Webinars can be a powerful addition to your business development toolkit as the content form can generate qualified leads and drive conversions. Reports state that webinars generate around 500-1000 leads with a conversion rate of 55 percent. No wonder, 67 percent of businesses have increased their investment in webinars.
But, gaining massive traction via webinars is not easy. It demands heavy investment in terms of time and a solid strategy.
A recent survey revealed that 50 percent of potential customers feel fatigued with most online events. Hence, gaining eyeballs to your webinar can prove to be a Herculean task.
Hence, businesses need to rethink their webinar strategies to reap substantial benefits.
In this article, we have discussed twelve good practices that'll help you record and promote a webinar, making it successful and worth replaying. Implement these practices to create a value-adding and engaging webinar for your audience.
Let's get started.
Best Practices to Record a Webinar
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Pre-webinar best practices
#1: Know your audience
Knowing your audience is pivotal to the success of a webinar.
It can help identify their expectations, needs, and pain points. You can figure out what content can provide maximum value to the audience, thus meeting their goals.
To sum up, knowing your audience can help you with -
- Providing valuable content: Create high-quality and valuable content that addresses their major pain points.
- Framing an audience-centered speech: Form a phraseology that resonates with the audience, thereby enhancing communication.
- Gaining a competitive edge: Successfully position your product by offering a unique value proposition, and gain a competitive edge.
So, before planning the webinar, ask yourself:
- Who are you speaking to?
- What challenges does your audience face?
- What are the goals of the audience?
- How can your product help the audience?
The answers to these questions will give you laser-focused clarity on how to proceed.
Use tools like Google Analytics to see insights into prospects visiting your website. For instance, check out the following screenshot of the Google Analytics tool.
Notice how it offers information, such as your target audiences' demographics, page views, and other interests.
Getting these basics right will go a long way in making the webinar successful.
#2: Focus on content and visual branding
Always prioritize creating high-quality content.
People attend webinars to gain valuable information and learn something new. So, maintaining high editorial standards is imperative.
The topic you choose should be well-researched, insightful, and engaging. It will increase your brand's authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Another crucial point to remember is to avoid a broad topic.
It can divert you from defining a clear framework for resolving the audience's pain points.
For instance, if you want to deliver a webinar on "content marketing for businesses." Narrow it down to something like "visual content marketing tips." This tactic will help you plan the webinar effectively.
Here are five ways to search for a relevant webinar topic for your audience.
- Check your FAQs page: Your FAQs page can lead you to the most searched queries of your customers. If you don't have one, analyze your competitors' FAQs page to identify the most commonly searched topics. Count on SEO tools like SEMrush to identify queries receiving high traction.
- Connect with the sales team: Ask your sales team about customers' queries and pain points. This information can help you create a helpful topic for the webinar, thus improving attendance.
- Share a poll: Ask your audience directly about the most helpful topic. This step can help you decide on the most relevant topic without hassles.
For instance, check out Slido's live poll. Observe how they have asked the audience to choose the topic of their interest.
- Check your competitors' webinars: Analyze the webinars of your competitors and their success rate. Use tools like Ahrefs and BuzzSumo to do a complete competitor analysis. This step can help you adapt the relevant topic to get started.
Be consistent in aligning your content with the brand's visual tone.
For example, insert your brand logo in the sliders. Choose fonts, colors, and other visual elements that match your brand's style. These details will highlight your brand during the webinar in a subtle way, without making it look promotional.
Use professional presentation design creation tools like Canva and SlideModel to create appealing presentations in no time. Besides, you can create banner images for the webinar using the ready-made templates from these platforms.
#3: Choose the right video hosting software
Technical problems during the webinar can lead to poor feedback and ratings. Most importantly, they can impact a brand's image.
To minimize technical issues and ensure a seamless experience, choose the right video hosting software.
When analyzing the video hosting platform, ask yourself -
- Does the software offer high-quality recording?
- Does it include the feature for conducting surveys?
- How many participants can the software hold without disrupting the experience?
- Can you extract the list of participants (potential leads)?
- Does it allow broadcasting the live webinar on social media platforms?
- Does it fit your budget?
LiveWebinar is one of the most effective webinar hosting software with advanced features. The platform ensures a seamless user experience and high engagement.
The platform’s top features include -
- Quick recording provision: Click on the "Rec" button to record the live webinar.
LiveWebinar software offers HQ recording feature. Besides, it offers cloud-based storage for keeping the webinar recordings secured. You can choose from an FTP server or Amazon S3 for storage.
