Author: Oleg Miroshensky
Chances are you never heard of Mike Yurosek. But you definitely tried the popular snack he invented.
In the early 1980s, carrot consumption hit a new low point. That’s when a Californian farmer, Mike Yurosek, started cutting carrots into uniform 2-inch pieces. And selling them as pre-packaged Baby carrot snacks. Baby carrots shifted consumers’ perception of carrots from important but dull vegetables to healthy, readily available snacks. And propelled carrot consumption numbers to the all-time high.
Similar to carrots, training materials are made to be consumed by our customers. But very often our customers appear to pass on the great content we built. Then it may be a matter of finding a suitable Baby carrot format that makes your training consumption appealing.
Today we will look at how to increase consumption for recorded webinars.
Webinars are popular tools to educate customers about new products. The format of a webinar normally consists of the presentation part, followed by the Q&A session. A live webinar is usually recorded and then becomes available online, as a product education resource. However, recorded webinars rarely enjoy high consumption. There is a good reason for that. Webinar duration usually ranges between 45 min and 1.5 hours. That means that viewers have to invest a significant chunk of time and stay focused to extract useful information. Not many people have this amount of time, so customers turn to other alternatives for product education. Now that we identified the problem hindering the consumption, let’s address it.
The divide and conquer approach that increases consumption
The beauty of a recorded webinar is that you can slice and dice the recorded information any way you want. Instead of following the live webinar format, try separating the product demonstration part from the Q&A session. The demonstration part of a live webinar is frequently recorded before the event to avoid any glitches. This recording can be used as a standalone product demo without any additional work on your behalf.
As for the Q&A session, it may be a good idea to enhance it. The time constraints of a live webinar may prevent you from answering all questions. Answering these questions may be very valuable for your customers. Also, consider providing Q&A in a variety of formats. For answers not requiring video demonstration, consider using text format. It is much easier to find an answer by skimming through the FAQ section than trying to find answers in a 15 min video. If needed, the text version allows you to augment the live answers with additional information.
Separating the demonstration from the Q&A achieves two things. First, breaking a lengthy video into smaller segments makes it easier to consume. It also creates focus without losing any value. Customers may watch the demonstration first. Later they may have a question and go through the Q&A section. They may even do it munching on Baby carrots.