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10 Webinar Best Practices You Need To Know
Thinking about hosting a webinar? It’s important to make sure you follow some key webinar best practices to ensure your virtual event is a success.
Webinars are interactive online events where speakers (or a small group of speakers) lay out a presentation to a target audience. The target audience partakes by asking questions, replying to polls, and using other interactive technologies.
Webinar marketing is an essential approach for B2B companies. Many consumer brands use it for their B2C marketing campaigns, especially after COVID-19 prompted many companies to transfer in-person events and sales meetings to the virtual realm.
Webinars allow people to develop more personal contact with the audience while also answering their objections on a large scale. They can even do this while sleeping if they use automated webinars.
Just how popular are webinars? Data from Research and Markets finds that the webinar market is expected to be worth a whopping $4.44 billion by 2025. So, there’s a ton of potential here for your business to capitalize on this medium.
Of course, if you want to have success with using webinars to grow your online business, there are some things you need to know. In the guide below, we’ll discuss the best practices for webinars to help you get the best results from your efforts.
Table of Contents
1. Be enthusiastic and passionate about the webinar's topic.
This begins by behaving naturally and speaking in a conversational tone. In webinars, scripts are traded aloud, so one should make sure they sound natural. They were drafting the content handy in short and punchy with bullet points. It shouldn’t feel like you’re speaking someone else’s words.
Adding some enthusiasm to the webinar presentation will help to boost audience engagement and avoid drop-offs. Attendees would prefer spending an hour attending to a passionate industry expert than a tedious robot reading from a script.
Presenters for webinars are picked based on their real-world expertise with the subject matter, so if one is doing a webinar, they should try to share some of their own experiences with the audience.
2. Choose a precise topic.
There’s a lot you can discuss. When you have a limited amount of time and a distant audience, though, you should be more particular, or you’ll lose their attention faster than light.
As a result, it’s critical to pick a targeted topic to compel and engage the target audience. The host will be able to determine what works once they better understand the target audience.
3. Identify the Appropriate Speakers
This is the most crucial factor for the webinar in most circumstances regarding speakers. People want to hear from experts and influencers and engage with them. Inviting the correct speakers to the webinar is crucial if the host wants it to succeed.
It’s important to remember that being knowledgeable isn’t the same as engaging. It’s pointless to have a speaker who cannot perform well—ensuring that the speaker is trained and prepared before the big day to be safe. Doing a mock and providing a proper demonstration will help the audience’s engagement. Always keep a look at what worked and what didn’t. And making a note of it would help in the long run.
The host should prepare for any problems by testing the equipment used for the webinar. To avoid the webinar collapsing, the host should always have backups and IT support.
4. Make a Plan for Your Webinar
When it comes to guaranteeing high webinar attendance, timing is everything. Here’s how to schedule the webinar so that one may reach as many people as possible:
- Sessions held in the middle of the week are renowned for attracting the most attentive audiences. Specify particular days, for example, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, to host webinars.
- Make an effort to be aware of time zones. Midday sessions are more likely to attract a larger audience.
- Make sure the webinar is not more than 50 minutes long at most. Remote audiences will not stay engaged for more extended periods, and one will lose money.
5. Choose the Best Webinar Platform
There are various webinar platforms to choose from, each with advantages and disadvantages.
For example, if you’re going to be hosting automated webinars that can be delivered on demand any time, you’ll need a platform that can handle that, like Everwebinar.
On the other hand, if you’re hosting live webinars and need to be able to accommodate a ton of attendees and engage with them in multiple ways (e.g. chat, surveys, etc.), you’ll want to make sure your webinar software can handle these needs.
The best webinar software will make sure you can accommodate the number of attendees, have a high-quality streaming experience, and interact with your audience in an effective manner.
The size of the firm and the number of people who will be attending will determine how sturdy your hosting solution needs to be.
6. Make Engaging Slides
Remember that “less is more” while creating slides for your webinar presentation. The slides should be straightforward, with plenty of white space, concise language, and explicit imagery. The audience’s attention will be drawn to the most crucial information without being distracted.
Leaving white or unused space on the slides improves the user experience while providing a better user experience and breathing room for the audience.
Creating presentation slides allows one to put the company’s logo front and center. Consistent branding improves brand awareness, builds customer loyalty, and boosts revenue so that one can make the brand shine by:
- Including the company’s logo on each slide
- Using fonts and colors associated with a brand
- Using visual elements that are consistent with the brand’s aesthetic
- Aligning the content with the message and values of the firm
7. Meet the Audience's Expectations
Serving user intent, or meeting the audience’s expectations, is another important to the webinar’s success. In other words, you want to make sure your event lives up to the webinar’s title and all the marketing behind it.
The host should make sure that the audience feels as if they’ve spent 30-60 minutes of their lives wisely by gaining new knowledge, answers, or inspiration from the webinar.
Gathering the feedback is an excellent approach to ensure that the webinar was successful and met the attendees’ expectations.
This can be accomplished by simply sending a follow-up email with the subject line “How did we do?” or making a rating form with emojis (so it can be fun and engaging that people feel to review).
8. Encourage participation from the audience.
Audiences need to be encouraged to form opinions about the information shared. It’s critical to capture their attention and drive participation in the first 60 seconds to ensure they stay.
If the host decides to do a 30-minute or longer webinar, they decide to make the most of every second to keep the audience engaged. They may achieve this by including interactive elements like live polls, live chat, and a live Q&A at the end of the webinar’s presentation so that the audience can interact with the audience in real-time. This two-way interaction will assist in breaking down barriers between the audience and the presenter, increasing viewing duration and increasing attendee satisfaction.
Because 90% of information delivered to the brain is visual, using rich media such as photos, GIFs, and videos will also help to enhance engagement. When it comes to video, the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds, but a 1-minute video is equivalent to 1.8 million words to the audience.
9. Assistance
Poor audio is one of the fastest ways to destroy a webinar. Even if one has suitable hardware, don’t use the built-in microphones on the laptop because the audio may be very low quality. High quality headset microphones are a better option to ensure that presenters are delivering their message clearly. Explore using a landline phone as an alternative. Even the most reliable internet connection can go down, and if it does, so can a VoIP connection. If one wants to be extra cautious, consider dialing into the webinar from a landline.
10. Create a Studio Environment
While hosting webinars from home, make sure the children, dogs, and neighbors don’t disrupt or make any noise during the webinar. While hosting the webinar in the office, select a quiet room with a closed door where they won’t be disturbed. Turn off the computer notifications, mobile phones, and anything else that can distract the audience during the webinar by keeping the studio space clean and clutter-free.
Have you ever stayed for a webinar that started late? Being one time will help the host/ speaker get things started quickly and make everyone feel more at ease when it’s time to start.
Final Thoughts On Webinar Best Practices
Webinars can be a powerful tool for expanding your reach, building your authority in your niche, and generating for leads and sales.
But remember, you can’t just haphazardly put on a webinar and expect to get good results. It’s absolutely critical that you follow the webinar best practices and tips above to ensure your event is as successful as possible.
Have any questions about webinar best practices? Leave a comment so we can answer them.