 Hello, and welcome to today's Business School's webcast. My name is Michael Bunker and I'm going to be your host for today's panel discussion. So today we're looking at struggling with your digital event program. So I'm going to ask the audience, have you ever compared your digital event program to a bad relationship? Well, a lot of people have and that's why we put together a great panel today to help answer some questions that you guys have sent through, but also give you some insights on how you can run an effective webinar or webcast program. So for the first time ever, we're giving you full access to a panel of people that are extremely experienced in this space. We've got Cassandra, Cass, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. So Cass, you've been with Redback Conferencing since 2016, correct? Yes. And in that time you've helped execute and deliver hundreds of digital events, correct? Yes. Nice, so a lot of insight there. We've got Miranda as well. Miranda, you've been with Redback now for five and a half years? Four and a half. Four and a half. I keep adding extra time on there. So you've specialized in helping sell digital event programs to our customers. Correct. Nice. And Michael Harris, thank you for joining us. You've got two Michaels today, so it's going to get a little confusing. You've been with the company for over five years as well, and you've been heading up the digital event team, delivery team. Indeed. So you've seen it all from the good, the bad, and the ugly. Definitely seen a lot of events. Nice. And as I said, I'm Michael Bunker. I am one of the sales managers here at Redback Conferencing and digital event consultants. I've worked with hundreds of customers over the years helping achieve a lot of fun digital event programs. So let's look at today's session. So we're breaking down digital events into three stages. We've got the group before, the during, and after. And with these, we're going to be looking at technology and marketing features, functionality in your presenters, as well as hosting and post event marketing. So we're going to cover off a lot of information today. You'll notice today we don't have slides, but we do have the Redback report just to the side of the video player. Please feel free to scroll through that because we will be using a lot of stats from it, as well as that we have a resource library in the bottom right hand corner in that you will find a lot of downloadable white papers on all the things we're talking about today. So you guys ready to jump into it? Yeah. So look, we're going to start off with technology and marketing. And when we look at technology, I'm going to be first coming to you, Michael Harris. You are a technology guru here at Redback Conferencing. What is the number one rule to delivering a successful webinar when you've never done it before and you're looking at technology? Keep it simple, keep it consistent. If you're doing a program, you want to make sure that you've got the same laptop, same computer, same headset, same camera across all of the series. And that way you know what sort of technology you're working with each and every time you run an event. You have the same experience and it's consistent across the audience's point of view as well. Nice. And that's definitely from the organizer's side. So whoever's maybe monitoring it from the business, what about from the presenter as well? You need to maybe briefing them on specifically using the same technology across all presenters? Exactly, exactly. And if they are presenting remotely from home, you want to make sure they've got a good consistent internet connection, wired, not Wi-Fi, always in the first instance, and same sort of setup as what you would have in your office or in your boardroom, you want to ensure that they have the same headset or in line with what. So that's the sort of webcam and headset that you're using. Nice. What about a backup? So if you're running a digital event like a webinar, what are some of the things that people can do to ensure that that message is going out? Indeed. So you'll always have to, you know, you want to use Vype or webcam in the first instance, and then you have a backup on the telephone, which is always an option as well, but also going through that backup situation with the presenter or the organizer beforehand setting up in your testing period. Just let them know in the first instance we'll go with the laptop and headset setup. If that fails, then you want to go with the telephone backup. Nice. Okay, Cass, I'm going to throw over to you. So you've been working with a lot of organizers and presenters over the years that you've been with us. What do organizers forget to do before running their first webinar? I think definitely rehearsing, rehearsing the content, reviewing the platform, introducing the platform to your presenters, so they're comfortable and confident with using that technology on the day. Nice. Well, especially when you have the webcam up, you don't want someone to be like, oh, I don't know where to click or anything. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you don't want them to be nervous as well, seeing everything for the first time. Nice. So Miranda, I know we're just spoken about webinars right now, but you've got a lot more experience in the webcast front. I've been very successful on that side. So what's, so webcast traditionally can be studio based like we're doing right now, but a lot of our customers do it from a venue of choice. So looking at a venue of choice, what are some of the things that your customers forget to do in the instance when they pick that venue for their event? Yeah, the number one thing I would recommend is double checking the internet connection there. We always recommend a dedicated internet connection for peace of mind. I mean, we have delivered off 4G from a caravan, not ideal, very stressful. The other thing would be to check the lighting on the stage, often if you're filming, you want maybe some extra lights so that the online viewers don't see sort of a dark presentation. And the sort of third most important would be to make sure you have a camera riser so that when people are walking in and out of the conference room or interrupting the session, you're not just seeing the people walking around on camera and you're able to focus on the actual presenter, which also means have a manned camera and a good videographer so that when presenters ultimately walk around the stage, really do they just sort of stay behind the lectern, the cameraman will follow them around