Hosting a webinar is an excellent marketing tool to promote your product, services or brand to your target audience – at the same time as providing a helpful resource. A Wyzowl report showed that whilst only 41% of marketers have actually delivered a webinar, 83% found it to be an effective strategy for their organisation.
Webinars open an interactive channel, allowing you to educate and inform your potential clients about a topic or product aligned with your organisation’s offerings.
The strategy, content and execution of your webinar heavily impacts lead generation, nurturing and relationship-building. That’s why we’ve compiled five best practices to help you deliver a successful webinar.
The important question to ask when you’re planning your webinar is – what am I trying to achieve? Perhaps you want to bring awareness to a product or service that you offer. Or maybe you want to offer some top tips to potential and existing customers.
A focused topic holds the attention of your viewers. These people have signed up to gain knowledge and understanding about a specific subject so make sure you don’t go off on a tangent - especially when you only have limited time. Knowing which topic to choose also means knowing your target audience. Put yourself in their shoes and consider their needs and wants.
Choosing the right day and time ensures a high attendance rate. Be sensitive to time zones and plan ahead if you have an international outreach.
Schedule your webinar for mid-week for best engagement. According to a study by GoToWebinar, mid-week webinars acquire the highest conversion and attendee rates, particularly Wednesday and Thursday. People have busy workdays, so schedule for midday when people might be on their lunch break.
Keep it short and snappy (no longer than 50 minutes) to sustain your audience’s focus. Concise and relevant information = a succinct and stimulating webinar.
In order to attract attendees, you need to promote your webinar. That’s why you need to curate an effective, invitation email to make your target audience interested. We suggest sending your email to leads and customers two weeks before the webinar goes live. A follow-up reminder a week before can also help to boost registrations.
Use the main bulk of your email to include key bullet points about what the webinar will discuss, demonstrate how your viewers will benefit from their engagement and finish with a clear call-to-action (CTA) button straight to the registration page. Just like your webinar needs to be short and snappy, so does your invitation email.
People don’t want to be talked at. If you want to engage your viewers and keep them interested, you need to make your webinar interactive, even if it is pre-recorded. By incorporating a live Q&A session at the end of the webinar, your audience can ask further questions about the topic and your organisation. Equally, adding this into your invitation email can also make your webinar more appealing.
Choose your Q&A panelists wisely so that all types of questions can be answered. For example, a customer may have a question that only an account manager can answer.
Whilst you may have delivered a flawless webinar and had a productive Q&A session, you need to have a good post-webinar strategy.
Sending an email to attendees, as well as those who registered but did not attend, which thanks these individuals for their interest should also direct them to a landing page with the webinar on-demand. During the post-webinar phase, you need to keep people’s interest and show them what they missed if they couldn’t attend this time – making sure they don’t miss the next one!
Webinars open a dialogue with your sales team, making them aware of prospective clients and those who need to be nurtured. Using your CRM system to highlight contacts who attended the webinar and those who watched it on-demand will support this process.
So, in conclusion, if you want to deliver a successful webinar, you need to make it relevant to your organisation, pick the right time, involve your attendees and craft your communication strategy around the webinar. If you incorporate these practices into your webinar process, you will draw your customers closer to you, attract new customers and create a hub of supportive resources for your audience.
Are you also interested in learning about how to reach more prospective learners through social media retargeting? Watch our webinar on Social Media Retargeting Best Practices by clicking on the button below.