Webinars are virtual learning tools that are a great way to connect with your audience, teach them new skills, and position yourself as an authority within your industry. Here are some tips about how to produce a webinar that will resonate with your viewers.
What are the benefits of a webinar?
There are many benefits to producing a webinar, including:
Webinars can reach a wider audience
Webinars are easily accessible for an audience because they can attend them from the comfort of their own homes, and the number of attendees also aren’t limited by venue capacity.
They are low-cost to produce
Webinars are a cheap alternative to their live event counterpart. This is because you don’t need to pay for a venue, speaker systems or refreshments for attendees.
They generate leads
Webinars are great marketing tools because they can expose more people to your business who may not have been familiar with you before. Every attendee is a potentially valuable lead for your business.
They are valuable for your audience
Webinars are effective learning tools and viewers will actively seek out your webinars to learn new skills or information. People also learn more from visual information than they do from text alone, so webinars are especially enticing for people.
Types of webinars
Webinars don’t come in just one form. There are a few different types of webinars you can produce, such as:
Panels
This is a popular type of webinar that features industry experts discussing a topic. These speakers can be in-house, external or a mix of both. These are unscripted and experts can join via webcam, wherever they are based. You can also invite audiences to ask questions that the experts take turns answering.
Educational slide shows
These webinars involve a speaker or multiple speakers relaying information through a prepared slide show. These can be quite similar in content to panel webinars, except the content is pre-planned, although you can still include an audience Q&A at the end.
Keynote live stream
These types of webinars combine a live event with the accessibility that an online event provides. All you need to do is set up a live stream of the keynote speech and make it available for viewers at home.
Product release and FAQ
A product release webinar should give the audience a unique look at a new product you have recently released, or even a sneak peek of a future product. To keep it interesting, you can feature a live demo, walk through the key features visually, or even create a product roadmap.
Tips for creating a successful webinar
Secure the best speakers
Always take the time to find the best speakers for your webinars. Whether your speakers are internal or external, you will want to use the people who can present their information in an engaging way and answer audience questions easily.
Promote it properly
Make sure to schedule your webinar far enough in advance so that as many people as possible can attend. Market the event across all your social channels and make use of your mailing list contacts too!
Make it interactive with a Q&A
The best webinars feature an interactive element, and the easiest way to incorporate this is to include an audience Q&A. This gives your attendees a chance to have their say and get involved with the event.
Use a moderator
Moderators are useful for webinars because they can guide the discussion, relay questions from the audience to the speakers and monitor any comments in the online chat to keep everything on track.
Keep it to less than an hour
Even though you don’t have to pay for a venue, that doesn’t mean you have unlimited time for your webinar. People will usually lose interest in anything longer than an hour and may not even sign up in the first place.
Make it available on demand
To get the most out of your webinar, you need to make sure it is available to your audience after it has aired. This isn’t just for people who couldn’t attend – those who did may even want to watch it again. You can even edit this on-demand version into shorter episodes for more digestible viewing.
Producing a webinar is an ideal way to create new, quality leads for your business while providing a valuable learning experience for your audience. If you need help putting together your first webinar, get in touch with us and see how we can help.