and it won't be jolty. Those are two very good points. A lot of times there are a lot of people up there that are trying to do webcasting and it can be quite expensive so they might be trying to do it a little bit on the cheaply and they might just have an unmanned camera at the back of the room. See an empty lectern. See an empty lectern. Exactly. But also the lighting when people think about it and venues are very bad at this is they'll light the lectern. A lot of presenters nowadays, they like to walk back and forth. If anyone's lapel, you do need to make sure that you have a full stage watch because as soon as they walk away from the lectern because they want to be freely moving, they start going into shadows, it's a bad experience and if your camera is not actually manned, then they're going to be completely off it and you're just giving a really bad viewing experience to the end users at home. Cool, well look, that's the technology front. We are going to move on to marketing but I think the last thing to just talk about is when looking at running a program, it is consistency with technology. As Michael said, we want to make sure that every time you're using it, you're not being throwing something new in the mix that's going to hinder you delivering a very successful event. So now we're going to look at marketing and I'm going to throw open a very broad question to the panel first, which is just common mistakes with digital marketing for an event series. So Miranda, I'm going to throw it back to you. What would you say would be one of the biggest mistakes when someone starting at a digital program and they're marketing an entire series? What are some of the things that people forget? Sometimes they have only nailed down the time and date for the first presenter so they only actually end up advertising the one webinar, which defeats the purpose of running a series. You want to get people excited about the entire program, you want to give them an idea of what topics will be discussed. It doesn't matter if you don't have time and dates yet, but you can advertise when you're marketing it. This is the first one. Click here to register and also register for all of the upcoming events and you'll get notifications as they at the dates confirmed. Planning is definitely key on that. I think the other thing is probably knowing the end goal. Yeah, that's probably one thing I would say. The other thing is how are you going to measure the success of your program? A lot of people find they, you know, they do their first webinar, they get X amount of people and they think, oh, that's great. We actually have people online terrific, but they didn't actually think about what their target number was or how they're going to measure the success. Is it by getting members that we've never had before attending our physical events? Is it a revenue-generating exercise and you therefore want to have an X amount of revenue that you're trying to achieve through the program in order to demonstrate the success? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, data is definitely key. Cass, I'm going to throw it over to you now because of everything that you've worked with, different marketings and everything for your customers, what are some of the things that they forget when looking at an entire series marketing plan? I think a common mistake people find is not understanding the participant journey. So not understanding all the different touch points you'll have with your marketing and having a clear mapped up plan. And also what Miranda said, touching point on marketing your, all your events as a series instead of just individually. Yeah, I think that's very, a lot of people do it, they'll have all the events on the website and everything, but you kind of can forget different touch points where when you're advertising the second episode in a series, at the bottom of that invitation, promote the on-demand of the first one. And similar when you do your on-demand email from the first event, you want to be advertising the next one, you want to make sure everything's connected at the end of the day. So I'm going to throw that over to you as well, Harris, like looking at common mistakes in digital event marketing, what would you say from the technology side that gets missed? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Like there isn't too much in the technology, like I said, keep it consistent. You want to keep the, from an interviewer's point of view, when they are turning up to either, like you said, episode one, episode five, episode seven, they want the same experience, they want things to work and they want to know, I've got my laptop, I've got my computer set up for a specific type of event, I want to know that I have my same set up. Next time, I'm going to get the same experience from an end-user's point of view. And definitely thinking about the end-users in mind, you want to look at having support details, so whether you're running your end-user support or you have a provider that's doing that for you, make sure it's across every bit of marketing because you want to make sure that user experience is always good. Now, although in the marketing side, we've just touched on a lot about the direct email campaign and everything, but let's throw it up into some passive marketing channels. So, when we're talking about passive marketing, we're talking about free things and it's not the dedicated campaign that we're running. So, looking at passive things, so there's like email signatures, your newsletters, what are some of the other things that you can do that are free ways of informing your audience about an upcoming webinar or webcast. I'll open that up. I think definitely use your social media, advertise it. Social media is free, so that's definitely another way that you can promote all your webinar or webcasts event series. Yeah, and so yeah, just creating that buzz really, just your presenter is a key part of that presentation, your series as well. So, having them reach out to their marketing or their networks, get it out there on their social media contacts and their points. LinkedIn is another great one, just getting that message out there, creating that buzz. And then as part of a series, it just grows on from event to event. You're just building that buzz around the whole series. Our presenters are key and they've got their own audiences, they've got their own databases, but we do want to make it very easy for them to help us and help promote the webinar. So, a good recommendation is template up what you want them