9 Ways To Host Successful Webinars
Are you scheduling a webinar and worried about stability? Maybe you have experienced hosting issues and crashes during webinars in the past. These problems can be stressful, luckily there are some ways to reduce embarrassing moments like that.
The following article will cover 9 ways to host successful webinars. With these tips you have a better rate of success with your next webinar.
Why Webinars Are Important
Over 60% of marketers have started including webinars in their content marketing because of their growing popularity. They can help companies generate higher-quality leads, expand brand awareness, and help provide more understanding through visual explanations of services or products.
Research shows these areas can be increased up to 74% with webinars because it allows businesses to clearly demonstrate what their pitching. Also, it builds trust and authority within the field.
On to the 9 tips:
- Use a Trusted Webinar Platform
The first step is to choose a webinar platform that you can trust. If a platform is trustworthy, the sign up process will be simple, with various ways for people to join. For instance, some may prefer watching on their mobile device with others watch from a desktop.
Other things to watch for include being limited to the number of people or the webinar being filled with ads. Advertisements can be a quick way to lose attendees as they are likely to get aggravated. Also, a bunch of ads will make it appear less professional.
GoToMeeting
This is the webinar platform we choose to go with. It allows us to deliver professional webinars, send out reminders and manage registrations easily. Of course, there are many other options available and you may find one that suits your needs better, such as AnyMeeting or Adobe Connect.
- Best Day and Time Slot
Choosing the best time and day for a webinar is another key to success as it can help with maximizing your attendees. Your target audience will determine the best time and day. Although, a poll by WhatCounts indicated the best day to hose a webinar is Wednesday or Thursday, because Monday and Friday are often very busy days.
Additionally, Google Analytics is another way to figure out what areas your traffic is mostly from, and what time. This can help you determine the best time for your particular demographic reach. For instance, if you’re based in the United States, but most of your traffic comes from Europe, you would want to avoid hosting a webinar during the night there.
Of course, experimenting with different days and times is recommended. Make notes of what times got the largest audiences, and retest at those times to see if the results are repeated.
- The Proper Equipment
A webinar is only as professional as the equipment used. Be sure to use a quality setup, which means investing in a good headset. Avoid using a built-in microphone (laptop or desktop) as they can provide low quality audio, often with a lot of background noise.
Any equipment that runs off a battery, could go dead, always have a backup battery. If possible, have a backup computer or a plan for technical difficulties that you may encounter to quickly get back to your presentation.
Are you using slides? Technology makes this simple and visually appealing, but always print them out so you have physical copies, in case the slideshow begins to glitch.
By ensuring all of the attendees have a good experience will make you look more professional and build trust. Malfunctions that are not quickly corrected can easily create skepticism.
- Advance Webinar Promotion
Promotion is needed to help boost awareness about your webinar. You want to give people enough time to learn about your event and fit it into their schedule.
The first step is to build a landing page to help explain the topic of your webinar, who the speakers will be, and clearly presents the time and date with a registration call-to-action.
Social media is another way of promoting your webinar, using hashtags and short videos will gain more attention. A video could give a preview of what to expect from the webinar.
Other promotional options include email marketing if you have a list of leads, blog posts or guest posting. You want to clearly define the time, date and topic with any promotional method used.
- Topics Based On Audience
To get people to attend your webinar, you first have to get their attention. To do this, you must choose topics that interest them. Otherwise, they will not want to attend.
The first step here is to determine specific areas that will peak your audiences’ attention. You want a rather specific idea, not a broad one. This allows you to focus on more detail of the single topic, then people with an interest in that topic will be more likely to attend your webinar for an in-depth presentation.
Your topic can be covering an industry trend, a product or service you offer, or anything else. The key is to provide the audience with advice and tips to create value for them. In addition, your presentation needs to be visually appealing. To do this, introduce a single topic per slide, and use images to help keep your audience interested.
- Engaging With The Audience
It is common to prepare a script to follow, but do not focus so much on the script that you forget to engage with your audience.
By engaging with the audience, you can receive feedback that’s valuable later. You can engage by asking questions to strike up interaction. Do this around every 3 to 5 slides, giving them information and then a chance to ask questions.
If you estimate the webinar to last 45 – 60 minutes, include an additional 45-60 minutes for questions. You can include the questions during the presentation, or add an additional time frame at the end for people with questions to stay around.
Depending on the webinar platform you choose, some offer different features, like polls that can be added to the webinar.
- Practice Makes Perfect
Remember this old saying, practice makes perfect? It applies with webinars too. The more you practice your script and go over everything from equipment setup to presentation, it helps work out any kinks and increases the chance of a successful webinar.
You should also close any programs and software that is not used during your presentation as these things can slow down the computer, increasing the risk of glitches. It will also help the video quality of your webinar, slow computer means video lag.
- The Follow Up
Once your webinar is finished, be sure to follow up with those who attended the event. You can do this by sending a short thank you email. Additionally, you can request feedback or ask them to provide a rating on the event.
Not everyone that registers for your webinar will be able to make it, life happens. Be sure to send a video of the webinar to those that couldn’t make it in person. This helps keep them interested and progress towards your ultimate goal.
Finally, you may offer highlights or freebies that could help people decide to attend a future webinar or take the next step.
- Evaluation
That’s it, your webinar is now over. You have reached out with a follow up email and requested feedback. Now it is time to evaluate your efforts.
Review the metrics provided by your webinar platform of choice to analyze the event. How many registered, how many attended? What did people respond most to, or worst to? Learn how the webinar performance increases or decreases based on topic.
Also, you can go over the performance with team members to determine where you can improve when needed. Getting audience feedback after the webinar is another great way of learning what needs to be changed before the next webinar.
