The Only Tips for Holding a Successful Webinar You'll Need

As COVID-19 took remote working, virtual meetings, and online seminars to its peak, marketers also started looking for ways to connect and interact with existing and prospective customers using online media.

And webinars emerged as one of the best mediums to fill the gap.

While more than half of the marketers use webinars as a lead generation or promotion tool, others use them to educate their target audience.

For the uninitiated, webinars are like online conferences or seminars organized to achieve a specific goal. The goal can be to educate the audience, generate qualified leads, establish your business as an authority in the niche, or something else.

But irrespective of the goals you have in mind, it will be challenging to achieve them if the webinar fails to woo the attendees.

Holding a successful webinar is challenging, and this guide aims to help you with it.

Tips for Holding a Successful Webinar

If your company provides quality products or services in the B2B or B2C sector, you should definitely incorporate webinars into your marketing strategy.

Webinars can boost a clear understanding of your offerings by a whopping 74%, and when people understand a product’s/service’s features clearly, they are more likely to purchase it.

To the viewers, the process of organizing a webinar can look pretty simple, but the case is quite the opposite. A lot goes behind organizing a successful webinar, and organizers have to prepare for it days in advance before the scheduled webinar date.

If you’re looking for tips to pull off a successful webinar, follow the below-shared tips for visible results:

Take Time Zones into Consideration

Before anything else, let’s start with the webinar preparation in its initial phase. When you come up with a webinar idea and goal to host a webinar, you should prioritize choosing the best time, especially if your target audience is located in countries with different time zones.

The best way to find a time well-suited for both the organizers and the audience is by running a poll on the company’s official social media channels. You can also pool in your email subscribers to help you pick the best time by redirecting them to the poll post.

Marketers can refer to their old webinar data to see which time managed to pool in more attendees. Though you can pick the best webinar time by any of these methods, some surveys state the 11 AM Pacific Standard Time usually has a high attendance rate.

Write a Strong, Compelling Script

The success of your webinar will depend mainly on the quality of your webinar script.

Webinars are usually 30 to 60 minutes long, but they can stretch a little over by an hour or so as well. If your script is weak, you’ll have a tough time retaining the attendees’ attention until the end. You can even start seeing some attendees leaving midway if the script doesn’t seem to interest or educate them the way they expected.

So when you start working on the script, start with a clear and focused mind. You can also take the help of industry experts on the topic you’re writing about.

Instead of writing a plain, dull script, try to find creative and a little humorous ways to put your points across. It will be a painstakingly challenging task, but the results will be worth it.

Create a Visually Pleasing Slide Deck

One of the proven, best ways to hold a successful webinar is by using a well-created slide deck to prevent the attendees from getting bored.

Some marketers make the mistake of putting out a dull slide deck that has nothing but plain text. Another mistake you would want to stay away from is writing the entire thing on the slide decks. You would definitely not want to sound like a speaker just reading lines from the slide decks; no good webinar host does that.

Once you’re done with the above point of creating a solid script, use its outline to design the slide decks. Include as many visuals and beautiful elements as you can without making the slides look cluttered.

Each slide should give a hint to the attendees of what’s coming next instead of giving away all the information in plain text format.

Use pictures, charts, graphs, interactive icons, etc., to make a slide deck that holds peoples’ attention instead of putting them to sleep.

Shortlist the Right Speakers

If you want to show your brand as an authority, pick some subject matter experts who know the ins and outs of the webinar topic.

Most webinars give attendees the chance to ask the host or speakers some questions at the end, and if the speaker fails to give the answer, it is guaranteed to affect your brand image. You wouldn’t want the attendees to feel that you have wasted their time by letting an inexperienced person host the webinar.

Another thing to consider is finalizing the speaker who is comfortable with hosting a video webinar and is a fluent communicator. These little points of considerations go a long way in making any webinar successful, so be sure not to overlook these points.

Choose a Reliable Webinar Platform

One of the most crucial tips for holding a successful webinar you can ever get is to find a webinar platform that is reliable and offers the features needed to pull off a successful online event.

The market is full of webinar platforms, like GetResponse, Zoom, Livestorm, WebEx, WebinarJam, and many others. Then, how do you pick one for your business webinars?

The answer is by choosing the webinar platform that offers everything you need. Check how long duration webinars you can hold on a platform. See if the platform offer features like live chat, attendee handouts, number of allowed on-screen hosts, on-screen whiteboard, replica replay, flexible scheduling, email & SMS system, etc.

If the webinar platform offers the features you’re looking for, go ahead. Also, pick the subscription plan that will allow you to comfortably host a larger set of audience without any hassle.

You can also read reviews about the webinar platforms you’ve shortlisted by real users online. Reddit, Quora, Facebook groups, and forums can be a great way to get unbiased reviews about the platforms you’ve shortlisted.

Run a Test Webinar

It may sound absurd, but running a test webinar with a few people works like a charm.

No matter how prepared you are on the webinar day, chances are some unexpected and minute thing can disrupt the entire setting.

May be there is a fault in the setting that fails to deliver the webinar joining link to all registered attendees on time, or the webinar screen or audio is constantly facing issues once people join.

Possibilities can be endless, so it is best to run a test webinar a day before the scheduled final webinar date. It will ensure the final webinar goes smoothly and the organizers have peace of mind.

If you want to exercise more caution, run a test webinar a few days before, so you get enough time to fix errors (if any).

On-board Moderators & Technical Assistants

Looking for some tips for holding a successful webinar that will never go wrong? Then hire a moderator or two along with some technical assistants for the main webinar.

While the host will be busy with the presentation, there has to be someone to look after the attendees’ questions. A person dedicated to moderating the entire session and keeping an eye on the chat box is as important as the presenter.

Usually, one moderator serves the purpose, but if the webinar is expected to have a larger audience size, then you can consider hiring at least two moderators. Besides hiring a moderator, you should also have a technical assistant who will immediately look into fixing an error that popped up during the webinar.

Hire people who have experience working as webinar moderators and technical assistance for best results.