- The frame rate of recordings: Edit 14 and 30 frames per second.
- Editable resolution of recordings: Upgrade any resolution recording to HD.
Besides, the software showcases participants and allows brands to interact with them via audio, video, and chat.
The next factor to consider is the audio quality of the webinar.
Your audience shouldn't struggle with listening to the insights shared by speakers. The speaker's voice should be crystal-clear, allowing listeners to gain maximum value from the webinar. So, invest in a quality headset or microphone to maintain high engagement.
Further, to avoid the embarrassment of an unstable connection, ensure testing your internet connection. Switch to a high-speed wired internet connection of at least 3 MBPS.
#4: Finalize a speaker
A speaker is a person who delivers the content and hence, can make or break a webinar.
Research states that the attention span of humans is only eight seconds, lesser than that of the goldfish, which is nine seconds. So, choosing a speaker with good business communication skills is crucial to grabbing the audience's attention and setting the right tone for the entire event.
Further, a skilled speaker can convey your value proposition and encourage the audience to take action, thereby boosting conversions.
So, here are a few tips that'll help choose the right speaker.
- Perform Google search: Use Google search to find top speakers in your domain. Type your keyword followed by the term "site," colon mark ":" and domain name to get the most relevant results.
- Ask an experienced employee: Look within your organization for an experienced subject-matter expert with good presentation skills. Since they understand your target audience's needs and pain points, managing the session will be easy.
- Refer to podcasts: Check out podcasts to find popular speakers in your niche.
- Explore speaker communities: Check out communities of influential speakers like The National Speakers Association (NSA) and SpeakerHub to find a reliable speaker.
If you are conducting a sponsored webinar, make sure you have editorial control over the content. Polish the content to make it more relevant for your audience. Collaborate with the speaker to create a webinar script that balances the sponsor's motive and your brand's message.
Don't forget to rehearse the script before the final presentation. This can help speakers stay confident and deliver a great session minus any technical glitches.
#5: Inform your audience
The higher the attendance rate of your audience, the higher the chances of acquiring leads and conversions, and the more successful is your webinar.
However, increasing attendance by attracting the right audience to the webinar doesn't happen by accident. You need to design a strong call to action.
Here are the best practices for announcing the webinar and igniting audience interest.
- Create an engaging landing page: Design an exclusive landing page for your upcoming webinar. Add crucial details about the session, such as the topic, registration form, event date, and speaker's information.
- Create effective social media posts: Posting on social media channels like Facebook (Meta), Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter is not enough. You should share the link to the landing page in the post to drive traffic.
Include trending and relevant keywords in the post to reach a wider audience.
Count on tools like Hashtagify, Keyhole, and Union Metrics to analyze the potential reach of your hashtags. Besides, these tools offer a list of trending hashtags across different domains. These tools will help you improve your reach without hassles.
- Send email invitations: A straightforward way to increase audience involvement in your webinar is by sending email invitations. No wonder, 65 percent of businesses use email marketing to promote their webinar.
But, not everyone that you send email invitations to will show up in the webinar. So, to confirm the registration, you can send a form for participants to sign digitally and confirm their interest.
Digital signatures can help in this case. These are electronic representations of handwritten signatures, unique to each user. Each user gets a unique key that helps determine their authenticity.
These signatures use a certificate authority called Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), ensuring end-to-end security. When users sign a document digitally, the software creates a unique hash value from the signed data to verify the signee.
Notice how GetAccept's Digital Signature platform authorizes and generates a list of recipients who signed the digital document.
So, implement a digital signature platform like GetAccept and send an email to participants a week before the webinar. Let them sign the document digitally for confirmation.
With the number of digital signatures, you can figure out the number of confirmed attendees in advance. Once you get a list of registered attendees, send email reminders a day before the online event.
Webinar best practices
#6: Join a few minutes early and start the recording
There's nothing more frustrating for attendees than waiting for the webinar's host to start the session.
At this point, any delay can result in losing potential customers.
Value your attendees' time and be punctual. If your webinar is scheduled at 3 pm, try to join at least 15-20 minutes before the session.
Here are a few tips to consider on the day of the webinar.
- Join 30 minutes early with a few team members for a quick practice session.
- Check the audio and video quality.
- Run a content sharing test and the webinar presentation.
- Mute the participants in advance so that there's no interruption during the webinar. The participants can be unmuted later during the Q&A round.
- Know the profiles of the guests and speakers and make a note of their major achievements and career milestones. It will help you introduce them confidently without shuffling through piles of papers.
