How to Build a Successful Webinar

Its 2019 and the way people interact with your business online continues to evolve. It has never been easier to give information to your client base in the way they want to receive at the time they want to receive it. Webinars (or web seminars) have risen to be a simple way to educate and converse with your customer base about the inner workings of your business. They are a versatile tool that allows you to show off your brand, generate leads, educate your audience, and learn more about your clients. Building a successful webinar takes a good amount of preparation as well as an understanding of the webinar platform you select. Even when you finish presenting a webinar, your customer base can watch it whenever they want. You can use metrics on your audience to make sure you are appealing to your targeted demographic. Webinars are fruitful ventures that can benefit your audience and your business.

WHY YOU SHOULD USE WEBINARS

What are the benefits of doing a webinar? According to the ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report 2019, 79 percent of media and branding companies believe that webinars assist in expanding their company and 67 percent think they lower their cost per lead. Webinars are a customizable experience that allow viewers from all around your market to interact with your brand.² Webinars provide live interaction between you and your audience aimed at educating and answering questions from them. Depending on the platform, you can record and archive the video for people to watch anytime. You can even repurpose the recorded webinars as original social media content. Webinars are a valuable piece of content that can be utilized in different ways.

BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL WEBINAR

Preparation for a webinar is just as important as the webinar itself. Webinars are not something you should do every week. Aiming for high quality is important, which is why you should aim for about four webinars a year, if you enjoy doing them. Here is a preparation timeline, which will help track your progress of building and setting up your webinar.

Eight weeks before: When planning, the first thing you should do is choose a topic. This leaves you ample time to decide and process what you would like to present. Next you will want to schedule a date. Typically, it is smart to do your webinar in the middle of the week either on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday when most people are ready to do business with you. Common sense suggests you not run a seminar on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. When choosing a time, the optimal choice is 11 a.m. in the time zone where the majority of your clients reside. By 11 a.m. most people are mentally ready to learn and are more likely to retain the information you deliver.
Six weeks before: You should start preparing promotional materials, and make sure any guests that would be apart of it are able to make it.
Four weeks before: You should start sending promotional email blasts to potential viewers, setup a registration system for them, choose the webinar platform you feel best suits your needs, and start the process of gathering your presentation materials. Three webinar platforms marketers suggest ON24, PGi, and GoToWebinar. When getting your materials together, it is smart to try to keep the presentation length of 50 minutes to an hour, because the average audience attention span for webinars is roughly 48 minutes.¹
Two weeks before: You need to check viewer registrations, review the prepared content, and create any webinar materials like polls or documents you would like your audience to use during the presentation.
One week before: Ramp up promotions for your webinar, do a few practice runs of your material, as well as keep an eye on registrations. The majority of registrations happen the week of the event.¹
Day of the event: Be sure to finalize your content and do a dress rehearsal where you will be giving your webinar. Do some last-minute prep, make sure you have your webinar setup to be recorded and go do it!

THE PRESENTATION

While you are doing your webinar, make sure to encourage audience interaction with strategic engagement tools. Each platform has different audience engagement tools and strategies, it is just a matter of selecting the ones that fit your audience the best.

Q&As are proven to be the most effective strategy.³ They allow the audience to ask you questions, which helps minimize misunderstanding and makes the interaction feel more personal to the viewer. Budgeting 10 to 15 minutes to Q&As for your webinar is usually enough for an hour-long presentation. If they have more questions when you are out of time, direct the audience to other avenues of contacting you, like social media or direct email.

The second most effective strategic tool is providing prepared resources for the audience to download.³ Having an outline and or handout that the audience can follow along with during the webinar makes your message clearer and keeps their focus. Plus, they can take it with them, and reference it in the future.

The third tool you should use is social media promotion in your webinar.³ It may not be the most effective to use during your presentation, but promoting your social media accounts during the event provides the opportunity to interact with people long after the webinar.¹

Other strategic engagement tools that are worth mentioning are polls, surveys, and group chats. According to The Insider’s guide to Webinars Marketers edition – GoToWebinar, those tools have a lower effectiveness rate, but they will still have a place in your webinars from time to time. At the end of the webinar, empower the audience to take action to interact with your business.

WHAT TO DO AFTER

Once the webinar is over, it is important to follow up with the registrants through email or social media. It is smart to reach out within 24-hours, while the topic of the webinar is still fresh in their minds. If you make interacting with your company as simple as possible for potential clients, the odds that they will do business with you will increase. Directing people to your social media provides the opportunity to stay on that person’s radar. Depending on the webinar platform, you can view demographics about your audience, then analyze and apply that data to help you understand your clients and prospect base better.³

A WEBINAR WILL TAKE YOU FAR

Webinars are a valuable interactive educational tool that has massive potential to grow your business. With the tips that you have just read, you should have no problem creating a webinar that will help expand your business.