How to Do a Webinar Your Audience Will Love

Webinars are used as educational webcasts that are streamed online to your target viewers. It was first developed as a learning tool but now, webinars are being used widely as a powerful marketing tool.

Several marketers use webinar not because it will benefit the audience but only because it will generate great leads. But not all know the tricks to reach and attract the audience in marketing their brands or products.

Creating a webinar can be quite a Herculean task, especially if you are new in this webinar world.

How to create a webinar your audience will love?

Let’s discuss how you can present a webinar to attract your target audience.

Webinar Planner 

First things first, determine the objective behind creating a webinar. What is the objective of marketing the service or product? It is important to track the outcomes of the webinar.

Once you have set your goals and you have planned out your webinar well, select an attractive title that your audience will love. Make the title vivid and it should focus on the problem you want to solve with the webinar.

Worth mentioning, select a format for your webinar. You can use the interview style where you ask questions to your expert guests, you can bring in a panel of expert presenters, conduct a product demo, or carry out a Q&A session in your webinar.

Once you have decided on the title, and format of the webinar, chalk down some points as conversation starters. Add graphics to the presentation and avoid using excessive text on the slides. Prepare the visuals, reflecting the colors and logo of your company.

Marketing 

Many people overlook this vital step. This is important since you need to produce a loud buzz during the webinar. Start marketing and sending out emails at least two weeks prior to the event otherwise your viewers will not even know about your webinar.

The general thumb rule follows 1 invitation + 2 reminders pattern. Send another final reminder on the day of the event.

Marketing also involves creating a registration form. This will help you to understand the number of participants who are planning to attend the meeting. From the registration list, you can also gather future potential leads.

Lastly, promote the webinar on different social media platforms. Keep writing content and reminding people about the big da

Webinar Setup

The kind of setup and gear needed for your webinar is largely dependent on the complication of the webinar. There are three main parts when it comes to the mechanical setup.

Video component –

The most widely and basic setup for most webinars is to use the full PPT screens for your slides on your system, added with the voice of the presenter.

What is more interesting is when the presenter speaks through the webcam in the PIP layout. If you are switching from one layout to another, it makes the presentation more active and offers a dynamic feel to the audience.

Audio component – 

Note that using good audio is an extremely essential component for a successful and holistic webinar.

Additionally, make sure that the surrounding is quiet and use microphones of premium quality. If you have guests or remote presenters, everyone should have their good-quality microphones. 

Encoding component –

 Going live with webinars can be done in different ways. You can use webinar platforms such as BigMarker, GoToWebinar, Zoom, and many more. They sport various features like sharing on the screen, sharing presenter controls, polls in the webinar, and many more.

You may also use live streaming channels such as Facebook or YouTube to deliver the meeting. But if you are preparing to capture footage from 2 or 3 high-definition video sources, your system may not be able to process all that. 

Test the setup

No matter how much we relentlessly emphasize this step, it is still going to be less. Ensure that you run a test of the whole equipment setup including the audio, video, webinar platform, and do not forget to check the internet speed.

Carry out a speed test by allocating dedicated LAN lines with adequate bandwidth of at least 5x than you usually use.

Be aware of your starting points but do not over-rehearse them. If you rehearse too much, the material you are planning to render would become lifeless and dry. The same applies to your co-hosts.

If you are a solo-presenter, practice the meeting with the images, slides, and other materials.

While you are running the test, keep a track of the time taken to complete each section. Keep a note of how long each session is taking to complete and shorten the material wherever necessary.

To introduce the title, ideally, it should take around 5 mins, followed by the body of the webinar, not exceeding 30 minutes, and another 10 to 15 minutes is enough to end the webinar with questions or discussion with the audience.

Examine the webinar and follow-up 

Once the webinar is over, do not pack up immediately and leave! Sit with your team and examine the entire session. Note down all that went perfectly and what could have been better.

This will help you learn from experiences and with practice, you will gain valuable knowledge for future webinars.

Do not forget to send your audience an email for follow-up within the next 24 to 48 hours. Show feelings of gratitude for attending the meeting. See the example SEMrush did here.

Analyse the retention and attendance data and go over the outcomes such as the number of leads you were able to gather, the number of people who signed up, etc. This will give you a brief idea of how successful your webinar was!

Conclusion

To sum up, webinars can be extremely useful in connecting with your target audience virtually. There is a lot to learn when it comes to delivering a webinar and only practice makes everything perfect. Follow the steps provided in this article and win more audience on your side. No matter what, always carry out a dry run first before presenting the webinar to your audience to avoid mishaps!

Guest article written by: Ankit Thakor is a strategic thinker and visionary who can see the big picture and focus on key issues to accomplish established goals. He is a Saas Marketing Specialist at SoftwareWorld – Software Technology Review and Rating Platform.