Hosting webinars have become a new trend in 2020. Organisations around the world leveraged webinar services as it is one of the most effective tools to generate warmer leads. Every day marketers are looking up new creative and effective webinars ideas to keep the attendees engaged. It helps in moving prospects in the sales funnel, thus enabling the salesperson to have a good interaction with them.
You must be thinking about what is a webinar? A webinar is a web-based seminar that is organised over the internet with the help of a webinar software/platform. It is attended exclusively by online attendees from their respective remote locations via any device or browser.
The content displayed in the webinar helps in engaging attendees thus delivering immersive event experiences that hold value to them. It helps in generating better-qualified leads. If you are new to the world of webinars, you have landed at the right place. In this post, we have listed a few webinar ideas and best practices for hosting a webinar. Before you get started with planning your first webinar, consider the best practices. To know more, read on:
What Are The Best Webinar Practices?
To host a successful webinar we have listed some top webinar ideas and best practices below. Have a look:
1.Send reminders
Sending reminders is one of the best practices to ensure maximum attendance at your webinars. Make it a point to send reminder emails to your registered attendees. Ensure to send reminders once a day before and an hour before an actual webinar.
2. Check the number and webinar software
Before going live with the webinar, designate someone from the team to dial-up to ensure the number is working properly. Ask this assigned person to send a question to get better clarity. It enables you to have a look at the webinar software or platform and know how it’s working. Test the webinar software before the actual event for a seamless delivery
3. Answer the questions asked by attendees
Answer the questions asked by the attendees during or after the webinar session ends. But, let your attendees know at the initial stage how you would be dealing with the questions asked by them. Whether you will answer the most relevant questions post-webinar session or answer selected questions amid sessions.
4. Do not scroll quickly during a dry run or a demo session
Do not scroll up and down a web page at a rapid speed during a demo session. Generally, once you refresh, it takes up some time to get completed depending on the bandwidth. Wait for 5 seconds every time you change the screen to enable participants to access the displayed content.
5. Close unnecessary application pop-ups
The display of personal information on the screen amid your webinars makes it look unprofessional. To make your webinar look professional, it is suggested to close all the unnecessary applications such as messengers, outlook, etc. It helps in preventing the interruption caused by notification pop-ups amid webinars.
6. Start the webinar on time
Do not make the attendees who tune-in on time wait for too long. But, you can start the webinar 2 minutes later. It enables attendees who joined a couple of minutes later to access the webinar and do not miss it much.
7. Utilise pre-webinar slides and announcements
Utilising pre-webinar slides stating “the webinar will start in 15 minutes” helps people to know it’s working when they tune-in. Making announcements on the call within a few minutes enables people to know the webinar will soon start and their audio quality is up to the mark.
8. Send recordings and webinar slides
Once your webinar gets over, make sure to send out recordings and slides to audiences within a 24-hour timeline. Let your attendees know during the live session about it. A couple of attendees will seek info via email, make sure to send it to them.
Top Webinar Ideas For Your Next Webinar
As hosting webinars have become the new trend, we have listed some top webinar ideas that help in keeping the interest of your attendees alive and keep them engaged throughout. Here is a list of top webinar ideas that you can use for your next webinar.
1. Create webinars with a shorter timeline
A traditional webinar lasts between 30 minutes to an hour. It helps in delivering value to your attendees and answers all the relevant questions asked by them. But as time has changed marketers experimented with webinars with a shorter timeline. Some big brands leveraged short-form webinars and achieved phenomenal results. The countdown timer placed below the screen makes the short form webinar more exciting and entertaining. While planning your next webinar keep in mind to create a sequence of short videos instead of an hour presentation. You can even opt for a minute webinar to showcase an offering or a 20 minutes webinar to educate the attendees about the same. Do a little experiment and see what suits your audience the best.
2. Team up with speakers and influencers for an expert panel
To make your webinar look cool and creative you can team up with various people right from speakers to hosts. Curate an expert panel with the most relevant speakers and influencers to have more distinctive perspectives and better discussions. To make the expert panel more interesting, gather people from different fields and backgrounds as they share different beliefs. Coordinating everyone’s busy schedule is the most difficult part in line to host an expert panel.
3. Select a co-host and team up with him/her
Choose a co-host that holds years of expertise and can fill up any information gaps in your presentation or webinar. A host that is passionate about the topic of the webinar helps in boosting excitement thus keeping attendees engaged. Apart from it, they ensure a lively flow of information throughout the webinar.
4. Incorporate a story to keep attendees engaged
People love to listen to stories instead of tedious webinar introductions. Tell a story to your attendees to keep them hooked with the webinar, thus allowing them to relate more to you. Incorporate a story that ever happened on a professional front and how you overcame the difficulties. You can even share your customer’s stories or invite them to share the same. It helps in getting good bonus points.
5. Creating a paid webinar series is a brilliant idea
Planning to host a webinar, but do not hold much experience to share? A paid webinar series works well. When you hold an insider knowledge of the subject, a paid webinar series works excellently. Paid webinar series can be utilised when you want to offer advanced training. Curate online courses and certifications. An interesting high-quality and relevant content attracts audience attention and evokes their interest in attending a webinar.
