MARKETING BLOG

Best Practices: Hosting a Flawless Webinar

Webinars are an effective component in a comprehensive marketing strategy. An excellently produced webinar can position your company as an industry-wide expert, generate new sales leads, and solidify relationships with existing customers. Webinars are inexpensive, easy to create and convenient for both presenters and attendees. We recommend the following best practices in order to guarantee a flawless webinar.

Start With Timely Webinar Reminders

A webinar is only effective if your invited guests actually show up for the event. Prior to the webinar, you should send an email reminder to your attendees to ensure attendance, but when is the best time to do so? Too many reminders are irritating and reminders too far in advance are virtually worthless. We recommend sending two attention-grabbing email reminders: one the day before the webinar and the second about an hour before it starts.

Tend to the Game Day Technicalities

When you host a webinar, your attendees have graciously devoted a segment of their busy day to your broadcast. Once the hour arrives, it is game day.

  • Make certain the meeting is working. Have a member of your team test it by accessing the webinar and sending a question. You will know the platform is working correctly and gain confidence in navigating the system.
  • Before beginning, close all unnecessary applications including Outlook and extra browser windows. Too many applications will needlessly slow your computer. With extra windows open on the desktop, you also run the risk of showing irrelevant applications during the broadcast, or worse yet, revealing private content to your attendees.
  • Call into the meeting 15 minutes early and employ pre-webinar slides and announcements. Every few minutes give your early callers a verbal update to let them know they are in the correct webinar and that you are present and starting soon.
  • Start just a few minutes past the hour. By starting at two or three minutes past the hour, you will give those who called right on time a chance to access the webinar, yet not be late enough to annoy those who were on time.
  • Have an obvious ending to your core presentation so that those who have something else to do will know they can leave without missing important content. Feel free to extend the time afterwards with additional content or a question and answer session if you like.

Follow Up. Fast.

The work isn’t over when you hang up the headset. During the live broadcast, let your attendees know that you will send them the slides and recording within a day of the broadcast. Then, make certain you do so. A quick follow-up will motivate your clients to take the next step in the sales process while the webinar content is still fresh in their minds.

How can Connect help your company leverage webinars to maximize sales leads? Ask about our Member Benefits case study to learn how monthly webinars, as a component of their overall content marketing strategy, helped our client increase sales and positioned them as a thought leader in the insurance industry.