The Content Marketing Institute found that 73% of marketers felt video was even more important to their business in 2022 than it was in 2021. In addition, a November 2022 survey found that 60% of marketing professionals questioned were using webinars for communications, and five-sixths of them saw webinars as an effective tool for speaking to audiences.
That’s why we decided to create this guide to help all professionals craft on their own the best webinars
But the webinar is not just a tool for reaching outside of your organisation. Forrester Research found that employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read a document, email or online article.3 When trying to communicate your strategy internally, a webinar is not only engaging but also allows you to create an interactive space for employees, wherever they are based. However, there are some pain points that teams face when creating a webinar strategy from scratch:
- Convincing managers that webinars will bring a significant return on investment
- Persuading guests to speak on your webinar
- Understanding all the elements that make a successful webinar
How to create a webinar: How to get buy-in
Hosting webinars is hugely beneficial for any organisation, but sometimes management needs some persuasion to set aside a budget for something they might not fully understand. Thankfully, there are some compelling arguments that you can make in favour of using webinars.
The reach of webinars
Running a webinar event online, whether fully virtual or in a hybrid format, means that more people can join in. Your potential attendees are not restricted by commuting times or distances if they want to take part. People don’t have to consider overnight stays, and those in different countries and time zones can attend more easily. With a webinar, you can also host the video of the event on your website, and those who missed it live can catch up on demand.
Thought Leadership and Webinars
A webinar is a public statement that you ‘own’ the topic you will cover during the event. Being able to bring relevant experts to talk and providing an in-depth look at a subject shows your expertise in that field and helps to make you the goto authority.
Active audience engagement
Whether you use your webinar for internal or external communications, webinars actively engage the audience in a way that simply sending the information out in an email could not. Holding an interactive video event grabs the attention of your audience and delivers your message in a manner that is more likely to resonate and stick than other forms of communication. When you ask the audience to answer questions, vote on polls and chat with other attendees, they become more involved with the matters at hand.
Trust
When the audience sees someone at a webinar, sharing their thoughts, ideas and experiences, it is a very human experience. There is a connection with the audience that builds trust in what the speaker is talking about. Whether it is an external audience of investors, clients or journalists, or an internal meeting, building this bond with the audience is an extremely valuable benefit of webinars.
Cost-efficiency
Holding a webinar cuts the cost of running your event compared with solely in-person meetings. With a hybrid event, you can book a smaller venue and, therefore, spend less on hire fees, refreshments and printing costs for meeting materials. There are also fewer travel expenses for speakers, executives and others who are not required to attend a specific location.
Webinar vs In-person events: a comparison
For a fully virtual webinar, you can host the event from your offices at no cost or from a specialist webinar studio, such as the high-spec facilities that Company Webcast runs across Europe, at a much lower cost than a meeting venue.
How to create a webinar from end-to-end
Preparation: the pre-event phase
1. Choosing the right topic
Picking a topic for a webinar should be your starting point. There needs to be a reason for holding the event, and this focus will help you shape the webinar to allow you to deliver your aims. In order to be seen as a thought leader in your sector, consider the most pressing matters in your industry. This will help you find a topic that can provide real value to your audience.
Action step: ask yourself: “What issues do my viewers face in their jobs?”
Look through the industry press and social media channels to see what people are talking about and seeking solutions for. Then turn one of these trending topics into the main thrust of your session. When finalising the topic, put yourself in the place of your target audience. Аsk yourself what kind of webinar would be the most helpful to make your working life easier and more productive. This will guide you to the right topic.
2. Find the most suitable title
The title of your event is important, as it must capture the attention of your target audience and help them understand the reasons why they need to attend. Make it memorable and enticing to encourage them to sign up straight away. Ensure you use the terminology that relates to the topic you identified. Be descriptive so that the audience understands what to expect and communicate what they will gain from attending, whether it is the resolution to a problem or help reaching a goal, for example. In addition, keep it brief. Long event titles can be unclear and off-putting.