sending out on their channels, so they don't have to think about it. So, create the blog post for them or create the social media post, have the link to the event, make it very simple for them to help you get your numbers up. Perfect. Before we move past marketing, because I know we just do need to keep the time, because we've only got you guys for 45 minutes today, is I do want to recommend that everyone does go down in the Resource Library right now. We've got about three or four different marketing white papers in there about social media marketing, tips for marketing, the Big 50. So, please go down there and download those so you can read along. Cool. So, let's have a look now at during the event. So, we've got features, functionalities, and we've got the presenters. Those are three main areas and this is probably the bulk of where a lot of our work is focused is executing this live event. So, looking at an effective strategy for running a webinar or a webcast program, how should our customers be utilizing the features on the platform? Miranda, what's your advice? Yeah, I mean, there's a huge amount of different engagement features you can use. I would say my favourite would be polling. So, you can have a poll pop up at the beginning of your webinar and you might say during this webinar we're going to be talking about these three things and then the poll will pop up and you have these three things. Which one would you prefer that we spend the most time on? And then you can one get people interacting with the features, the polling. And then two, you can see quickly exactly what, you know, 60% are most interested in this topic, only 20% are most interested in this topic. So, we know where to focus our time, we're making it relevant and the audience feels like they're being listened to. And then also on the topic of polling as well, something else that we've seen working really well for series is people will have at the beginning of the program, how confident do you feel on this topic on a scale of one to ten? And then they'll again run that same poll, how confident do you feel now on this topic of the scale of one to ten? And then you've got something to go back and say, this is the return on investment we've now got, you know, 60% more confidence levels in this or whatever it is, or other way around. And then, you know, you've done something wrong. No, absolutely. Cass, I'm going to throw that same question to you because looking at the features, functionalities and everything across the series, what are your recommendations? I would probably recommend try and use the same features and functionalities across your webinars or webcast series. So if you do wish to use a poll, keep that same poll in every single event. Just when it comes to reporting, you've got something to benchmark at the end. Yeah, no, very true. So when you are looking at a series and it is comparing apples to apples, you don't want to be doing one event to the next and it being apple to orange. You're not going to have consistent data. So utilize the features, polling, surveys, all those things are going to give you really good user data. And then taking that data afterwards will tie into your whole marketing plan and everything about how are you achieving your ROI. And then also think about where you're storing this data. A lot of the platforms will either have plugins to your CRM or they can download the stats as CSVs that can easily be uploaded into it. But you do want to make sure that what you're reporting on before and during will match up for your series. So Harris, anything else you could add to this one? From a production point of view, again, thinking about that end user experience, you know, typical people join webinars, you get a slide presentation to present the talks throughout that presentation as they go through and they might answer, open it up for Q&A at the end. If that has been the theme in your series previously, why not go in and add a webcaming? Keeps it dynamic, keeps people engaged. The viewers at home are actually seeing what the presenter is conveying and you get a lot of emotion and you can see their face throughout and just conveys a bit more meaning and added value to the presentation. But for webcast, definitely go in and added a live demo and so you can, if you're at a conference, you do a live event and the presenter is doing some website demo on his laptop, bring that through for your audience, connect it up and then they are also seeing that same demo live and on their video player at home. Nice. And as you're saying, that's features and functionality are two different things. So features will be the things like polling, survey, that's where you can benchmark your reporting. But doing new things with functionality like demos, live video questions, anything like this is just going to take your event to the next level and help engage with your audience and keep their attention for longer. And speaking about attention, looking at the redback report, if you guys haven't scrolled through it already, some interesting stats came out of this year where actually holding your audience's attention has shortened. So over the last three years, 60 minutes was what our audience said. This year for the very first time, they're saying 45 minutes is the optimal time for running a digital event. I know that's not great for all types of events, but would you guys agree that that's a good duration or should we say more or less for some events? I think it's a really good duration. You want to keep it short. You want to keep it sweet to the point. Keep your participants engaged. Also factor in Q&A time as well. A lot of the times we forget about that. But I think 45 to 60 minutes is a really good timeframe. Yeah, as soon as you've covered your content, there's no point fluffing out for the next 15 minutes. Yeah, just get a schedule to go for it now. It doesn't mean you have to go up until the hour. But it is good in keeping in time. It's good to lay out the housekeeping and include that on every event. How can people interact with the platform? How they can interact with the presenter or the speaker and then also lay out the format of the event. This is pretty key. And then it sets out your presentation. The audience knows what they're going to expect. Have the main part of the presentation and then flick the Q&A or discussion at the end. So we design our business skill series around 45 minutes. And because as you guys know, we're leading up to lunchtime. We want to make sure that there's a 15 minute gap from the end of this session so you can grab a coffee, grab something and maybe run up the door to another meeting. That 45 minutes might not work across the whole spectrum of events because you do have events and a lot of events that we help run are continual professionals of element. And you might need to hit that one hour to get that one point. Or you have any beginning point to 75 of a point for a 45 minute session. If it works for your audience, great. If it doesn't, look, it's all a bit trial and error in the beginning when you're looking at doing a program. But moving on past that functionality. So we did just speak about the fact that you can change it up and you can look at different things. 