Webinars were the original virtual events even before we were forced into the virtual world by the pandemic. Webinars more than ever, have turned into a lead generation strategy for big event organizations. In today’s time, event organizers are reimagining the format of webinars to make a bigger impact in their events. They were always a part of events and need to be explored before you use it to reach out to your attendees.
Here’s a guide that will help you amp up your webinars for your virtual event and prepare your audience well for a Virtual & Hybrid event.
Let’s go ahead and know what is a webinar?
A Webinar is an online program organized by event organizers to garner leads and/or at the same time educate/train attendees. Webinars have been a proven method to bring in more customers, expand a brand’s reach as well as reach out to potential customers and business prospects.
Before the virtual revolution, webinars weren’t as interactive as they are now. There was no scope for branding or interacting during the LIVE webinar. They were simple broadcasts and had no scope of two-way communication or feedback.
The technology today has come a long way, and starting from exclusive branding options, to organizing webinars with multiple speakers as well as presentations or training. Webinars have become an essential part of event content creation and with many virtual event softwares coming into the picture there is only steep competition.
Other than the usual presentation format, webinars can be used to communicate different purposes to your audience. Here are a few:
-
Education Webinars
-
Presentations
-
Trainings
-
Annual general meetings
- Product Demonstrations
Here, are the reason why you must go ahead and plan a webinar for your virtual event.
-
Train your attendees on the various trends in the industry
-
Communicate about your brand
-
Talk about your product
-
Bring together leaders for an industry
-
Initiate conversation on a certain topic
-
Hold discussion with two or more speakers
- To have prospects & attendees give their feedback over any content
There are multiple formats for conducting a webinar. Before you go ahead, choose one or have multiple ones incorporated into one with the help of your Virtual Event platform.
-
One Speaker
-
Multiple speakers with presentation
-
Panel discussion with screen sharing
- LIVE Q&A with a moderator
Selecting the right date for your webinar:
Before you go ahead and decide on a date for your webinar, first take the time to think about how long it will take for you to do the preparations. Choose a time that works for your audience. And make sure of which day you choose to conduct your webinar. Most importantly, you as the event organizer need to be aware of the special events and holidays so that they don’t collide with your webinar. This in turn may affect the number of your registrations and attendees on the day of the event.
Select & phrase a relevant title for your
webinar:
You might have your own terminologies for your webinar titles and topic. However, you must still consider SEO and arrive at a title that appears on top of the search results. This will allow your attendees to look for it easily and know more about the webinar.
Form a title that appears on top search
results:
-
Find out the keywords that’s relevant to your title
-
Find words that use industry words
-
Make or form titles that are keyword focused
- Your title must reflect what is their in your webinar
Takeaways: The best practices for your webinar!
-
Your webinar has to be less than two hours
-
Take breaks in between your webinar
-
Make your presentation as interesting as possible
-
You can use whiteboards for speakers to make real-time presentations
-
Engage your audience with Q&As, smaller sessions, surveys
- Provide your webinar speakers with an instructional video or manual
Promoting or Marketing your webinar
After deciding the time & content, your next step will be to promote your webinar. Without promoting your webinar, you will not get the right number of registrations. This means you’ll not have attendees, which will affect the success of your webinar. A few steps you must comply with to start with your webinar marketing are - a website or a landing page for the registrations to take place. Secondly, an email marketing campaign. And thirdly, promoting through social media, paid marketing and/or influencer marketing.
Landing Page/Website
Your
webinar landing page can be a simple registration page or have the right amount
of creativity and elements to make it more dynamic. Your landing page is the
space where your attendees understand about your webinar and decide if they
want to engage with it further.
Along with this, you can decide further if you want the webinar to be free or a paid one. Make sure you figure out the charges in advance, keeping the industry standards in mind.
Email Marketing Campaign
When you think of email marketing, it is not possible for you to send emails one by one to the clients and registrations. Therefore, it is essential for you to reach out to a virtual event platform who can help you send out bulk emails with the help of the right marketing tools. The main aim of your email is directing the leads to the event, hence your emails should be visually appealing, less text and be intriguing.
Email marketing doesn’t stop with just one email - it consists of a series of mails that need to be sent to the leads and prospects from time to time. Starting from a registration success email, to invites, reminders as well as a thank you email.
Social Media promotion of your webinar:
Social Media is one of the most effective and cheapest forms of marketing. Create posts and content that can be used to promote your webinar. Make fun creatives and promote it amongst your target audience. Always remember to target your posts into groups and people who are from the same industry.
Paid Marketing for your webinar:
Run ads aiming at your target audience which will help you gather the right number of registrations. These come with analytics and if you track them, you can gather an idea on how your ads are performing and can re-strategize accordingly.
Virtual Event Platform
Last but
not the least is an efficient and right virtual event platform to build your
webinar in a way which is most attractive to you and your audience. Once you
assess your requirements, it will be easy for you to determine which platform
will be most suitable for your virtual webinar.
Resource: https://www.zupyak.com/p/2856825/t/virtual-events-how-to-plan-your-webinar