How to A/B Test Your Webinars Blog Series – Part 1: Content

Picture this, you’ve now completed two webinars and you’re just beginning to create the content for your third webinar. At this point you’re wondering, how can I make sure my third webinar is better than my first two?

There are several ways to ensure that your content improves, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to A/B test your previous content.

In this webinar series, we’ll outline different webinar elements that you can help you to A/B test your older webinars to ensure improvement for your future webinars. We’ll cover a variety of items such as content testing, post-webinar report testing and even A/B testing by asking specific poll or research questions. But don’t worry if this task seems overwhelming or too time consuming, Xtalks is here to help guide you through every step and even provide feedback and insights to improve your upcoming webinars. Feel free to contact us if you ever have any questions about your upcoming webinars, or how to find the best content for a webinar in general.

How to Use this Guide to A/B Test Your Webinars

All elements of your webinar that are mentioned below have a point system attached to them to grade your past webinar. So first, get started by downloading our webinar A/B test calculator by clicking here.

Enter the points separately for the two webinars you have conducted. Keep in mind if your webinars don’t fit into one of the options, try your best to fit it into a category so you can obtain an approximate score for each webinar and compare the two scores. Additionally, take notes on what categories your webinar fell into, and send this to Xtalks to provide you with feedback on how to best go about planning for webinar number three. Also, this scoring system will give you a better idea of what worked in your past webinars and what we can help you improve on!

Don’t forget to download our A/B testing excel template. Simply plug your points into the excel sheet and it will calculate everything for you.

Even though there are numerous different content aspects within a particular webinar, in this Part 1 of a series of blog articles, we’ll just focus on three: title, content format and third-party involvement. Subscribe to this blog to get future updates about A/B testing your webinars.

Title (Catchy and Clickable, Informative, Educational, Promotional)

Thinking of webinar titles can be difficult. It’s always a toss-up between being informative or being catchy. At Xtalks, we try our best to help you create a title that’s informative, timely and clickable.

Here are a few title examples that we feel best cover all aspects of an ideal webinar title.

• What is A/B Testing, and Why Should I Care?
• Optimize Your Webinars and Obtain Qualified Leads Through A/B Testing
• 3 Ways to Optimize Your Webinar Content

Let’s look at a few title categories to help grade your previous webinars.

Catchy and Clickable Webinar Titles

• Solve All Your Lead Generation Problems
• Grow Your Webinar Audience by The Hundreds!

How many times have you gone to click on an article because of the attention-grabbing title, only to get to the page and realize the title doesn’t even remotely reflect what the article is about? Catchy or clickable titles aim to grab the readers attention, which is great for getting initial clicks on your webinar event page. The only problem with catchy titles is if they don’t accurately align with the webinar content or with the webinar abstract content, visitors to your web page will be uninterested in registering for your webinar, or worse, be disappointed by your webinar itself. So, ensure that if you’re going to use a catchy title for your webinar, it’s one that represents your webinar content and webinar abstract and be sure that you’re not bordering on clickbait or opting for what you think sounds clever.

Awarding Points

If you think your previous webinars had catchy titles but were not reflective of your webinar content and webinar abstract give yourself 10 points.

If you think your previous webinar had a catchy title and did grasp the message of your abstract give yourself 30 points.

Informative and Educational Webinar Titles

• Learn How to Effectively Compare and Contrast your Webinar Content
• How A/B Testing Can Improve Your Future Webinar: A Case Study With Real World Examples

These types of titles risk being considered uninteresting but will convey the message behind your webinar to your audience accurately and may educate your audience on your topic of choice. An informative title aims to draw a reader’s attention by describing a key piece of information your audience needs or is curious about. If your audience is intrigued by the title, they will likely also be intrigued by the written content of your webinar. Informative and educational titles are best when they’re short and concise.

Awarding Points

If you used this type of title and it was short and concise give yourself 20 points.

However, if your previous webinar title was informative or education, but lengthy give yourself 10 points.

Promotional Webinar Titles

• Learn Why Our A/B Testing Guide is Right For You!
• How Using Xtalks A/B Testing Guide Will Change Your Future Webinars
• A Demonstration of Xtalks A/B Testing Guide

The last type of webinar title we’ll discuss is a promotional title. These usually include your company name or product name. While, yes, they can be informative and educational based on your company or product, and you may be targeting audience members farther down your sales funnel, most audience members will be wary that your webinar will be an uninformative sales pitch. If you do plan on running a sales-focused webinar, let us know, and we can help you optimize your title and abstract to make it more inviting to a larger audience.