51% of our respondents for this year's Redback report have said that they believe that the best functionality of the room setup is still slides with a video feed. And that is around the webinar side of things. And that is a webcam. This can be a bit different when we're looking at what we're doing today. It was a video only with a PDF document next to us. So just because it works for some people doesn't mean it's gonna work for every single event. Now my favorite and the one that I talked to most about with our customers is presenters. And I think presenters really can they need to make or break a series. So again, this year, our audience has said 81% of them have said passion and enthusiasm is the number one most valued thing in a presenter. So what are some of the either trials and tribulations when you've worked with presenters over the years, Cass? I think when presenters stretch out their content, participants pick up on that. They also pick up on energy as well. So ensuring that your presenter is confident, they're excited, and you can hear it in their tone of voice when they're excited to be there and wanting to present that topic. Absolutely, Miranda, with presenters, what are some of the things that you've seen? Yeah, I mean, I think great presenters always keep remembering to engage their online audience and whether it's just saying, oh, I can see so-and-so said this. So it's nice to sort of reference the online audience throughout, not just at the end for Q&A, but during the session as well. Harris, being delivering majority of the webcast for the business and looking at actual presenters at the physical events, do physical event presenters mean that they're great and they're engaging? They've got that conference audience in front of them. Are they gonna be a great webinar presenter or a studio webcast presenter? I think being a good presenter is part of people's makeup, it's part of who they are. And it's because they're in a different format, they might be sitting in an office or they might be presenting from home. We're just trying to remind them to always be themselves. They've got that personality, they've got that energy about them. The difficulty when you're doing a webinar is trying to bring that out on camera or just on the phone. So again, exactly, but again, it's a part of who they are and it's just about being able to bring them out or bring that personality out of them even though they're sitting at home or if they're just presenting on a phone, just reminding them, letting them know, look and doing a run through, getting them on line early, letting them practice and rehearse again is key. So letting them get comfortable with that different surrounding. And I would definitely say, just because someone's presenting at a conference and has that live engagement straight off the bat, doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna be great. In this format, it is a very different experience presenting to a camera that has no one there and still trying to have that energy level. So one of the things when you are looking at presenters because that is the number one thing that's gonna make your series memorable is get them on the platform beforehand before you commit to them, and actually get them to do a little demo to you. Get them to rehearse some of their content just so you can see it because there's nothing worse than having a really engaging presenter that's a face-to-face presenter and then getting them into a live environment and then them just completely phrasing up and being very robotic and they're trying to figure out the functionality and what stuff does, they can make for really bad experience. So just because they're great face-to-face doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna be great on digital. Cool. So let's look at our third session section which is post-digital event. So we're gonna split up into two things. We've got our hosting component and we've also got marketing. So Miranda, so the digital event's been delivered. Everyone's very happy. Are you not done with that event? Is that the end of that whole lifespan of that content or what do you do next? Yeah, I wouldn't have thought so. I guess the benefit of webinars, webcasts is you've then got a piece of content that you can keep repurposing for as long as that content's relevant. So the idea is that not only do you run a great event, you then have that content which you can have on your website in a member's area or you chop it up into sort of small components by topic as sort of grabs of information on social media pages on your website as a bit of a hook to then advertise the subsequent webinars in that series. Yeah. Nice. Cass, I'm gonna throw it to you because you did make a really great point at the beginning, which is that whole participant journey map. So you've journey mapped all the way to the live event. You've got your live numbers. Now, how do you map out the on-demand? Like where do you like, what's the next stages that you're gonna be doing with your dedicated marketing and everything to make sure that those participants carry through? Yeah, so yeah, back onto marketing. Instead of once the digital event has concluded, just instead of a thank you email or a follow-up email, include the recording in that particular email, include the recording for previous events and also link it to the registration for your next event. So not just a plain thank you for attending but what's next or what has happened before. Yeah. And utilize some of those feature, the reporting stats that you got from your event. So polling results or anything, use little hooks like that that are gonna get people to watch the on-demand. Harris, I'm gonna do a lot of talking with you on this one and it's hosting and it's such a broad topic, but it is something that everyone's now realizing that they really need to get hammered in at the