Here are some real-life examples of compelling webinar titles that engage perfectly with their target audience:
- Do you know who’s watching? Using engagement data in your B2B video marketing
- How to work smarter, not harder. The secrets they don’t want you to know
- Six strategies for moving the needle on gender equity
Each of these communicate the value that attendees will gain from them in a concise and effective manner
3. Who will present it?
Your presenter or presenters should have a good understanding of the topic under discussion. They should also possess stage presence and authority in order to be able to steer the discussion, highlight the key findings and provide a connection between the audience and your expert speakers.
Action step : Choose someone who can bring their real-world experience of the subject to the event but who also understands they are there to anchor the webinar and to let the speakers make their points. Where the presenter shows their knowledge is in asking followup questions of the speakers to facilitate a rich debate.
- Master the Art of Promotion: Learn how to effectively promote your webinars using a mix of traditional and innovative channels, such as social media, email marketing, and influencer partnerships.
- Engage Your Audience: Uncover the secrets to keeping your audience engaged and invested throughout your webinar, including interactive tools, real-time polls, and expert Q&A sessions.
- Leverage Data and Analytics: Understand how to use data and analytics to measure the success of your webinars, refine your strategy, and improve future performance.
4. Pick your all-star panel lineup
The temptation might be to aim for the industry leaders in the field related to your topic, but they might not always be the right booking. You need to choose someone who will provide your audience with the most value. This doesn’t just mean that you want someone who simply knows the most, but rather someone who can communicate their knowledge in a relatable and memorable manner. Consider the credibility of the speaker; the more credible they are, the more people will want to sign up to hear them talk and the more trust they have in the fact that your webinar and, ultimately, your company are trustworthy.
Action step:
To find industry leaders for your webinar, search for blogs on the same topic as your event. Find out who is talking about the subject and research them to discover their standing in the sector. Read the industry press to understand who is being quoted and who is writing columns. You can also ask AI to narrow down potential speakers. Using ChatGPT, type in your industry and the angle you want to take, then ask it to generate suitable candidates. Be careful to research them before you approach them, as the results are not always completely accurate. However, it is helpful to point you in the right direction.
5. Draft your outline
Once you have your speakers booked in and you know what they will talk about, you can create an outline for the webinar. Make sure that it flows in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, your audience could be confused if they receive the information in an order that isn’t intuitive. You might choose to open the webinar with an explanation of the topic so that everyone is up to speed. You can also introduce the pain points that people experience and explain that you will solve these in the course of the event. Add in your speakers and give them a time limit so that the event doesn’t overrun. Ensure there is time in the outline for discussion and questions from the audience, too.
Action step: There is no set way to outline a webinar, but you should take your audience on a journey that acknowledges their pain points and then provides solutions.
For example, this would be an effective webinar outline:
- Introduce the webinar topic and explain why you are qualified to tackle it.
- Run down the agenda to give reasons for people to continue watching.
- Tackle the problem and assure the audience your goal is to solve it.
- Present the core content, including the speakers.
- Sum up the content and do a Q&A.
- Thank attendees and provide a call to action.
Another approach is:
- Start by highlighting a pain point using industry statistics or using a real-life case study.
- Reinforce the audience’s reason for being there by detailing what you will cover and how it affects them.
- Tell them why you and your speakers have the authority to solve this problem
- Introduce speakers.
- Take questions for the speakers from the audience or interview them to extract more valuable information.
- Sum up the content and make an exclusive time-limited offer for them to act on your solution.
10 Best AI Tools You Need for Your Webinars
6. Write your script
Once you have approval for your outline, you can write the script for the presenter. They might want to have their input in the process, too. This is where you craft your words so that you engage the audience and hold their attention for the duration of the event.
Example: Make sure you throw ahead to what is coming up in the webinar that will interest the attendees. Give them tangible reasons to stay online. Rather than saying “[Speaker X] will be here in ten minutes,” try to script it so that they understand why they need to hear them speak. Try something like “[Speaker X] will be here to tell you five tricks to [solve pain point].
