Webinar Tips

What Monopoly can teach us about Webinars

6 min read

Sep 6, 2016

I expect most of you reading this have played Monopoly at least once in your lifetime, if not go and have a game as soon as you finish reading my blogpost. I also expect that many of you will think I’m crazy for thinking we can learn Webinar strategy from a board game, but please hear me out.

Many people believe that Monopoly is a game of luck and has little to no strategy in it, this is wrong in my opinion. While it is true that you have to rely on the role of a dice there are some elements to the game that you can plan and strategize around, increasing your chances of being successful.

Orange is best

We’ll start with my favourite Monopoly tip, I always try to buy the orange set of properties. These are statistically the most frequently landed on property group in the game, I’ll try to explain why.

During the course of the game you are more than likely going to be sent to jail, whether through a Chance card, throwing three doubles or landing on the Go to Jail spot on the board. The result of this, other than my Mum getting frustrated, is that you get more frequent footfall past the orange properties and therefore more chances for people to land on them.

How do I apply all this to webinars? The point here is to get footfall or in this case eyes on your webinar. Promote your online events to as many people as possible, obviously use your mailing lists to get people signed up nice and early. A big social media push will also help with increased footfall, Twitter and LinkedIn are both terrific ways to promote your event.

Basically the more people that see your event promotion, the more leads you will generate and hopefully more conversions.

Supporting with complete sets

Now this is something most people do know. If you own a full colour set the rent paid to you is doubled on each undeveloped property. Get a set early in the game and you will quickly have the advantage.

Now applying this to Webinars is fairly straightforward. Make sure that you have webinars that support each other. If you have similar topics use them to promote each other or running a webinar series would be a great way to do this. This is a perfect example of the whole being worth more than the sum of the parts.

Houses are key

Again, a point most people will be aware of, your property becomes more valuable if you add houses. However, what you may not know is the best return on investment for these houses is three. Therefore sometimes it is best to save up until you can afford three houses on all properties in a colour group. That way you maximise profitability.

Additionally, sometimes it’s a good idea to create a housing shortage, each game of Monopoly comes with 32 houses and once they are gone, nobody else can build, so don’t be too hasty to jump to hotels.

So how does this relate to webinars? Look at those houses as other activities in your marketing plan, for example; Blog Posts, Case Studies, eBooks. Always support your webinars with content, remember they are part of your content marketing and not a stand alone entity.

Finally, it is highly important to continue promoting your event once it is available on-demand. You will find that your viewing figures will still increase as people are free to watch at their leisure.

'Pass Go' aka motivate people

So, for me personally, when I play Monopoly, I rely heavily on my £200 when I pass go, this is a constant in my game, this is what motivates me to move around the board. On that note buying the browns early can eliminate the income of others.

Bringing this back to Webinars, you must give people a reason to watch your webinar, they must be motivated. There are many ways you can do this, mainly offer them something, perhaps a certificate of attendance, or a copy of the slides, these all work as motivation.

Other ways in which people are motivated is to have their opinion heard, we all like to talk about our own interests and show our knowledge of the things we enjoy. Give people this opportunity in your webinar. Use live chat or Q&A features, or even poll your audience, your audience has a voice, let them use it.

Try to work together

It’s easy to get caught up in the mindset of not wanting to trade during Monopoly, but sometimes this can prolong the game, leading everyone to get bored and frustrated. Sometimes in is better to trade, as this can be mutually beneficial and create a more enjoyable game. Plus it allows you to take advantage of some of the tips above.

Ok, so how do we link this to webinars? Well a great way to keep your content free to view, is by having sponsors. The link here is that you need to work with your sponsors so that the webinar is mutually beneficial. Ultimately the aim is to generate leads, the more the better. So by running sponsored webinars you can potentially have two lists of contacts, increased promotion and therefore better exposure for both parties.

Additionally your sponsors may have connections with some great presenters that will help even more with promotion.

Talk to each other

This isn’t really a tip to win the game, it just makes the experience more fun. In my experience nothing kills off the fun of playing a board game then when people stop communicating. Keep the conversation going throughout the game, basically if you think you’re losing don’t mope, just carry on playing and enjoy the game for what it is.

The point I want to get across here is to use live chat in your event. It gets people talking, and people love to talk. Having live chat creates a nice atmosphere in your event, and it allows people to talk amongst themselves, in which case they may hang around for longer.You may even find they start to answer the questions asked by other attendees.

But don’t forget the experience is always better if people are getting replies from your presenters.

Related Post - Get results from live Chat in webinars

Take aways

So the main thing I wanted to get across here is to make the most of your webinars. Webinars give you such a tremendous opportunity, but it is easy to miss the chance to take advantage of this. If you promote your webinars well and make the content engaging, with the opportunity for interaction you will see much more success from your events.

My final point is to not look at a webinar as a single stand alone entity. It has the potential to be much, much more and I really hope this is evident from my points above.

I really hope you have found my tips useful and that soon you’ll be winning and webinars and wowing your family and friends with your Monopoly skills.