beginning and they need to make sure that this is working. So let's talk about hosting options for our audience. Yeah, well, whether it's a webinar webcast, you're still going to end up with IPC content. Yeah. Again, putting a lot of thought into what you're going to do after each event specifically, but then how you're going to package that series up as a whole, where you're going to host that and then what you also wanna track and measure out of those recording. Getting the live metrics, the stats for the live event is one thing, but then you'll got a whole nother content piece where you're seeing who's logged in, how many views and you may end up getting more hits to the recording than you would on the live. So what does that mean and then how does that also then tie into your next event? You are with the series and again with hosting in particular, you are gaining a bigger database of people as you go. Yeah. And you have two different people logging in to the recording than you would on the live. So again, tying into the marketing piece, what are you gonna do with this? It's key and people sort of learn as they go, but having a plan in mind on how you're going to develop each episode as you go, it's key. Yeah, and as Miranda, I'll throw back over to you on this one because we did speak about the beginning. It's knowing the end goal, any series and how you're measuring it and a lot of people put a lot of focus on the live. And if that live number is where we forget that you've got a piece of asset at the end, that is gonna be reportable. So you wanna be looking at your numbers there. So as Harris just said, you've got a bunch of people that came live and then you can now report that some of them have come back from the live to watch the hosting and then you can track brand new people. So how would you, in a series environment, how would you start promoting the on-demands as a unique piece of content themselves? Would you be doing throughout the series to say, hey, this is the whole content list. What are some of the things that you've seen customers do? To promote, sorry, to promote the whole program? To promote the on-demands side of the program. So maybe after doing three events, they've sent you out a dedicated email saying, hey guys, have a look at our library content. I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm not really understanding the question. So the question would be around, okay, our whole digital program, we've been concentrating on getting people to the live and then we've been talking about getting people to attend the on-demand one. Would you say that there's value or have customers promoted through maybe at the court, maybe three months in, it's like, hey guys, here's our library of on-demand and doing a dedicated email just to that? Oh, definitely. I mean, I think, I guess you've got, generally in a live event, you only actually get about 35 to 40% people, even though they're registered, actually attending live. So you've still got maybe 60% of people that weren't able to join live and you want those people to actually have any, I mean, be able to jump in, whether it's on-demand or for future series at any point in the game really, so advertising it three months down the line so long as it's still relevant, sending them a bunch of recordings. You're hitting a whole different market. So in the beginning, you would have been aiming for attendance, live attendance. But then again, three months in, things have changed, content has changed. You're looking at a different set of events, essentially, with those recordings. So you're hitting a completely different market. Those who watched them live, again, are looking forward to the next events in your series. But then people who wouldn't be familiar with that series at all can then now and go in and watch those recordings, all available in a single place. It looks like they're still a part of the series as a whole. And then again, you're pointing people, if they're watching the recordings, back and how to register for the next event. And there are other ways that we haven't really touched on right now, which is that whole other passive side. So there are the social media ways of promoting the on-demands, but also start utilizing your presenters. So maybe edit out a five minute clip from the webinar and using that to promote that on-demand a couple of weeks after or to promote the on-demand. There's a lot of unique things you guys can do. And I think it just comes down to, as Castle was talking about, map out that whole journey, see where you've got little gaps of things missing and adding other little touch points that are unique that isn't the same content constantly going out. Great, so look, we've covered off a lot of stuff so far, which has been great. And we've got a lot of questions coming through. So everyone, please keep sending your question through the ask a question button in the bottom right-hand corner. But I'm just gonna start off with some of them now. So Melanie has come through and she's asked, I have a presenter that, I have presenters that are nervous in front of the camera but my organization is pressuring me to have the cameras on. What are my options to make both parties happy? Cass, you've dealt with this a lot. So I'll throw this question to you. Yeah, I think this happens a lot when customers may want the presenters to be on camera, but the presenter might not be so comfortable or confident. Have a mixture of both. You can have the camera on maybe just at the beginning and the introduction, and then have them on at the end as well. This way you're keeping parties both happy and it also depends on the topic. If the topic is maybe content heavy, for example, an educational video, it might be distracting to have them on camera the entire duration. So keep it to slides and audio, but you do have that flexibility working around that. Nice. It doesn't make it easier for a lot of presenters not to see themselves on screen as well because that can be quite distracting. So have them on for the intro, have them on for Q and A when they're not focusing on their content, that way they can focus on just the written stuff that they've got in front of them. But as I would say, not all platforms allow for that functionality. So you do need to test out what you have. Correct. So I know with not trying to plug or anything, but with our right back platform, it is very easy to switch those on and off, but some other ones might not be. So again, as we talked about at the beginning of this practice trial that I've rehearsed