Webinars are a great marketing tool that can play a pivotal role in attracting and retaining public sector buyers and other suppliers in your field. However, hosting webinars – good webinars – is not that easy.
There are many technical aspects to consider, not least of which is a stable internet connection. There are also production values, like set design, and, of course, the script.
The best way to leverage webinars and ensure you reach specific goals (like directing them to a landing page) is to provide a knock-out presentation based on a lot of hard work.
We’ve lined up our top tips and tricks to help you host effective and inspiring live webinars.
Our Guide To Winning Webinars
Before we look at our top tips, let’s look at why webinars are so important from a statistical point of view.
Did you know?
- 73% of marketers say that webinars are the best tools to generate leads, particularly high-quality leads.
- 92% of marketers believe webinars are best to engage potential customers in remote locations.
- On-demand webinars are preferred for their flexibility.
- Email marketing attracts the most attendees for online events.
- Including videos, other types of media, and interactive elements in your virtual event increases webinar attendee engagement and the likelihood that they’ll attend more of your online events.
Onwards to Tips & Tricks
The following tips will help you create and host successful webinars and reach your webinar’s goals.
Audience Generation
This is arguably the most important step in creating a successful webinar. If you don’t have an audience – a sizable audience – all your effort goes to waste, not to mention the financial loss incurred.
There are several tricks you can use to zero in on your webinar’s targeted audience.
1) Know your target audience
This is your starting point.
With a little research, you’ll be able to define your ideal persona – the type of character you want to target. The more specific persona the better.
For instance, ‘public sector buyers in healthcare’ is a very broad audience. You can narrow it down to ‘decision-makers in the NHS.’ Take it a step further and target the children’s ward in hospitals. Go even narrower by directing your webinar to the ‘contracting authority in charge of playroom equipment in the children’s cancer ward.’
Now that you know who your audience is, you can turn your attention to the all-important topic.
2) Topic
You must have a topic before you can do anything else to prepare for your webinar. It’s very important that your topic be client-focused. No sales pitches.
Ask yourself: What challenges does your target market face? How can you address those challenges?
Construct your webinar with those two questions in mind.
Narrow the webinar topic down to one key element. This helps webinar planning because you’re concentrating on only one thing and aren’t being distracted by tangents or multiple challenges and solutions.
Moreover, being too general or vague is likely to frustrate your audience, who may feel you’re wasting their time – and time is money.
It’s crucial that the topic is also relevant to your area of specialisation so you know it inside and out. You need that degree of familiarity and confidence to develop an effective webinar that captures your target audience.
3) Type
Choose the right type of webinar to reach your goals. Communication-oriented webinars, such as those that focus on methods to improve communication skills internally and externally, or improve communication strategies to maintain healthy business relationships and networks, are particularly effective. They are followed by training and marketing webinars, such as those related to digital marketing strategies, including content and social media marketing.
Interestingly, while training webinars are particularly effective, education has the lowest score when it comes to successful webinars.
4) Marketing
We’ve seen that email marketing is the most effective at securing registrations. While we’re not saying that you can ignore all other channels in your webinar marketing strategy, it is a good idea to pay special attention to email campaigns to make them especially compelling.
You can also market your webinar on social media platforms, concentrating more of your efforts on LinkedIn and Facebook Business. Paid ads on Google enable you to extend your reach and attract interested parties you might ordinarily have missed.
5) Timing
As a rule, 45-minute webinars attract the most attendees, but the length of webinars is also affected by the topic. For instance, it appears that start-ups get the most benefits from webinar presentations when they’re only 15 minutes long.
However, to provide and receive the full value from online webinars, start-ups should aim to host several punchy virtual events throughout the year.
These short, impactful webinars are an excellent way to keep your audience engaged, grow brand awareness, and remain at the top of contracting authorities’ minds.
FYI: The most effective webinars are held in the morning from 10:00 – 12:00 and in the afternoon from 13:00 – 15:00.
Speakers/Presenters
What is the most important character trait of a webinar presenter?
Charisma.
Of course, webinar hosts must be knowledgeable so they can convey all the information promised in the topic. They must be able to answer questions from the audience – even long, involved, and sometimes convoluted questions.
Unfortunately, if your knowledgeable speaker is too straight-laced, you’ll lose your audience to boredom.
Charisma.
Presenters must bring the webinar to life and engage with the audience to maintain rapt attention.
Choosing a presenter
Therein lies the rub.
Is there someone in your business who has the personality to present a live event, or will you need to look outside of your company?
You’ll attract a much wider audience if you can get an influential guest speaker or a panel of experts to participate in the webinar.
(Note: It’s likely that you may have to hire guest speakers for a fee. Remember to include this in your webinar budget.)
Audiences love experts because they can pick their brains in Q&A sessions to fully benefit from professional insight. Audiences also love a good debate and panel discussions.
Bear in mind that these need a mediator or someone who can maintain order and keep everyone on topic.