The introduction and conclusion of your webinar are particularly important to get right. They act as the first impression the audience has of your business and the last impression too. Here are some tips to make sure you include all the necessary elements of the introduction and conclusion.
For the introduction, you need to hook in viewers and ensure they understand what is coming up. This should mean that only people with an active interest in the topic remain, and that makes it easier to target them with a sales pitch later.
Example: Make sure your presenter:
- Gives their name and the name of the company. Take ownership of the event
- Reiterates the topic and the pain point you will cover.
- Informs the audience of their and the company’s qualifications and experience, showing what gives them the authority to speak about the topic.
- Mentions the speakers and teases the valuable content they will be delivering.
- Tells the audience how they can interact with the webinar – through questions, polls and other features.
For the conclusion, you want to leave a good impression and nudge your audience to take another step towards becoming customers.
Example: Your presenter should:
- Sum up the main points and arguments.
- Thank both the speakers and the audience.
- Provide the audience with any follow-up information if necessary.
- Give a clear call to action to help them make their next steps. This could be “claim a 20% discount now”, “schedule your discovery call now.” Time limit the offer to provide a sense of urgency. Make them act whilst the subject is still swimming around their heads.
7. Crafting a presentation to remember
Your presentation needs slides to complement what your speakers are talking about. However, they should not take attention away from the person talking. Loading slides with excessive text distracts the audience, who spend their time reading them rather than listening to what the speaker is saying.
They should illustrate their points, rather than leading the conversation. Slides act as something for the speaker to refer to in order to help the audience better understand the nature of their argument. Keep the design simple and on-brand for your organisation.
Action step: Discuss the presentation with your speakers and they can either create their own slideshow or send you the assets for you to build it in-house.
8. The right channel(s) to promote your webinar
Once you have everything in place for the webinar, you need to promote it and encourage your target audience to sign up. Use your email marketing list and your social media channels to spread the word about the event, as well as creating a press release for the industry press to publish. You could tease some of the information that the speakers will impart in order to garner interest in the event. Rather than simply saying “We are hosting a webinar about [subject] on [date],” think about what will persuade your audience to investigate further. What can you offer them as a reason to join in? Try phrasing it in this way: “Do you struggle with [pain point]? We’ve got five simple tricks to [solve pain point] in our webinar on [date].”
Action step: The first job is to set up a landing page with a sign-up form to direct your potential audience to. Try to do this a month or more in advance to give you an opportunity to build your prospective audience.
After sign-up, send a confirmation email and give them the opportunity to add the event to their calendar. Then, send reminder emails two weeks before, a week before, a day before and on the day of the webinar. Remind people they signed up and remind them of the reason they registered too. As soon as your landing page is up, you can start to create social posts to promote it. Increase the frequency as you get closer to the day. Use different angles in your messaging. Some could be a straight sell, but others might be profiles of your speakers, memes about the pain point you are addressing and other content. You can also send out emails to your mailing list. However, a month out from the event, it might be advisable to add the information as a section on your regular mailout and only send event-specific emails in the last two weeks. This helps you capitalise on the sense of urgency, but without feeling like you are spamming your audience
If you use paid adverts, on Google and Facebook for example, start them early – a month ahead of the event – as they might take some time to start converting
10 Webinar Statistics and Best Practices for 2023
9. Following-up with your attendees
After running your webinar, you have the opportunity to gather feedback that will help you finesse your approach for the next event. Running a webinar satisfaction survey is advisable, as you can access feedback on a wide range of aspects of your event. This helps you assess the performance of all elements of the webinar, which you can take into consideration next time
Action step : Email those attendees who opted into receiving communications and ask them for their opinion of the event.
Ask them whether it lived up to their expectations, whether they felt they learnt something and whether it was a valuable experience. Ask what they liked and what could have been better. You can also have them suggest future topics and speakers. If the same subjects and names come up multiple times, it shows there is a need or demand for them.