the technology, see what you can do that's gonna make for a really good viewing experience. Okay, Michelle has asked, how far in advance should I advertise my digital event program or series? Miranda, let's throw this to you. But before I do throw this to you, I'm actually gonna split this into two questions. Because right now that's quite broad and you're talking about everything, I will say to you, okay, how far in advance should I advertise my digital event program, the passive marketing? So that's getting everything on the website. So how far in advance should people do that? The passive marketing, I mean, some people have an annual newsletter that might be saying, what are we doing the next year? I'd even start marketing the idea that we're gonna be running a webinar series as soon as you even have the idea in your mind. As soon as you have the idea, as soon as you have the presenter, anything, start mentioning it on your website, newsletter, the social media, and then when you actually do the direct email marketing campaign, I used to say three weeks, but these days people are doing about two weeks, I'd say, would be the optimal time. Anything much earlier than that, people are just reluctant to commit and you find anyway on the last chance to register email that goes out maybe a few days beforehand, that's when you get the majority of people registering anyway. So, yeah, I'd say two weeks for the actual dedicated campaign. Cass, what is our preferred timeframe? I think we even do smaller than that for our customers. Yeah, we normally recommend about 10 to 12 days because it is online, it's more accessible. So having that shorter timeframe is okay for your direct marketing. Well, yeah, they're not registering for a face-to-face event, they're not having to change their travel plans, you are trying to get people to commit to either just from their desk or their mobile device. So the shorter the timeframe, the better because you don't want to give them too much freedom. How many emails should we be sending out for promoting an event? I think an invitation and a reminder to register is key. So just the two, you don't want it to be bombarding the participants in boxes, but I think at least two, just the initial invitation and just a friendly reminder, hey, if you haven't had a chance yet, sign up. Yeah, and there's also more in the suggestion as well about that last chance to register. That's the harder language, trying to get people to join on, I think is quite good. Harris, this question's got your name all over it. Zach has asked, my conference venue only has Wi-Fi. What are my options for streaming? Always a trick you want to deal with. Again, it's 2018, we should be getting the NBN in all these big venues across the major capital cities. However, you do find the odd venue here and there that doesn't. Again, do what you can. We liaise with the venues, always try and insist on a wide connection where possible. If it's physically impossible they don't have one available, then there are options out there for you to look at wireless technology or 4G, 4G-based systems that will allow you to get into that connection in there, but always check it out beforehand, do a thorough test, simulate what you would be doing live within that venue and then try and simulate the same sort of timeframe where the traffic would be in the building at the time of the event so that you can see what sort of Wi-Fi or 4G signal you have. OK, so if you did go over, so for a lot of webcasts out there, you have a primary and secondary stream. If you went over just Wi-Fi, do you lose your secondary because that generally is the secondary option? Pretty much. Again, you're relying on a primary on 4G or wireless and a secondary as well. We do run a few different providers, different 4G systems with different providers as that backup, but it is relying on whatever's out there and you're at the whim of the provider. Yeah, and those costs wouldn't necessarily be quoted at the beginning either because this is an afterthought when you find out you don't have the internet so that can change how much you were expecting to pay for that event and that stream. Now, Miranda, you've had a lot of success with customers over the years and this question is absolutely perfect for you, so Paul's come through and asked, can I make money for my digital events? Yeah, absolutely. So any content that you would charge for in a physical conference setting, we would actually recommend charging the same price for in an on-demand or live webinar setting. Some people will charge either exactly the same or they might deduct a little bit from the price if it doesn't include a gala dinner or something like that. We normally add that into the price for a live event. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. So when you are looking at your webcast, specifically like a conference or a seminar or anything, and you are streaming that out, do remove the social element of it. That's the only thing that the online participant will have different from their experience. So if you can actually put a dollar figure to everything that's happening on that program, then you remove those, charge for exactly what it would have been, just minus those two things. Because you are making it easier. We do have some customers who charge the exact same dollar value for people not traveling because they are, they're not flying to the conference, they're not having to pay for accommodation. You're saving people a lot of time, a lot of effort and making it very convenient for them to have a similar, almost exact experience. You know, so make sure you're not cannibalizing any live attendancy that it's not like, oh, I can get this half price online. People are still obviously encouraged to attend place to place with them. To add onto that piece as well, I think it's thinking of their series and thinking about your on-demand content. You got a price for the live event, but you also now have a full conference recording as well, available to your audience. And like you would think about in your live sessions, you can charge it per session, or you can charge it to view the whole conference. Some people do member non-member pricing. I'm even a reduced rate to view the recordings only. So you do have those options, but again, planning ahead, how am I gonna package up this for their recording conference style and how am I gonna break that up and release that on the mom? Absolutely. And that's really about how to make money from the digital events of the webcast side of things for your