Jessica Kleppang 2011

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Why Should You Invite a Guest Speaker to Participate in Your Webinar?

To answer this question I had a conversation with Mike Agron, who is an expert on webinar

speakers as well as the principal and webinar executive producer of WebAttract. Beyond

helping me answer the question, he provided me with a better understanding of the value that a

guest speaker adds to a webinar.

We start with the Mike‟s basic proposition “that any successful event, live or virtual, puts the

needs of the audience as the #1 focus, i.e., beyond doing your homework to identify a

demographic that would find your webinar and its messaging to be relevant, the folks who

ultimately go to the registration landing page and sign up have an expectation that the webinar

will deliver on what‟s advertised, and usually that means something of value, not a sales pitch.”

From this statement I conclude that not only is it important to identify a speaker that the

audience wants to hear from, but it is also important to have a speaker who delivers exactly

what they say they will.

The fact is that the speaker is who attracts the audience for your webinar. The speaker is the

main event or “the meat” as Mike would say. Recruiting a subject matter expert (SME) as a

speaker is an effective strategy for increasing audience numbers. “Usually,” according to Mike,

“information is best communicated by someone who has „been there and accomplished

something of value‟ that the attendee would want to give up their valuable time to „hear‟, if not

they‟ll either bail or be disappointed with the experience, which can damage the brand of the

webinar speakers and messaging.”

By choosing a SME as a speaker you are showing your potential audience that you are plugged

into the community. According to Mike, “Subject Matter Experts range from noted Industry

Analysts to unknowns who are enthusiastic to tell their „story‟ on how they solved a complex

business, marketing, technical, or operational challenge.” He goes on to say that into “their

credibility is enhanced by being able to share with the audience, in an engaging and

conversational tone, a profile of themselves/company, use case around the challenge, options to

solving this, solution(s) implemented, results around business value to solve this such as

increased productivity, faster time to market, less cost and risk, and what were the “lessons

learned” that another person would find of interest and value, and how do you get started?”

Having a SME will not only increase your audience base, it will also add credibility and

authenticity to your webinar. Your audience will see your outside source as having an unbiased

opinion of your product or company, a key factor in creating an authentic informational

webinar. “While a representative of the webinar sponsor could do this, and if that person has

credentials that are respected within the industry, that could work…..however it has so much

more credibility coming from a 3rd party client or partner, who has actually “been there and

done that” and can use their experiences to help others make an informed decision.”

Jessica Kleppang 2011

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The speaker must also be able to share something of value, “people will intuit very early on in

the presentation/discussion if the person speaking is credible and trustworthy to provide

something the attendee didn‟t know, or was thinking about, etc.” A good speaker is

“knowledgeable and understands the audience.” This person is enthusiastic, passionate, and

excited about the topic; they can articulate the deliverables and talk in real terms the audience

understands and relates to. So, for example, if your webinar is about how the marketing

automation will help with sales then the speaker should be able to inform the audience on

exactly how marketing automation will help with their sales including a real world example. In

essence, the SME should get to the point and tell the audience what they want to know.

In conclusion, there are many benefits to inviting a guest speaker for your webinar. These

benefits include an increase in audience members, credibility, and authenticity. As Mike nicely

put it “finding and inviting a knowledgeable „expert‟ not only stimulates interest and curiously

for the audience, it adds an order of magnitude of authenticity that transcends sounding like a

sales pitch.”