Personalise the Message
People like a personal touch, so you need to start personalising your message from the first email you send out, notifying your target market of your upcoming live webinar.
Reminder emails are a bit easier to personalise because the list of recipients is smaller than the initial batch of email invitations.
Personalisation also applies to the speaker(s). Personal anecdotes, personal experience, hard learnt lessons – all of these show the audience that even experts are human. They become more relatable, which lends to a cosy atmosphere, even when attendees are separated by thousands of miles of geography.
Another way to personalise the webinar is to give attendees free gifts. They should help make your webinar memorable, for example, a set of infographics, an ebook, or links to other webinars or online presentations that you or your speakers (with permission) have created on the topic.
Nuts & Bolts – The Technical Side of Hosting Webinars
There are certain technical details that you need to take care of to ensure your webinar runs smoothly, without any gremlins in the system.
Webinar hosting software
There’s a lot riding on your webinar, so now is not the time to skimp on software. Get the best webinar software you can afford; a package that won’t slip into the blue screen of death halfway through your speaker’s keynotes.
Webinar software must include a stable webinar platform capable of supporting all your attendees regardless of where they are and what device they use.
On a related note; ensure the internet connection is stable and have a backup internet connection just in case. Smooth-flowing webinars are good; webinars that freeze, jump, and pop in and out are bad.
Equipment
It’s important to ensure that you have the right webinar technology and the best equipment you can afford. For example, high-quality headset microphones – with spares in case one or two go in the fritz.
Use strategic lighting so your speakers can clearly see and be seen. Avoid glare on screens, such as those used for presentations or guests’ laptops or tablets. You must always test lighting before the live webinar to ensure that it suits the seating arrangements and enhances the effect of the presentation slides.
Test your recording equipment. Then test it again. And again.
Recording equipment is prone to technical issues. It’s essential to have the right webinar technology setup that poses no risks to the equipment, like sensitive (and expensive) video recording tech on uneven flooring and iffy plug sockets that short circuit, lose the well-researched and presented webinar content and shut down the whole online event.
Ensure you have spares of everything, including a backup of all graphics and video presentation slides. Then, if there is a glitch, you have spare equipment ready for action.
End on a Good Note
A strong finish is essential because that’s what will stay the freshest in your audience’s mind. A few conclusions for your online seminar include:
Q&A where webinar attendees are also asked questions about the information covered. This helps to gauge their understanding of the material as well as the degree to which the speaker’s performance affects a successful event.
A live survey for instant feedback (still fresh in the mind). Ask all the standard questions such as what they liked most and least, what can be improved, rate the speakers, whether they would recommend the webinar (or your business), and would they attend the next webinar.
Ask attendees what topic they would like to see in an upcoming webinar. Provide options, otherwise, you could get way-out suggestions that have little to do with your marketing strategy to attract new customers.
Also find out if they would prefer another live webinar or a pre-recorded webinar would be more convenient. Design your webinar format around their answers.
Post-webinar
Some of the most important things you must do to help guarantee your webinar’s success happen after the event.
Follow up with a thank you email and include something like a link to a special blog post, infographic or summarised ebook. Make the webinar content gated (limited to those with the link, for example) but include everyone who registered, not just those who attended the webinar.
There are a number of reasons people who registered can’t attend webinars, had to leave early, or were constantly interrupted by circumstances.
Three benefits of follow-up emails and gifts
It’s easy to underestimate the importance of follow-up communication in the success of virtual events. However, doing so restricts the number of future webinar attendees.
Instead, take the time to create personalised thank-you emails and you could experience the following:
- People love a freebie and if it has genuine value to their work so much the better. They basically feel good about you and your business.
- They love freebies so much that they’ll jump at the chance to attend webinars you’ll host in the future to see what else they get.
- Those who couldn’t attend will appreciate the thoughtful inclusion and may make a more concerted effort to be present at the next event.
Measure, Analyse & Evaluate
The only way to improve online webinars is to analyse as much data related to the event as possible. For example, registration vs attendance, registration route (which channel did they use? Facebook, email, business card?), early exits, conversions, participation – there are analytics for virtually every metric you can think of.
Google Analytics is a fantastic analytics tool that has a decent free plan, as well as souped-up paid subscriptions. There are also standalone analytics software products. The trouble is that you’ll have to analyse and interpret the data yourself, which requires a great deal of skill.
If you know that interpreting analytics and creating reports isn’t your thing, consider engaging an online marketing agency that specialises in B2G (Business to Government) marketing. They’ll help you make sense of the webinar data and can also help you use the information to plan and improve your next online event.
Cadence Marketing specialises in public sector marketing, with webinars being one of their areas of specialisation. If you want to create a webinar that knocks your audience’s socks off, contact Cadence Marketing and make an appointment for a free consultation.
You may be surprised at how big a difference having professionals with extensive marketing knowledge in your corner makes.