conferences and so forth. When you're looking at your webinar programs, that's slightly different because of the people that are generally charging for webinars are CPD, correct, Kaz? So continual professional development, a lot of people that offering these points, these are tax deductible, you're giving them great content. How many CPD events a year do you think we would be running for our customers? Oh, I probably couldn't even count. Yeah, there's hundreds of events. Especially when it comes around to March end of CPD season. So yeah, we do get quite a few of those. If you look in the Redback Report right now, and Paul, this was a great question, scroll down through, we actually have a metric in there about what our audience is willing to pay for their digital events. And I think in the past years, I think five years ago when we originally started this Redback Report, it was zero that people were willing to spend. I think that's gotten up to $50, but depending on who you're providing these points to, how they're, I was not gonna say how they're paying for it, but depending on the level, so like if it's a doctor, a lawyer, whatever, there are lots of different brackets out there. As long as they're actually gonna be able to use those points, definitely charged. We have a lot of customers with very successful digital programs doing that. And they do charge for live and on demand. Yeah, it's just a lot more accessible these days, whereas it would be more difficult. Five years ago for people to access recordings and on-demand programs or just your webinars in general. You got access to tablets, phones, you know, laptops, computers, everything. No matter where you go, you're always on the internet connected. Yeah, it was not surprising. Yeah, exactly. I was surprised to see people getting more involved in the webinar webcast space because of that technology. Nice. So I'm gonna take this next question and Andrew's asked, where can I find good webinar presenters or digital event presenters? Look, that's an age-old question. There are speaker associations or speaker groups out there that you can go to, but those are generally designed as keynotes or they're designed for conferences. And as we said before, they're not always gonna make the best digital presenter, but a lot of them are getting more and more. For us with a business school series, we actually meet a lot of our presenters from networking events, from social gatherings, or even just reading articles on LinkedIn and saying, hey, I wanna speak to that person. It comes down to brief or having that first call with them online, call with them on the phone and getting them online to see what they'd be like with the technology. A lot of people are really keen to be webinar or webcast presenters these days because they're creating digital content of themselves. It's building their brand. So a lot of people want to be presenters. The only ones out there that potentially got a charge are ones that you are generating money from. So those are your CPD presenters, professionals and so forth. So, Harris, I'm gonna now throw the next one to you. Rowan has asked, what is the recommended technology for delivering webinars, webcams and mics? What should I be buying? Yeah, plenty on the market out there. There are a whole bunch of different HD cameras, but as long as your camera can produce a 720p image into your laptop, that'll be more than sufficient. Is that for a webcast or for a webinar? For a webinar. For a webinar, start with, VoIP headsets, again, plenty out there, but again, something simple, something with a mic cover so you're not getting that wind sound in the background and won't be too affected by what's going on around you. And then if you've got some lighting, again, lighting is key. Having a light either in front or just behind the presenter just to keep it nice and balanced and keep the camera focusing on your subject. Nice. Perfect. Trial the technology. You can just use a webcam on your computer when you're starting off, but it's gonna be really bad quality and people right now, you've only got a first impression to get someone to come into you so you don't really wanna skimp out on that. Okay, so Sarah has asked, my live attendance numbers are declining every webinar. What can I do to increase them? Before we answer this, and I'll throw over to Miranda because we've worked with a number of customers who have done this, I'm gonna ask Sarah, can you please type in how are your on-demand numbers doing? So while you're doing that, let's throw over. So your live numbers are declining. What do we do? Yeah, obviously then, it's key to remember the fact that, as I mentioned before, you really only get, say, 35 to 40% of people actually attending live. So you've still got 60, 65% of people that are interested and you wanna make sure you make it really easy for them to attend the on-demand viewing. And you also then wanna make sure you're actually tracking those that are watching the on-demand viewing that you're seeing. Ideally, you have a situation where they just need to register into their registered email address. And so you're capturing how long they're in for, how many people are viewing the on-demand in addition to the stats you've got from the live event rather than just publishing it on your website. You don't know who's watching it or sending it out in an email. You don't know who's watching it. And that way you can say, actually, X amount of people have joined both live and on-demand as opposed to just looking at the live stats. So often you find clients are actually, when they look at how many people are actually joining their on-demand content, they're realised they're actually doing quite well. Yeah, nice. Katz, with you, I'm gonna ask a similar question, but like, so her live attendance numbers are dropping. What can she do? Is it potentially she's doing it the wrong day in time? Yeah, I think Michael Harris touched on a really good point before. Review the content. See what's relevant. See what's not. Adjust that to the next event. And also don't be afraid to ask for feedback. Send out a survey to your participants. See what you've done well on. See what you can improve on. Always ask for feedback during the series as well, just so you can always improve. Even ask them and say, hey guys, we've been running them on Thursdays because everyone thinks Thursday is the best day to do it at lunchtime. And in the redback report, if you scroll down, you'll be able to see those stats as well. But that might not work for your audience. We've worked with a