Ultimate guide to Webinars
Webinars are virtual events that are hosted online. They can be hosted by a single person or presented by a panel of experts who share their knowledge on a particular topic. Webinars provide an opportunity for attendees to learn from experts in a convenient and cost-effective way.
While marketers use webinars as a demand generation tool, webinars are held for a variety of reasons, from training and knowledge-sharing to product launches and internal meetings.
Since the virtual boom, webinar programs have grown leaps and bounds as the explosion of virtual events has created a need for technological advancement, increased levels of interactivity, and heightened production value.
It’s an age of digital disruption, one that is helping planners and marketers alike reimagine the webinar format and reevaluate how they utilize webinar programs to make the biggest impact. Webinars are a necessary part of your total event program and are ready for the next level.
It’s time to rethink your event/marketing strategy and tools to meet the heightened expectations attendees have for webinar engagement. This ultimate guide to webinars will help you break down webinar basics as well as offer tips to improve your current webinar programs.
What is a Webinar?
A webinar is an online seminar lasting 30-60 minutes held primarily to generate leads and educate or train attendees. They have long been used as an effective way to expand a brand’s reach, establish a company as a thought leader in the industry, and engage with prospects and potential customers through an accessible platform.
Our current remote work-life has increased attendance at webinars exponentially, but even before, webinars were a great video conferencing tool that didn’t ask for much from attendees (other than a little of their time and a simple form fill).
In the past, webinars were a flat and passive experience for attendees. There was little branding, low interactivity, and the production value was practically nonexistent. It was an episodic, online broadcast. And while they worked well, as technology has improved, so have expectations.
Now, webinars can range from a single speaker to a multi-person discussion, product demo to an open forum. There are many ways to create content, and with the rise in webinar software like Movazi events hyperlink to the website please, more ways than ever to engage with attendees are available. After all, engagement is key.
Types of Webinars
Webinars are used for many purposes. With a short window to engage attendees, webinars must have a clear intention. Below are a few different types of webinar:
• How-to content that breaks down simple concepts
• Educational webinars
• Introduction to a product
• Cement yourself as a thought leader
• Internal training for employees and leadership
• Professional development for those in the industry
• Lead generation tool to generate interest in a product
• Provide access to leaders in the industry
• Allow customers and prospects to ask questions on a topic
• On-demand Webinars to onboard new customers
Webinar Examples
Most webinars are designed to instruct others concerning a specific topic. Some examples of webinars include eLearning, employee training, product demonstration, and onboarding. The viewer is able to get a grasp of these concepts as the speaker demonstrates their expertise. This can be accomplished using Movazi Events, where you can engage with your audience, increase your ROI, and attract attendees.
Planning Your Webinar
Though webinars are everywhere, not all are created equal. It takes careful planning to create an effective webinar. From content to engagement, webinars must be created with the attendee in mind. And webinar hosts must utilize a great webinar hosting platform such as Movazi Events to properly engage an audience.
Purpose of a Webinar
It’s a simple question, but one that can easily get overlooked. What is the purpose of your webinar? The answer to this question guides everything else – content creation, the tech needed, how you interact – and follow up with attendees. An important thing to remember is that all events have two purposes. The first is about what you want the attendee to get out of the experience. The second is what you want to get out of the experience. Webinars are multifaceted – webinars inform, educate, boost your profits and engage attendees.
Webinars work because they’re accessible. They don’t take an enormous time commitment, are often free, and getting to the venue is as simple as clicking a link. That’s why webinars are a wonderful lead generation tool. With the right registration form you can find out key information about your attendees that can later be used to set them off on their attendee journey to engage with more content or get them in front of sales. The webinar content defines their level of intent and can start their buyer’s journey or acts as an additional data point in their profile.
Set Goals for Your Webinar
Once you have your purpose, you can set goals for your webinar. Whether this is your first webinar or hundredth, you need a benchmark on which to track success. The best goals are based on the past. If you regularly get 100 registrations, make the goal of increasing that number by 20%. If you often get many registrations, but low attendance, set a goal for attendance. Because webinars use technology at every stage, there is no end to what you can track and improve upon.
Think about your attendee touchpoints. Set goals for email marketing campaigns, social media, time on the webinar event website, form fills, attendance, view time, and, of course, survey results after the event. Data is powerful. It shouldn’t be feared, but rather analyzed and learned from, and used to set new goals.
When choosing goals, don’t forget to think about your stakeholders. What do they want to see? Do they care how long an attendee watches the webinar, or do they care about how many leads are sent to sales and what the quality of those leads is? Often, your internal stakeholders, from leadership to marketing, to planning, to tech, all care about something different. Articulate stakeholder needs and use them to guide your goals.
Measure Success and Debrief Team
You’ve got the data, but data is nothing without context. Framing your data around your goals, KPIs, and stakeholder interests will allow you to define success for your event and the company overall. Look more closely at the numbers. Has anything changed drastically from your last webinar to this one? Did you meet your goals?
Identifying success and opportunities requires analysis. You may not have as many registrations as you hoped, but why? Was the day bad for attendees, were there technological issues and was the website as engaging as it could’ve been? Data is step one, and understanding it is step two. While you can’t always know for certain why something happened, you can hypothesize and present that explanation to your stakeholders. Then, during your next event, you can test your hypothesis and see if you were correct