In the current environment, most people are at home. Some are furloughed workers looking to learn new skills and others are still by their computers, open to taking in information, training and advice from people who know what they are talking about.

This is why webinars have had a sudden resurgence and are again becoming a popular method for sharing knowledge and experiences. Holding your own webinar should be something you are now either doing or considering if you want to engage with your audience and build either your personal or company brand.

It is not difficult to set up a webinar. Just Google “best webinar platforms” and you will find a whole host of brands offering their software with varying costs and features. Popular platforms such as Demio (demio.com) GoToWebinar (gotomeeting.com), Zoom, (zoom.us) are all competing for your business so please do your research to find the one that meets your needs.

But the big two questions are:

Will anyone turn up?

How do I get the most from it?

GETTING BUMS ON SEATS

There is one crucial thing to remember when planning a successful webinar and that is to make it something PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR ABOUT AND YOU ARE QUALIFIED TO TALK ABOUT.

If one side of this story falls down, then either people won’t come or they walk away underwhelmed. So think really hard about your own experience, what you know, and what you can genuinely bring to the table. What is it about your life, career, learnings, or expertise that will make people think: “I want to hear what they say about this”?

Also make it really specific. For example, don’t name it “Everything you need to know about marketing” – it is too vague and people haven’t got time to read on. Instead, narrow your subject matter to a real specialism, such as “TikTok marketing for beginners”. This is much more specific and of interest to those who are new to the TikTok platform and want to learn more. But going back to the previous point, you will need some TikTok marketing credentials and proof of success to draw the crowds.

THE 4Ps FOR WEBINAR SUCCESS

There’s no denying that holding a webinar takes work. Not only do you have to get people to participate but you also have to create the talk, which is why it’s important to get the most from your efforts. We suggest these 4Ps for webinar success: 
 

PREPARE
PROMOTE
PERFORM
PERSIST

PREPARE

As tempting as it is to just start ‘getting the word out’, you need to prepare by getting all of your fundamentals in place. These include:  

Landing page – create a landing page on your website dedicated to this webinar or your series of webinars. This makes it easy for an interested person to get further information on what your webinar is all about, which will then nudge them over the line to book their place. Make sure your landing page has a simple form to collect the customer information you need.

Journey – devise an email journey for this process. For example, once someone books onto your webinar they will be enrolled into an email workflow, which will include a confirmation email, an event reminder email, a second event reminder email, and a thank you for attending email. You can use tools such as Mailchimp or Hubspot to create automated journeys, which we would definitely recommend as there will be too much to keep on top of manually.

PROMOTE

Once you have your landing page created, emails written and a workflow set up, then you need to go out there and tell everyone about it. Ideally you need to be generating interest in your area of expertise a long time before holding a webinar. This way you are almost guaranteed to have a certain number of people attending. So weeks and months before, you should be creating engaging content with blogs, social posts and video around your webinar subject area, gaining reputation, followers and a community within which you can leverage. Then you should begin to promote your webinar. Make sure the graphics are eye-catching, the headline is attention grabbing and it is clear on the post what an attendee will get from it.

PERFORM

Well, now it’s over to you: your moment to show your audience why they made a fantastic choice in giving up their time and possibly money to attend your webinar. Here are our top tips:

• Practice practice practice your presentation
• Check check check -your presentation, sound, screen and that the webinar technology is working
• Start with a personal story that relates, in some way, to the overriding point of your webinar.
• Keep it simple. People can’t absorb too much information at once, so use fewer words and more images.

PERSIST

We conduct webinars in order to generate leads and build company or personal profiles, which is why it is so important to stay in touch AFTER the webinar has been delivered. As with the PREPARE stage, you can also create post-webinar user journeys to gain feedback, inform attendees about your next webinar and add value by providing them with further information such as blogs, user guides and white papers. Don’t go in for the hard sell, but do continue with communication and make sure you think hard about what useful information you are sending.