In the past year, I’ve probably registered for 30 Webinars, shown up for 12 of them, and lasted to the end for none of them. What could be an effective marketing tactic often falls flat. One of your Webinar selling points—Conveniently attend while in your office at your own computer!—becomes one of your weak points. Listeners get bored, switch to their email, or Word document, or Web browsing, or go out to lunch.

Why are Webinars boring? Three reasons:

1. Content is focused on the presenter/company and not the audience. That’s because from beginning to end, you developed a Webinar based on your agenda. But from beginning to end, your audience has one key question in their minds: “What’s in it for me?” You better spend every minute answering that question.
2. Presenter talks too much. Wait a minute, the presenter has to talk, it’s a Webinar. True, but someone get out the editing pen and shorten the script. Keep the meat, cut out the fat. And please, please rehearse. Speak naturally, conversationally—even if you’re reading the script.
3. Slides that work like sleeping aids. Presenters go to one extreme or the other: they fill their slides with bullet points of text; or, having heard that’s a no-no, they simply use a single picture that has little context to the topic, and leave it on the screen for two minutes. A better way is to use an image and few words on each slide. Use one slide for every key point you make. Maybe you use text-heavy slides so attendees can have them afterward and still retain the gist of your message. Instead, try offering them a white paper or executive brief related to the Webinar topic.