With technology progressing at a lightning speed, our offline world is gradually converting into a digital one. With people working remotely, webinars have become the need of the hour. Most people think of webinars as a shared screen that allows one person to interact with a large audience, but not many know that a webinar is not just limited to this. A webinar can do a lot for you in building your brand when done the right way. It can help your business grow and allow you to establish your authority in the industry by helping you reach out to the right audience.
The only hurdle in this marketing initiative is that not all webinars convert. Many webinars fail because of low attendance or due to high drop-off rates. So, before getting to the part where you get the hacks for hosting a successful webinar right, let’s get to the basics.
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Why host a webinar?
Most of you, who are relatively new to the digital scenario would probably be wondering what good a webinar can do for you. Firstly, a webinar broadens your audience’s horizon. You can actively connect with people from anywhere around the world without the additional expense of traveling to the place literally. Moreover, live interaction with your audience can help understand your initiative better, thus generating potential leads for your business. Over time, with a dash of creativity and inspiration, you can even repurpose your webinar into interesting blogs, infographics, videos, and so on. Hence, a webinar is a sustainable marketing approach.
If you are here in search of some good tips for your very first webinar, then you are in a lot of luck. In this guide, we will provide you some ground-breaking information that will help you enhance your webinars with total ease. Let’s begin!
Tip #1: Find the right webinar platform
Even when you do your regular meeting or presentation, you choose the perfect venue that will suit your audience’s as well as your taste. Isn’t it? Webinars are no different. If you pick the right platform for your webinar, you no longer have to worry about facing issues like technical problems, poor feedback, and so on. While you are on your spree for the perfect platform, make sure to keep in consideration your budget, the features you want, the approximate number of your audience members, and so on. Some of the popular platforms that are trending these days for their amazing webinar facilities include GoToWebinar, Zoom, WebinarNinja, Demio, etc. Some of the features you may want to look for in a platform include chat capabilities, automated polls, surveys, follow-up emails, overall webinar analytics, and so on.
Tip #2: Understand your target audience
When you are choosing a webinar, you must understand that you are opting for a one-to-many communication channel. In other words, you have a wide range of audiences to cater to. However, it is at this point that you need to be crystal clear about who your target audience is and what are your preparations to get them to convert. For that, you first need to find and understand your target audience. Who is your target audience? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, as each business will have a different group of people to attend to depending upon their sales and marketing goals. In the end, it is your target audience that will help you grow your business. So, once you identify your target audience, make efforts to find more about them. Try to interact with them via feedbacks, social media posts, polls, surveys, and so on.
Tip #3: Choose an informative topic for the webinar
Good informative content is the key to a successful webinar. Anyone would sign up for your webinar, only if they relate to the topic or they feel that this webinar will provide a solution to their problems. So, once you are done finding and understanding your target audience, you will already be familiar with their likes, dislikes, struggles, and pain points. Knowing this information will help you plan a webinar that is laser-focused on your target audience. If you are facing trouble finding the right topic, a great piece of advice for you is to know that not all readers know what they want to learn, however, everyone knows about the struggles they are facing and wishes to escape them. If you can provide your readers a good solution, it will automatically make you an information source and an authoritative figure in their eyes. Instead of a broader topic, try to narrow it down to something more specific.
Tip #4: Give your webinar a catchy title
If you were under the impression that your work is done after choosing an informative topic for your webinar, then you are highly mistaken. Keeping your editorial standards high and content goodwill only works if you can at first grab the attention of your readers. For doing so, you need to realize that the first thing that will make a person aware of your webinar will be the title. Every day people come across thousands of advertisements, webinar invitations, and good content. However, the thing that will make you stand apart from them is your title. So, it is all the more important for your title to be unique, innovative, interesting, and out-of-the-box. Keep your title short, sweet, and self-explanatory. It should neither be too long to bore the readers and nor too short to make the readers think it to be something weird. Having a good title will work wonders for your webinar!
Tip #5: Decide the format of your webinar
Now that you are done with the content of the webinar, the next step is to choose the format. One of the most popular webinar formats is the Single Expert Presenter in which one speaker shares expert advice, tips, and insights. Some of the other formats which you can consider are dual presenters, a live panel, a Q&A Webinar or you can even go for a product demonstration if your goal is to promote your product. In case, more than one formats seem to work well for you, then you can even mix formats. For example, you can have a single presenter include a Q&A session, and so on.
Next, you should decide whether you wish your webinar to be scripted or non-scripted. According to some people, though scripted webinars can make you feel confident they can sound stiff, boring, and uninspiring. On the other hand, a non-scripted is less stable in terms of confidence but it will appear like an actual person sharing valuable wisdom. Choose the option that comes naturally to you. After all, it is all about confidently engaging your audience either way.
