How to Create a Successful Webinar

Get-Your-Webinar-Seen

Marketers keep on trying new tools and channels now and then to promote their brands. The webinar is one such channel. Primarily, a webinar is defined as a seminar on the web. It involves the presentation of products or services with the help of proper facts and figures in real-time. This enables the marketers to demonstrate the product or advertise the service.

Marketers keep on trying new tools and channels now and then to promote their brands. The webinar is one such channel. Primarily, a webinar is defined as a seminar on the web. It involves the presentation of products or services with the help of proper facts and figures in real-time. This enables the marketers to demonstrate the product or advertise about the service.

Referring to various research and survey, the webinar has been voted as a critical marketing method to boost product promotion. For example, as per the Content Marketing Institute, approximately 58% of marketers use webinars for promotion. Also, 32% of marketers credit their success to webinar based marketing.

Webinar has been effective and in raising the sales statistics. Webinar is, therefore, also called a lead magnet.

As per MakeSocialMediaSell, webinars helps to retain 40% of viewers’ attention. Moreover, according to a survey conducted by ReadyTalk, among viewers who attend the webinar, between 20% and 40% are qualified leads. At the same time, as per data provided by Branded Solopreneur, 2% to 5% of viewers are likely to buy something from you.

Having said everything, the marketer should not webinar as a sales pitch; rather it should be informative, interactive, and convincing. The focus of the webinar should be to encourage discussions, spread awareness, improve customer satisfaction factor, and boost engagement rate. These factors will, eventually, result in the generation of lead and proliferation of sales other-way round.

However, the effectiveness of a webinar depends on various other factors such as the number of attendees, choice of topics, ways of promoting, time of hosting, and duration of presentation among others. Hence, this question rises every time a new marketer plans to host a webinar- How to create a successful webinar?

In this blog, we have shared some tested tips to create a successful webinar that is achievable with the help of a well-executed product presentation design or other readily available templates.

To start with, you should know your audience and product (or service). And the next step becomes relatively easy, choose a topic that resonates with your audience.

Choosing a topic may be a tedious job at times. Here are few tips to guide your way out while deciding a suitable webinar topic-

  • Take a dip into your blog to come up with an interesting topic. Check out the comment section to find frequently asked questions by readers.
  • You can also check social media platforms and ask customer service teams to collect any frequently asked queries.
  • Also, check other webinars out there and pick the one that resonates with your service or product.

Once the topic is decided, the next step is to determine the Webinar Hosting Platform-

The number of hosts in the webinar should be the key deciding factor while selecting a platform. The reason is given that the platform should have a provision of multiple hosts.

Analytics data should also be kept in mind. The data received post-webinar, further, helps in future webinar marketing.

Some of the locally available hosting platforms are GotoWebinar, Cisco WebEx, ClickMeeting, and EasyWebinar.

Duration and Timing of the Webinar- Time and interest go hand in hand. To make it interesting, ensure the webinar doesn’t extend more than 60 minutes; whereas 60 minutes should be strategized into 45 minutes and 15 minutes. 45 minutes for presentation and 15 minutes should be allocated to question and answer sessions.
While structuring a webinar, you must focus on a single topic. The topic should be of immediate relevance to your attendees.

Moreover, the structure should revolve around 4Us, as per MakeSocialMediaSell. The 4U implies to Unique, Useful, Urgent, and Ultra-specific.

The timing of your webinar is another deciding factor for the success of your webinar. It is advisable to host it on Tuesday and Wednesday, around 10 am to get maximum attention.

Promotion is the next and very important phase in the journey of hosting a successful webinar. Once the webinar is well-crafted, use different methods to spread the word about your upcoming webinar. Some of the tried and tested methods are listed below-

Landing Page- Create a landing page that is optimized with detailed information about the topic of the webinar, date and time, participating speakers, and the registration form. Once the landing page is created, establish the path the registrant would follow, and the thank you page.

On this page, you can ask them to let you know if they have any questions they need answering and this will ensure a better attendance level. Also, you can include countdown timer opt-ins, exit-intent opt-ins, etc.

Blog- Write a blog that is dedicated specifically to the promotion of the webinar. This works similarly to a landing page and needs to include all details and the reasons for people to attend.

The blog can also include CTAs that lead to the webinar registration page. Once written, youcan promote it on social media and send it to all your blog subscribers.

Email Workflow- Email is a good way to send a customized invitation to your customers. While drafting an email, ensure to include the schedule, the topic of webinars, and a link to register. It is advisable to send the first invite 2 weeks before the webinar.
Again, send a reminder 1 week before the date of the webinar. The second mail should be split into two distinct emails. The two mails should be sent separately to people who clicked on the previous email but failed to register, and people who did not click your previous email at all.

Both emails should work as a reminder and also as a means to ask for feedback on the reason they haven’t registered yet.

Further, it is optional to send the second reminder 1 day before. This email may be a bit too much for some databases as after 2 emails, the contact has most probably made up their mind, but it’s always good to test.

Social Media- Even though this might seem like the obvious option here, it is often underestimated. Social ad campaigns for webinars can be initiated on LinkedIn and Facebook. On Facebook, it is possible to create custom audiences through demographics and tracking.

Other Speakers- In case you are partnering with another person or multiple people for webinar hosting, then ask them to leverage their databases. They could write an article about it or post a message about it on their social media platforms.

The more people get involved in promoting the webinar, the more shares it will generate which will lead to more registrants for your webinar.

Post-Webinar Ritual

Once the webinar has been completed, a thank you email should be sent to all those who attended it and ensure that you keep your promise of any giveaways.

Post-webinar, there are still other instances to convert your audience into customers. For example, send a replay or download link of the entire webinar video to the participants.

Also, a new email or thread of message should be created for the participants who haven’t followed the next step. You can tempt the audience with a strong yet sophisticated CTA, or offer a time-limited discount to create urgency.

Conclusion:

The webinar provides ample opportunity for a brand to have an actual dialogue with their target demographic. Not only that, it becomes an ideal platform to inform your customer base about your services, offerings, and topics they care about.

With every hosted session, you and your team can broaden the exposure and reach of your brand. You can quickly build trust and credibility with your audience when you put a face and voice to your business name. Apart from these benefits, a webinar can aid in lead generation as well as lead nurturing, guiding your current prospects to the ultimate goal of the marketing pursuit – a sale.

For more marketing strategies, visit- https://valasys.com/

We, at Valasys Media, provide custom-made B2B services to our clients that ensure that they can deliver seamless experiences to their customers through seamless touch-points across Omnichannel & thus can optimize their sales revenues. To help our customers achieve their core bottom-line endeavors such as optimized users’ experiences, bolstering returns on investment (ROI) & improved sales revenues, we deploy extensive market research along with our dedicated B2B services.

Our services include lead generation, lead nurturing, account-based marketing, list building, content syndication, event promotion, business intelligence services & contact discovery services. For deciphering the recipes to perennially healthy sales pipelines, feel free to get in touch with our team of experts.

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