- With LiveWebinar software, you get the provision to customize the layout and start the recording at the click of a button. So, choose a suitable layout design and begin the recording on time.
These tips will help you squeeze the most value out of the online event.
#7: Don't forget to discuss your product offerings
Around 50 percent of brands pitch their products upfront without addressing audiences' needs. This mistake leads to the loss of valuable prospects.
However, your ultimate goal is to convert the attendees into customers. So, don’t miss out on sharing details about your product.
How to do it?
- Address the challenges faced by your target audience.
- Share the possible solutions and position your products as one of them.
- Mention what kind of product is "ideal" to resolve their issues. Here, you need to state the features of your product without naming it.
Notice how the HubSpot's team addressed the concerns of their audience and then provided their product offering.
#8: Include a call to action
Once you gain the audience's trust, including a compelling call to action (CTA) should be your next step.
CTAs encourage the audience to take action, moving them lower in the sales funnel.
For instance, you can invite the audience for a free demo of your product or offer them the product at discounted prices. The CTA, thus, can simplify users' journeys, boosting conversions.
So, how to include CTA in the webinar?
Use the "call to action creator" feature of LiveWebinar to build and embed the CTA within the webinar. It doesn't require any coding. All you need to do is write a simple to understand CTA content and click on "send" to display it at any instant during the webinar.
Notice how the software has the option to create CTA buttons. You can create as many CTAs as you want.
This tactic will ensure your hard work in conducting the webinar pays off.
Post webinar best practices
#9: Share the recording with attendees
Edit your webinar recording by trimming its length and adding accurate captions.
Reports state that consumers prefer webinars of around 90 minutes. So, make sure the edited version of your webinar is no longer than 90 minutes. Further, add accurate captions to boost the credibility of the recording.
Count on tools like Adobe Premiere Pro and Pinnacle Studio for editing your video. These tools are user-friendly, have intuitive interfaces, and advanced video editing features. From inserting captions to making the video high-resolution, these tools offer everything. Even a beginner can use these tools with ease.
Most importantly, send the edited recording to all the attendees within 24 hours.
The reason?
A quick follow-up can help improve the conversion rates as the webinar will be fresh in their mind. So, don't miss this opportunity to drive lead generation.
#10: Share a survey to understand the impact of your webinar
A simple trick to keep the audiences coming back for more is giving them a voice.
Run an online survey to ask whether they liked the session. You can even request brief feedback asking for areas of improvement.
This strategy can make them feel valued, thus building brand loyalty.
Use tools like SurveyMonkey to capture the audience opinions of your audiences.
This tool is rated as one of the most popular survey platforms and can help create professional surveys within minutes. It offers expert-written questions for different niches and has over 100 customizable templates. You can either choose from their questions or create them from scratch.
#11: Repurpose the webinar content
The key to attracting and holding audiences' attention is to share informative and valuable content.
However, creating high-quality content consistently is a draining process.
Repurposing your webinar video content can do the trick. It can help you gain the same mileage as unique content.
All you need to do is analyze the presentation slides and pick vital information. You can use the information to create the following -
- Infographics
- Whitepaper
- eBook
- Blog posts
In a nutshell, convert the same content into various formats. Share it across various marketing channels to retain your engagement rate post-webinar.
#12: Track your core webinar success metrics
The easiest way to ensure whether your webinar was a hit or a miss is to track success metrics.
You can analyze the results to understand what went right and the aspects that need improvement.
Here's a list of webinar metrics you must track to determine its impact.
- Webinar registrations: It signifies the total number of people registered for the webinar.
- Webinar attendance rate: This term refers to the number of people that attended the webinar.
- Webinar view duration: It signifies the average viewing time of the webinar.
- Registration conversion rate: This term implies the number of people who attended the webinar and became customers.
- Total revenue: It refers to the ROI generated through the webinar.
With LiveWebinar, you can track all these metrics, thereby understanding your webinar's performance.
Conclusion
A webinar is the most effective medium to engage, convert, and retain the target audience, building a successful brand.
Planning, coordinating, and following up with the procured leads are vital practices for creating a positive impact via webinars.
But the key is choosing the right webinar platform. A feature-equipped webinar platform like LiveWebinar can help ensures meeting your growth goals. Using this platform combined with the shared practices can help you make a smooth transition, thus engaging the audience.
So, go ahead, and add LiveWebinar to your stack for recording a high-quality webinar.
Check out our blog for more tips and strategies for conducting webinars.
For more details on LiveWebinar software, get in touch with our team. We're happy to help you!