Tip #6: Make the webinar device-friendly
One of the major mistakes that most people commit while hosting a webinar is that they forget to take into account the various devices. You need to keep in mind that not all of your attendees will attend the webinar on a desktop or mobile. Hence, as a host, it is your responsibility to ensure a seamless-uninterrupted user experience, no matter through whichever device the user plugs in from. One of the things you can do to improve the experience of your users is to increase the text and visual size. Another thing you can do is to choose a webinar platform that supports both mobile and desktop. For example, ClickMeeting and Zoom are two great platforms that allow users to download their app for viewing the webinar on phones.
Tip #7: Ensure a stable internet connection
Now after all this hard work, you wouldn’t want your attendees to leave the webinar in the middle because of poor video or audio quality which is mainly a result of an unstable internet connection. If you have an unstable internet connection, then you should know that you can even get kicked out of your own webinar. If this is the very first webinar you are hosting, then you really wouldn’t want the webinar to fail because of a mere internet connection. To avoid any embarrassment later, make sure to check your internet connection stability prior. A wired connection with an upload speed of at least 3 MBPS would be a good choice. A good internet connection will prove to be a great asset for both presenters as well as hosts.
Tip #8: Don’t forget to take a dry run
We understand that hosting a webinar takes a lot of effort, time, and patience. But a successful webinar can work wonders for you as well. So, after doing all these efforts, you should make sure that nothing goes wrong. One of the best ways to do so is to take a dry run before the actual webinar goes live. Before the day of the presentation, get your team together and perform a dry run, acting as if it was the real thing. One thing you should know beforehand is that no matter how much effort you did, one or the other thing tends to go wrong on a dry run in most cases. However, rather than facing embarrassing technical glitches in the actual webinar, it is better to do so in the dry run. Make sure to check whether the equipment is working, the presentation has slid in order, the speakers are ready, and so on.
Tip #9: Actively promote your webinar
By now, you are almost ready for the big day. The only thing left to do is promotion. You would want your webinar to receive maximum publicity and be the talk of the town. For that, you need to work hard again. Put in a good word about your upcoming blog on every social media platform you have a presence on. No matter whether you write a blog, use email marketing, try paid advertising, go for pop-up promotion or add an attractive post on your social media profile, do anything and everything you can. Using the right hashtags on your social media posts about the upcoming webinar can work in your favor. You can also initiate contests on social media platforms to heighten the audience’s sense of involvement.
Once you have done all these steps, just know that you did everything in your power to make your upcoming webinar and success. Now, all you have to do is to wait and watch. It is natural for you to feel antsy before your first webinar. The last piece of advice for you will be to repeat the mantra: I CAN DO THIS and you will!
Before going away, would you also like to know about some of the top Webinar Making Software that you can use? We’ve got you covered, continue reading!
Top 5 webinar making software
Webinar making software is that magic wand that can make your journey of hosting a webinar very easy. Technically speaking, webinar software can be defined as a video conferencing software that aids you in hosting or broadcasting workshops, lectures, conferences, meetings, etc. on the web. Some of the best ones are:
1. GoToWebinar
This software is basically designed to cater to all your needs regarding a webinar and web conferencing. This tool features functions and facilities that help in generating leads as well as retaining customers. There are regular reminder emails and notifications which help you stay well-prepared. The best part is that with this software, you can easily keep a track of the audience engagement using its engagement metric tool.
2. ClickMeeting
This webinar management tool is appropriate for those businesses that are trying to increase their digital reach by hosting branded webinars. The thing which makes it one of the best tools is that all of its features are straightforward and easy to use. They are especially useful when dealing with international audiences and speakers. You will be pleased to know that you can even customize the webinar room and elements associated with it, that too in just a few clicks.
3. Livestorm
This video communication platform allows you to host everything ranging from webinars, meetings, online conferences to product demos, virtual learning, and a lot more. This software even allows the various teams to manage every aspect of the video communication strategies with total ease. This is a highly adaptable platform that helps you create, promote and manage online events hassle-free.
4. Demio
This webinar-making software can be used to create, host, and market webinars. This fully optimized software boasts of providing a user everything that they need to create and host live and automated events in the web browser. The software is even capable of fully engaging the audience on a large scale. With the help of Demio, you can even automate the events with pre-recorded presentations and other simulated events.
5. WebinarNinja
This is a user-friendly, cloud-based platform that helps individuals as well as businesses to easily create, promote and run various types of webinars. You will be pleased to know that the software comes with a series of amazing engagement features such as chat, polling, Q&A, sale offers, and so on. This software even features many built-in CRM tools such as customizable landing pages, email sequences, detailed statistics, and a lot more.
All this information can appear a bit overwhelming, especially if it is your first time hosting a webinar. However, once you slowly start processing and applying it, you will realize that the process is no rocket science. We hope that you have a successful, engaging, and fruitful webinar session and our range of Webinar Softwares can help you make it as easy it can get!
Also read:
• Top 5 Free Webinar Software That You Can Use in 2021
• Share Your Live Feeds Easily with These 6 Best Live Stream Software for PC