lot of people in different industries, and especially in the healthcare profession, you can't do anything during the day. People do not attend. It has to be done after hours. So if you are delivering your events at the wrong time for your audience, your live numbers will always be bad. And they'll tend to get worse because there's things that are gonna interfere with them joining. So as Cass just said, go out to your audience, survey them, what do you like? What are the formats? But what's the day and time? Whatever you do, though, do not give them every option for the day of the week as well as all different times. You wanna give them maybe three options. Say, do you want them on Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but mid-morning, lunch, or after work. Just give them more of a focused timeframe that way you're not having to cater for absolutely everything out there. So Sarah's come back in and she says her on-demand numbers are growing regularly. So that's great. So you actually are measuring them correctly. I think just people, as Miranda said, put too much emphasis on the live and not the on-demand. Yeah, I think the biggest shortfall is they forget to actually measure people registering on the on-demand. Yeah, I think that we just get really tunnel vision we're looking at, oh my God, I only got 30% to this. This isn't a success. It actually is at the end of the day. And if you are measuring that on-demand content from one month, three months, six months and seeing the growth in it, go back to the business because you spent money on that first event. You're actually getting more return over the period of time if you're reporting on it correctly. Okay, so, Harris, I'm gonna throw this one over to you. David has asked, paid versus free hosting platforms, what do you recommend? There's always pros and cons of both. Again, mainly with the free ones out there, they limit the functionality back down to bare minimum. So you'll get a YouTube email-type service where you can upload your content. It is public. There's no sort of way of locking it down or sectioning off the access. Some videos for some viewers, other videos for others. But with that paid platform, you've got full customization. You can load them up into that platform, section some by content, by presenter, by topic, whatever the sectioning that you wanna do. You can go ahead and do that with that platform. You can also add a payment portal. And you do get more in-depth metrics. The paid hosting platforms out there understand the value of reporting and how valuable that is as a part of your series. So they wanna make sure that clicks, if you're in time, at what point in the presentation they're dropping off at. So you do get all those metrics and that will add into the success of your program as a home. Nice. Look, guys, we are about to be wrapping up in a moment. And before we do, there are more questions coming through it. And I do apologize that we haven't been able to get through all of them. I do just wanna throw it to everyone. And I'll start with Miranda. What's the number one thing that you want people to walk away with? Looking at the whole program now, marketing, technology, presenters on demand, that's gonna help them with their series journey. Yeah, I guess the main thing is you've just gotta give it a go, really. I think that people can sort of build up for this. So it's gonna be a big scary thing or a massive task or there's gonna be so much work involved. Yeah. But actually, when you actually do it, people are more often than not very surprised with the demand that they've had for the sessions and actually how little time it takes compared to when you're organizing a physical event and down the line, you can even start to do more online and less events where maybe you weren't getting the attendance numbers and some of these more rural and remote areas that you're hoping for. So we're flying less people around. And yeah. It isn't an expensive way of reaching a much wider audience. And you get to report on that cast through the same question to you. You've been speaking to the audience today. What is the one thing that you wanna leave them with that's gonna help them with their digital event series? Yeah. I think definitely plan, review, and also just keep in mind all the different touch points. Like we said before, mapping it out. It's always important to keep on top of things and be organized. Yeah. I think that's a big thing. No, look, it's almost similar as mine, but I'll go last. Harris, what do you wanna leave people on? Keep it consistent. Again, in your technology, delivering with the marketing and communication and the frequency of those pieces is sending out to the audience, keep it consistent. You wanna keep the audience informed and they also wanna know what they're gonna expect either via an email, via a login screen, via the actual platform when they log in. Keep it consistent and you'll keep them coming back. Nice. And for myself as well, look, it is all about at the end of the day. It is knowing where you wanna end up with the series. So as Casas said, we really, you need to map everything out and you need to know, understand your participant journey, how people are being communicated to you, how you're trying to get new users or new participants to join each time. But it is keeping that at the very beginning knowing exactly where you wanna end up and then take it piece by piece throughout the whole process, tweak it as you go, but make sure you use the features and functionalities in a consistent way, as Harris said, so that you can have really good analytics throughout to make sure that you're gonna meet that success or that measurement. So look, before we leave today and I'm so happy that you could all join us, I'm really excited about the panel we've had today. I thought we got a lot out to the audience, but I do just wanna remind you all that there is a button to provide us with your feedback. We do value your feedback so we can make these a little bit more pleasant and enjoyable and hopefully provide you the best content that we can. Another reminder as well that there's a lot of resource documents in the resource folder. So there are white papers on everything that's gonna help you build a successful program. And if you wanna contact us, there's a contact button on today's page. So if you wanna ask us any questions or if you need help with your digital program, please reach out to us. We'd be more than happy to help out. Once again, thank you so much for joining us today. Hope you have a great day.