Webinars are quickly gaining traction as a way to promote online businesses. Today, 73% of marketers consider webinars to be a great source of quality leads, converting between 5% and 20% of viewers into customers.
But despite all this, many B2C and B2B companies still struggle with creating high-quality content for their webinars.
This is why we decided to create a foolproof formula to help you create grade-A webinar content that engages your audience and converts them into loyal customers.
Ready? Let’s get started!
Choose your team wisely
A typical webinar usually has three key contributors. They’re the backbone of the session and success depends on them. So you have to be quite careful with your options when selecting your team:
Organizer
Also known as the facilitator, the organizer is a critical team member tasked with developing webinar content. Their other roles include finding a speaker, promoting the webinar, facilitating registrations, and communicating with participants before and after the event.
Presenter(s)
Webinar presenters are also referred to as subject matter experts. Their role is to develop and deliver the presentation. They also take care of webinar programming, troubleshooting, participants’ registration, and other critical details needed to make the presentation a success.
Assistant(s)
If the participants have questions that the presenter or organizer may not have much time for, the assistant helps with the answering. They mostly respond to technical queries. For example, “there is no sound transmission” or “the video and the audio don’t sync.”
Pick an interesting topic
Your webinar presentation will either be a hit or a miss depending on your topic. The worst mistake you can make here is to pick something generic or a topic that no one is genuinely interested in.
You want to go for good webinar topics that are within your area of expertise and which offer solutions to specific problems. The goal is to keep your attendees hooked and to establish an instant connection with them.
Choose the right webinar format
Before you start creating content for your webinar, it’s important that you pick the right format for the presentation. Below are a few options to consider depending on your preferred topic:
Interview
If you intend to feature an industry expert in your webinar, be sure to provide them with a list of questions and ask them to prepare answers beforehand. You might also want to discuss your presentation strategy and expectations before the day.
Q&A
Q&A webinars are quite similar to interviews, only that the audience asks questions while you address them. For the best results, consider collecting questions before the webinar and pre-select them to ensure they’re aligning with the selected topic and the webinar’s duration.
Panel discussion
Panel discussion webinars are where you interview a panel of experts to get their insights on a particular topic. It’s an excellent way to give your audience more in-depth perspectives of what you’re discussing.
Presentation
Presentation webinars are arguably the most common today. Here, a speaker gives a PowerPoint presentation with a pre-written speech on a specific topic.
Create a clear roadmap
For the presentation to be successful, you need a clear cut structure to steer you in the right direction. And yes, even unstructured webinar formats like Q&A and interviews where a prewritten script may not be applicable also needs a clear road map.
To keep the session on track and avoid diverting from the topic, your webinar should include the following:
- A captivating introduction
- Order of points to be discussed
- An inspiring close
- A persuasive call-to-action
Write a captivating script
A webinar isn’t a place to play the Jack of all trades, master of none. Thinking to yourself that you can kill it in your presentation without a script has to be the biggest lie.
Your webinar needs a script that’s powerful and engaging. What’s more, you need it to stay relevant to the topic and capture everything within the set duration.
Ensure the script contains facts, examples, illustrations, and stats that will keep the audience engaged throughout. The idea is to ensure attendees clearly see what’s there to benefit from the webinar.
Create awesome slides
Slides are a reflection of your presentation. You want to make them extremely readable, error-free, and presentable. We mentioned that your script should contain facts and stats; this is where you are to make them visual.
Here are a few best practices for creating super slides:
- Don’t overload the slides with text; your audience may find it hard to follow
- Avoid paragraphs and use bullet points instead
- Leave enough white space between points
- Include images, charts, and graphs to augment your points
- Add a closing slide where you thank the attendees and include contact information and call-to-action.
Find ways to promote the webinar
That you’ve picked a captivating topic and written first-class content doesn’t always guarantee that your webinar will attract the right audience. After choosing an idea, you want to ask yourself, does the topic have a strong search potential?
Further, you must have a well-laid content promotion strategy to publicize the webinar.
Here are a few tips for promoting your webinar event:
- Create a landing page where you introduce the webinar topic, speaker(s), date and time, and a CTA triggering people to sign up for the event.
- Display an advert or create a banner on your website’s homepage to create awareness among visitors about the upcoming event.
- Leverage social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to promote the event.
- Send email reminders to your subscribers with a time countdown to your event.
- Send emails with a direct link to the webinar on the day of hosting.
- If you have trusted partners with co-marketing arrangements, reach out to them for help with promoting your webinar.
Conclusion
Creating effective webinars starts with choosing topics your audience will find interesting and relatable. Be sure to go for something narrow to address specific needs and expectations among your attendees.
If you can follow that alongside the tips we’ve discussed in this post, we see no reason why your webinar shouldn’t be a hit and turn viewers into loyal followers or customers.
Have any questions or suggestions we may have missed out on? Let us know in the comments.
