If you’re a professional speaker presenting at public conferences or seminars, don’t try to turn those in-person presentations into online webinars. Instead, use webinars to enhance the value of these presentations.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a speaker is trying to replace your in-person presentations with online versions (webinars). It’s a tempting idea: after all, you’re a master of presenting, you’ve already created your PowerPoint slides, and you’re an experienced presenter.

But it’s deceptively difficult to translate your success as a conference presenter into success with webinars, for example:

• It is more difficult to find the right market
• Your existing customers and audiences don’t necessarily want the webinar version of you
• You generally can’t charge anywhere near the kind of fees you usually charge for your in-person presentations.

That doesn’t mean you should use webinars at all! On the contrary. It just means you use them differently.

instead of trying to replace your presentations with webinars, to improve those presentations instead. Here are some ways to do that…

1. Market Research

If you’re building a new show or presentation, take a free Q&A webinar to discover your audience’s biggest needs and most pressing questions. Simply promote it to your network and then come by and spend an hour answering their questions. Use this for market research instead of promotion. You provide an extremely valuable service, and in return you discover exactly what your market wants to know.

You can further enhance the experience by inviting people to email you their questions ahead of time. You can then arrange them in a logical sequence, create some PowerPoint slides to help you answer them, and direct attendees to additional resources (yours and others’) during the webinar.

2. New material test

You can also offer a free webinar to test new material before adding it to your seminars and conference presentations.

Do not worry that by giving away this “free” material you are devaluing the face-to-face presentation. You will not deliver your entire main presentation in your webinar. That’s a bad idea anyway, because the dynamics of the two environments are quite different. Instead, you’ll use small elements of your presentation, for example a new story you want to test.

3. Promotion of the event

If you need to encourage people to attend your presentation in person, host a webinar to promote it.

Of course, don’t make this just a big promotion for the event! Instead, offer genuine value in the webinar, for example by teaching a of the concepts you talk about at your event, and then invite them to attend the event to learn the rest.

This doesn’t just apply to paid public seminars, where you need them to buy tickets to your event. It can also be applied to events where a client pays you a flat fee, but you still take the initiative to encourage people to attend (which, of course, your client will love).

4. Make a connection

If you want your presentation to attend to do some planning, brainstorming, or pre-work before they see you in person, host a pre-event webinar for them. It also allows you to learn more about them, so you can personalize and personalize your presentation.

Even if they don’t need to do any pre-work, a pre-event webinar allows you to build a relationship with them, so they have a stronger connection with you when they attend your presentation.

5. Offering support

You can also offer a follow-up webinar after your presentation to offer additional support and assistance. This shows that you really care about helping them put your ideas into action. Even audience members who choose not to attend will appreciate your intention.

Do you use webinars to enhance your presentations?

These are just a few of the ways you can use webinars to enhance your in-person presentations. If you’re not already using them, you may be missing out on a huge opportunity to add value, improve the experience for everyone involved, and yes, increase your speaking fees.