How to create a webinar: KPIs and the post-event phase
10. Analysing participation, engagement and results
As well as audience feedback, your webinar platform should provide analytics relating to listening and engagement during the webinar. These will help you understand where people dropped out, what captures their attention and what they might not have found valuable.
11. Evaluating performance
By analysing this data, you can consider what changes you need to make to your webinars in the future and the ways that you can spark interaction that keeps people engaged in the conversation.
12. Keeping it alive by repurposing content
Just because your live webinar finished doesn’t mean that the content is gone forever. You can gain more traction out of it by repurposing it after the event.
Action step The most obvious way is to allow access to watch the event on-demand on your website. Other ways to reuse the content include sharing clips and extracting quotes from the recording to use as images on social media. Each time you can link back to the full video to drive more views. In addition, you can transcribe the event and create a series of blog posts that bring in your target audience in different ways. Use artificial intelligence tools such as Descript or Otter AI to save time and effort carrying out this task. You can find out more about how to harness the power of AI in our guide to the ten AI Tools You Need For Your Webinars
How to create a webinar: convincing speakers to participate
Step 1: Preparation
Provide a detailed brief
In-demand speakers do not want to be associated with poorly planned and executed webinars. If you can provide a detailed briefing of what will happen and what you intend to achieve with your webinar, you show them that you can be trusted. When they understand the flow of the webinar and their exact role, they are more likely to agree to take part.
Do your research!
When pitching to anyone, you should research them beforehand and gain an idea of their experience, their point of view and their style. In order to persuade someone to speak on your webinar, you can use this knowledge to personalise the approach and show them that you have taken the time to tailor your pitch for them. If they are popular speakers, they will receive numerous pitches, many of them generic copy and pastes, so the ones that speak directly to them will stand out
Step 2:
Showcase your expertise
Once you have run a series of high-quality webinars, you will be able to show the prospective speaker what to expect. By providing evidence of the quality of your webinars, you can persuade them to take part in your next event, safe in the knowledge that they will not tarnish their brand by being associated with it.
Offer your platform for promoting their product(s)
Another sweetener is the ability for the speaker to promote their product or service on your webinar. You are allowing them to get in front of an audience interested in the same themes as them, so for the speaker, it is a good opportunity. You don’t want their whole speech to be a sales pitch, but by allowing them to mention what they have on offer, you provide another reason why they should say yes to attending and speaking at your webinar
Step 3: Following-up
The benefits of partnering with you
Popular speakers receive many offers to appear at events, so if they don’t reply, it is possible that they may have missed your invitation. Follow up on your request if you don’t hear anything after a few days. When you contact them, be polite and refrain from being pushy. Restate the case as to why they should speak on your webinar. Be sure not to bombard them with messages. After a couple of reminders, it is worth moving on to someone else. If they feel pestered, then they might put you on a blocklist for the future. As long as you approach them in a polite and professional manner, there is still a chance they could appear at a future webinar.
Conclusion: How to create a webinar from A to Z
Creating an engaging webinar is an effective way of communicating both internally and externally. It involves many different elements that you need to work through methodically, and it helps to have the backing of management both in terms of finances and support. Thankfully, there are many benefits of running a webinar that you can present to your manager to allow you to create interactive events that speak directly to your target audience.
How Company Webcast helps
Company Webcast helps you to create unique, captivating and stress-free webinars, whether you want to engage customers, prospects, the press or your own employees. Our team of on-the-ground experts listens to your needs and requirements. Using this information, they provide you with the custom-made preparation and support your need to make your webinar a success, even when working on tight deadlines. With our professional team at your side, you can create an expert-level webinar with high-definition cameras, studio lighting and make-up. Whether you run your webinar from a venue of your choice or from one of our state-of-the-art studios across Europe, Company Webcast makes creating webinars simple and straightforward. We provide the equipment and the expertise; you bring the content. Our team delivered more than 15,000 events in 2022, and we can provide you with the best advice and guidance on how to make your virtual events spectacular. Contact us today to find out more.
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