In this blog, I will go through tips and tricks for hosting a webinar, how to structure your webinar, create your invitation and landing page, reminders and also leveraging your webinar recording as evergreen content.
Webinars can consume a lot of time and resourcing, so to get the most out of your webinar, consider the following:
- Establish when the best time for the webinar would be for your audience. Top-performing times to maximise attendance are usually Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10 am or 11 am local time.
- Instead of talking about something holistically, pick a specific topic. Talk about something that will help your audience, for example, Best practices in eCommerce.
- Featuring a customer interview or a demo. Including a customer interview is a great way to build credibility with your audience. People buy from people and like hearing from others similar to them about their experiences.
- Move slowly through product demonstrations if you choose to do a live product demo. Remember that there is a delay, so try to take it slow.
- Add giveaways to help boost registration and attendance, not just "free" whitepapers.
- Host a preparation call one week before the event to walk through content and logistics.
- Make sure you use a platform that you are comfortable with (see below list of platforms)
When structuring your webinar it is important to understand your audience. Who are you targeting, what are they looking for, what challenges are they facing and what is relevant and exciting for them?
Make sure you choose the right topics. A quick tip would be to look at the common inquiries you receive from clients, what are the hot topics in the industry and look at your most visited web pages and blog posts.
Decide the format of your webinar, do you want a single presenter, do you want to include a Q&A with a guest speaker or expert, do you want a panel representation with a moderator?
Selecting the right speakers is critical to the success of the webinar, so ensure that the speakers are familiar with the topic and confident on camera.
Once you have decided on the audience, the topic, the format and the speakers, you can start preparing your assets for the webinar.
Create the slides
- Ensure to use your branding and logo throughout the webinar
- Keep the slides short and use images and visuals elements for appeal
- Ensure your slides map out key points to cover and keep on topic and on time
- I would recommend 60mins max for a webinar, ideally 30-45 mins.
Create your webinar invite and landing page
- Include an engaging banner image with the webinar title and industry imagery, that way at a glance the audience will see what you are hosting
- Feature a high-resolution company logo
- Include a brief 2-3 sentence description of the webinar
- List 3-4 bullet points telling people what they’ll learn by joining (pain points that we are addressing)
- Add a giveaway callout, if applicable, to incentivise registration and attendance
- Publish the landing page at least 3 weeks before the event to help drive maximum awareness
- Most registration takes place one week before the webinar
- Push out your campaign with email marketing, and sponsored content and leverage your team to inform prospective customers
- For email marketing, remember the importance of the subject line
- Include the term "webinar" and mention a specific takeaway from the event
- [webinar] Grow your brand 3x with this proven method
- Use industry terms:
- Lighthouse shines a light on business growth with CRM
- Have a clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
- "Save your seat", "Register now", "Register today", "Claim your spot"
Housekeeping items on the day of your webinar
- Send a reminder email to registrants one day before the event and one hour before the event
- Have panellists join at least 15 mins before the start of the webinar
- Close all unnecessary applications and silence your devices to ensure that there are no distractions
- Start 2 minutes after the hour to give attendees time to call in
- Make sure to begin recording once the content starts
- Remind participants that the webinar will be recorded and shared afterwards
- Let the audience know how to submit questions and when they will be addressed
Leveraging your webinar recording
- Send out the recording (and slides) within 24 hours of the webinar
- Host a gated version of the on-demand webinar to capture new leads
- Email the on-demand webinar to target account lists who didn't initially sign up
- Create blog content for your webinar
- Follow up, follow up and follow up - It takes 10-20 touches to create an opportunity
Check out this handy list of webinar platforms to consider:
Aside from your usual webinar features, GoToWebinar lets you host your webinars on their servers and create a page you can share online. This way, you can increase your visibility and entice them to join your live webinars soon.
WebinarGeek has quite an intuitive, web-based interface, making webinar hosting both easy and quick as there’s no need to install additional software.
Webex by Cisco hassle-free online video solution for businesses. While you can use the software for reaching out to your customers and leads, Webex works best in improving how your team communicates.
Google Hangouts has been around for a long time as an online communication tool. You can message or hold video calls with users to keep everybody on the same page about work and your products.
As one of the most popular and widely used videos conferencing tools around, Zoom needs no introduction.
Demio offers a great combination of a modern interface and the ability to run both live and automated on-demand webinars.
Livestorm is a great webinar tool for demos and training purposes and offers collaboration features and a generous free plan.
WebinarJam is the most intuitive solution on the market if you’re looking to sell a product or service via webinar.
GetResponse offers not only webinars but also various marketing tools across email, signup forms or landing pages.
EverWebinar is best suited to SMEs looking to boost their sales via automatic, webinar-based lead generation funnels.
Zoho Meeting offers a simple and consistent user interface across all devices, which you can access directly from your web browser. There’s no need to download software that will take up space in your computer’s drive or expose your computer to security risks.