5 top tips for pharma webinars

1. Make the most of tools available to engage and understand your audience

The 2019 Webinar Benchmarks Report for Life Sciences lists the percentages of webinars using engagement tools, with some revealing findings: 77% of life sciences webinars include a Q&A session but only 53% offer resources for download, 25% use surveys and 23% polling. These tools can help you to find out more about the interests of your audience and better understand them so, you can develop a personalized approach to the content you deliver.

Polling can be used to obtain a quick profile of your audience. Ask short multiple-choice questions to find out their experience of the drug, therapy or device being discussed. Why are they attending the webinar? The results can be shared with the audience during the webinar if presenters are comfortable thinking on their feet. Acknowledging the audience’s familiarity with the subject matter and picking out other key poll findings will help to engage the audience.

2. Offer resources for download

Only 53% of webinars offer resources for download, yet 72% of healthcare providers (HCPs)* expect materials to be available via a meeting portal / website, with 54% of HCPs failing to find access to content or presentations. Regulation can present a challenge with the timescales but offering appropriate material for download not only ensures you’re meeting audience expectation, you can also track what is downloaded and by whom, to gauge the HCPs’ level and specific areas of interest.

3. Deliver your webinar both live and on-demand

Out of the total views for a webinar the average percentage of views for live only is 59%, according to the ON24 Benchmarks Report. On-demand or ‘always-on’ is 36%. If you only deliver a live version, you’re missing out on adding 50% more viewers.

Make sure you provide an on-demand version of your webinar – it’s quick and easy to do and can hugely increase your ROI!

4. Repackage your webinar for on-demand viewing

The Benchmarks Report lists the average viewing time for a live pharma webinar as 63 minutes, but for on-demand it drops to only 32 minutes. This is also 5 minutes less for each than the average across all industries – as you’d probably expect, as Life Sciences audiences have less time to spend watching content.

So, if you’re turning your webinar into an on-demand asset, are you optimizing your content for a viewing time of 30 minutes?

If compliance is an issue for you, put clear chapter slides in your live webinar and then enable on-demand viewers to move between chapters.

If your content must be reviewed anyway, edit the recording to tighten the content and produce a 30 minute on-demand asset.

Also consider creating shorter bite size pieces, or even using snippets to promote your next event.

5. Add Simu-Live events and additional languages to extend reach

If you’ve secured time from an eminent key opinion leader (KOL) to present at your webinar, is the content valid and compliant in other countries? You can deliver one presentation across multiple time zones with Simu-Live events – use the recorded presentation and have a KOL on standby for the Q&A alone, while having cost efficiencies in producing only one webcast recording.

You can also use simultaneous translation services to deliver the webinar live in additional languages. Providing they are briefed prior to the event, specialist interpreters are available to do this. Share marketing assets and content with colleagues in other countries to increase the reach of your event and in due course, to increase the number of touch points with target HCPs.

*The Science of Healthcare Professional Meetings, a white paper based on data collected by Ashfield.