My sister & I have found real time interaction invaluable for giving ACDSee products personality. Participating in online chats branded my sister & I as ‘Connie & Heidi’. Googling our names brings us up on top. Tonite my sister hosted her first webinar! This format added a whole new dimension of viewing & hearing her make the product dance.
It’s ironic that long ago it was me finding the tools & asking my sister to implement them. Now she’s finding the tools & initiating their use! It’s so awesome!
How we used chats to establish brand:
We started with online chats at websites last July. Due to such popular demand, we’ve had to limit scheduling chats to once a week. Typical chats in our community are generally laid back & not really directed. But when people come to our chat – the questions fly as fast as we can answer them & ACDSee donates software that’s given out as door prizes. Our community loves it!
Using a webinar to create a dynamic, interactive product presentation
Tonite a select group of 600 were invited by a prominent magazine editor to join my sister’s webinar. Imagine adding the ability to view the live use of the software & hearing my sister describe what she’s doing along with the opportunity to ask questions! She presented and I typed answers to questions as fast as I could.
Here’s the stat’s from tonite’s webinar & what we learned:
600 were invited – 168 registered – 100 attended – 173 questions were asked
*update* of particular note is that 90 didn’t own the product
- There was confusion about the audio – people had to call in at their own expense.
- Some couldn’t figure that out
- Some weren’t willing to pay (my sister has to pay for the software)
- A few were from Europe & it was cost prohibitive to make an hour phone call
- We lost 25% due to the phone issues
- My sister recorded it for later playback, but we’re not sure on the bandwidth issues
On the positive side:
- Those that attended love it!
- They really appreciated the new format
- I think that it has great potential!
- GoTo Meeting was used & the cost is really reasonable – up to 1,000 can attend
Have you used a webinar to demo your product? Do you have any advice for making it a better experience for the presenter or attendees?
I’ll share my 2 cents about this.
Our product we use is so much a visual product and so difficult to instruct how to use in writing. I have tried screenshots and that worked. I do videos and people love them. So why not do live webinars? The feedback coming in from the webinar is good so far.
This was my first webinar so yes, we learned a lot. What works and what doesn’t. I think the best part was the Q & A part. The attendees were asking questions, Connie filtered them for me, she then asked me the ones that she thought the most people would be interested in, and I explained/demo’ed them. That worked great!
I think webinars would be a great marketing tool. It needs to be done right though. People are dedicating time to watch and listen and if you are late/unprepared/having trouble they are NOT going to be happy.
And the best part of the feedback I got was this from an ACDSee technical writer. “I learned something new tonight!” Sometimes employees need to see the products being used in a real world application!
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