If you or your company are producing a blog that is read by more than a handful of people, webinars are a powerful tool for driving a variety of goals. Through broadcasting these events on a regular basis, you can:
- Build loyalty with readers/consumers
- Become a thought leader in your niche
- Increase traffic to your blog or website
- Drive revenue and more
Webinars can be a massive driving force for converting email subscribers into actual customers, and loyal ones at that. But if you are a newbie to hosting webinars, many who have come before you can attest to the fact that the first few can be an absolute train wreck if you don’t know what you are doing.
Side step that embarrassment and failure with Fanatics Media’s complete guide to running a stellar webinar.
Step #1: Devise a Game Plan
Before you can do anything, you need to establish your goals and know what you are aiming for. Is driving sales most important to you? Are you looking to acquire emails? Are you trying to establish yourself as an authority? Defining your goals will help to guide the rest of the process.
Set your budget before embarking on any real preparation. This will help to ensure you don’t go broke in the process. Account for everything you will need; promotional content and ads, presenter compensation, tools, and so forth.
Step #2: Research Topics and Speakers
This is quite possibly the most important phase of the entire process. Without a great topic and equally compelling speakers, your webinar will be a flop.
Start by researching things that will interest your audience; pain points, career goals, and other ways to help them get ahead. Once you have settled on an irresistible topic, it’s time to find some authoritative presenters who can speak to this topic.
Influencers of any given subject can be found through searching social media or Google, and by leveraging tools like Buzzsumo, Kred, Klear, and a Fanatics favorite, Little Bird.
Start reaching out to the folks you find and aim to lock down 1-3 speakers for a deep dive into the webinar material. Be sure to acquire headshots from these folks and the social links they wish to promote; you’ll need them for marketing.
Step #3: Choose a Platform and Outline Materials
There are a variety of webinar platforms to choose from, but GoToWebinar is one of the most highly regarded for its intuitiveness and array of features. Google Hangouts is also a great alternative. Whichever software you go with, once you’ve settled, fill in the necessary fields like title, time and date, speaker bios, sign up forms, and if the platform allows, a promotional video. This can help to drive a massive number of sign ups.
Now it’s time to reach out to your presenters again to collaborate on the first draft of the webinar outline. Make sure to cover the points of discussion, length of presentations, any slides to be used, and a deadline for it to all be finalized by.
With this in place, it’s time to promote.
Step #4: Promote with Passion
No one is going to attend the webinar if they don’t know it’s happening, so you have to get the message out to the world. Begin with those on your email list. They are already interested in what you have to offer and are the ones most likely to join. Point out what they stand to learn, benefits, who the presenters are, and a sign up link. Providing an incentive to sign up, like a free eBook download, is a great way to boost numbers.
Next, move on to social media; post updates about the webinar, create social ads that will entice, and blast out supporting content through your site. You will want to keep this up all the way until the broadcast date, so be ready to create plenty of content.
Step #5: Broadcast like a Boss
When the event date arrives, send out email reminders to any potential attendees and log on to the platform about an hour early to make sure everything is in working order.
When the webinar begins, press record, thank everyone for joining, mention the name of the webinar, and introduce your speakers. As the webinar progresses collect questions from the audience chat box for a Q&A session at the end.
When the Q&A wraps, thank everyone again and let them know the recording of the webinar will be up online later.
Step #6 Post Production
First thing’s first; get the video converted into a YouTube video or viewable file and send it to your presenters to share.
Afterwards, send out follow up emails to attendees asking for any feedback, or pointing them toward relevant links where you can convert them into customers. Send out emails to non-attendees as well with a link to the replay to rack up views.
Then, analyze the number of attendees, email acquisitions, conversions, and successes/failures from the event so that you can improve for the next time around.
Webinars can take you to the next level of success no matter what your goal is. Sales? Done. Emails? Got ‘em. Awareness? Check. Follow this guide and you will crush your next webinar no matter if it’s your first, or one hundredth.
Need help creating a slam dunk broadcast that will compel and convert? Let us know and we will help you craft a winning webinar that drives serious results.