Awarding Points

If either one or both if your webinars had a promotional title give yourself 10 points per webinar.

Remember, be brutally honest with yourself – even ask your colleagues their honest opinions. Being honest in grading your previous webinars will make sure that your future webinars are a success and can be a great stepping stone for us here at Xtalks to provide feedback to improve your future webinars.

For more hints at writing titles for your webinar, subscribe to this blog for a forthcoming post on optimizing webinar titles, or check out this post, “6 Tips to Optimize Your Webinar Event Page”

Webinar Content Formats

Previously we wrote a blog article outlining webinar formats, where we listed several different types of formats that could fit with the content you’re trying to convey to the audience. In this section, we’ll outline these formats briefly so you can categorize your previous webinars. However, if you ever want a more in-depth look at these formats check out our blog article, “Optimize Your Webinar Format to Communicate Your Expertise.”

Interview/Question and Answer/Panel Formats

There’s no hard right or wrong when it comes to a content format – it should be centered on what you want your audience to remember when leaving your webinar. That being said, conducting your webinar through an interview style, question and answer or panel format will keep your audience engaged throughout the webinar and leave them thinking about your webinar later on. One caveat to this style of presentation is that it often takes more planning and can be more difficult to execute.

An interview format webinar is very similar to interviews you would see on television or hear on a podcast. This would include pre-formulated questions to ask the speaker(s) or questions that build on their answers while displaying slides with relevant information on the question asked or even on the general webinar content.

The question and answer format is very similar: imagine the last 10-15 minutes of your webinar (the Q&A portion) taking up the bulk of the webinar time instead. This would be an entirely unscripted session, either basing your answers off questions on hand or audience questions.

The panel discussion webinar format would involve 3 or more expert speakers discussing a specific topic. This format is highly engaging because audience members will be able to hear different industry perspectives.

Awarding Points

If your previous webinars were in either an interview style format, question and answer format or a panel discussion (with two or more speakers) give yourself 40 points.

Presentation Format

Another option for content format is the basic, yet effective, presentation style format. This would consist of a few speakers (one or more) presenting from a slide deck, either with a pre-rehearsed script or speaking off bullet points from the slide deck. While this is a great format, it’s not always as engaging as the previous formats mentioned, but it does leave the audience informed on the topic.

Awarding Points

If any of your previous two webinars have been in presentation format give yourself 20 points for each webinar.

Product Demonstration Format

The last content format is a product demonstration. While product demos can certainly be engaging to an audience who is farther on in the sales cycle, we usually recommend that it doesn’t take up the bulk of your webinar. Keep in mind product demos will be interesting to audience members who are actively looking to purchase or evaluate your type of product or service. Generally, these types of webinars are not as engaging to a wide audience.

Awarding Points

If you were aiming to engage later-stage prospects and included a product demo in your overall presentation, give yourself 20 points.

If you were hoping to draw a wide audience and your webinar was a product demo with no additional educational content – give yourself 10 points.

Also, if you feel that your webinar utilized two of the content formats mentioned, give yourself the points for both. I hope you’re keeping track of your points!

Third-Party Involvement

Third-party involvement can really push your webinar to be more dynamic and interesting to audience members since they’re getting multiple points of view and are hearing different perspectives from different industry professionals. It’s important to try and obtain at least one third party speaker, even if it’s just to outline a case study, provide their experience on the topic, or even to drive the whole presentation.

Awarding Points

Give yourself 10 additional points (per webinar) for each external speaker that presented. For example, 10 points for one external speaker, 20 points for two external speakers and so on.

At this point on the A/B testing excel sheet, you should be left with two “Total Score for Each Webinar” numbers. As you noticed, each content item being tested has a value. After a decade of conducting webinars, we feel we’re best able to approximate a value amount of importance for each content item, which also gives you some insight on what audience members value the most in terms of content.

While a title is important for initially getting people to your web page and reading your abstract, the content format of your presentation along with the inclusion of external speakers ultimately are more important when engaging an audience.

Now that you have you have tallied your numbers, you can see which webinar performed better. Also looking at the score you allocated for each category, you can see what webinars performed better based on title, content format and third-party involvement. You can analyze further and see what areas you have room for improvement going into your third or next webinar and what areas are your strongest.

To get the most out of this A/B testing process, contact Xtalks staff and set up a free consultation on what categories you can improve on and how to accomplish this.

We hope this blog series will provide you with some deeper insights on how you optimize your future webinars. Subscribe now (at the bottom of the page) to make sure you receive Part 2 of the series!