvious difference is that the presenter and the audience cannot see each other. The presenter therefore loses the power of eye contact. Even more important, there is no way to know whether audience members are paying attention. Are they still out there? Are they reading emails? Are they chatting with friends?

The best way to keep their attention is to make them into participants, by using interactive slides. Using the interactive slide example pictured above, the woman who is presenting begins her webinar by asking audience members to respond to the question onscreen.

The presenter then reads some of the responses back to the audience and mentions each respondent by name. She then promises to concentrate the webinar on the items that audience people have checked.

This request accomplishes two things. It empowers the audience to partially set the agenda, giving them a feeling of ownership. Equally important, the presenter has demonstrated that she is facilitating an interactive discussion, and each audience member must be alert to respond. This rapport uses the power of human nature as a presentation technique. No attendee wants to be embarrassed by being unavailable to answer.

Numerous studies have proven that participants learn and retain 70 percent more information when they are participating, instead  of  being passive viewers. And that’s the power of online interactivity.

(We’ll share the next six Webinar tips in upcoming posts.)

As technology evolves and business people look for better results from their Webinars, they discover the true interactive capabilities of Presenternet. Collecting input and feedback from the audience at every step of the Webinar means that when the Webinar is complete, you have a sorted list of qualified sales leads ready for follow-up. By collecting input from your audience and storing it for later reports, you are cutting your sales process time by as much as half. As the industry progresses and more adn more companies turn to marketing Webinars as a mainstay of business, competition for audience mindshare will increase. Be sure to plan your Webinar properly and don’t spend any more time than you have to with follow-up. Take control of your data and deliver results from every dollar invested in Webinars.