Accounting
The Ins and Outs of Webinar Success
During 2020, webinars skyrocketed. Were you a bit envious of your colleagues promoting their new, shiny lead generation tool? If so, you too can use webinars to drive leads and impact the bottom line.
Sep. 02, 2021
During 2020, webinars skyrocketed. Were you a bit envious of your colleagues promoting their new, shiny lead generation tool? If so, you too can use webinars to drive leads and impact the bottom line.
According to RingCentral, “The 2020 pandemic prompted companies and marketers to change their strategies. That’s why there’s a sudden surge in webinar viewership. 67% of marketers invested more time on webinars. U.S. brands increased webinar offerings by as much as 36% — that’s just between February and March 2020.”
What can you do to make a webinar successful, i.e., bring in leads and generate income?
13 Tips to Increase Success
Increase your webinar success with these tips:
- Know your audience. Consider who’s attending and what their pain points are. Once you know this, you can weave a story introduction that has them nodding their head in agreement. See webinar formula below.
- Keep mobile in mind by making font sizes larger and visuals more impactful. Test your slides on a mobile device before the live date.
- Hook ‘em with the headline. Think like your customer and craft headlines that would get their attention. Not sure how to do that? Try a free, online headline generator for inspiration.
- Prepare some questions ahead of time to lead the Q&A session. It’s also important to have someone assist you with the webinar to capture any questions in chat or on social media.
- Consider mixed media during the live session, for example, imbedding a video, sound bite, or animation to drive home a point.
- Be dynamic and conversational. Sometimes it helps to have another person online with you when you’re presenting so it feels more like a conversation. If that’s not possible, talk to the camera like it’s a person.
- Pick the right day and time. According to GoToMeeting, Thursday at 11 a.m. is the best time to host a webinar.
- Have a stable Internet connection and good headset to help deliver the information effectively and clearly.
- Conduct a dry run. This is also a good time to record the session as a backup in case something happens during the live session. If you need a script, practice with that. Keep in mind, going off script or ad-libbing is okay too.
- Create a webinar landing page on your website to capture leads. Include the topic, date, time, speaker information, and a few topical highlights. Instapage has several, high-converting landing page examples.
- Announce the webinar on social media with a unique hashtag, create event notices on your firm’s social media profiles, send an email series to your list, and include a link in your email signature to promote the event.
- Post event, follow up with participants by sending the playback link and additional content they may find helpful.
- Track results to determine webinar success and growth over time, including the number of registrations, top registration sources, actual attendee numbers, and time spent on the live session.
Webinar Formula
Begin with a story that has the pain point front and center. Add a few bullet points about how you helped solve the pain point. Then, end with a call to action that doesn’t cost a dime, such as downloading a case study, getting a checklist, calling for a demo, etc.
Story Pain Point + Solution + Call to Action = Webinar Success
What should I avoid?
Keep in mind, “78% of webinars have fewer than 50 attendees,” says Search Engine Journal.
If you’ve tried webinars in the past, but just haven’t been able to break the “attendance” record, it might be due to your headlines and promotional materials. Or, it could be one of these mishaps.
- Leaving out interaction within the webinar – people remember engaging speakers and activities. Include a poll question or two during the webinar to increase engagement between you and your audience. You can do this with a chat, polls within the platform, like Zoom or WebEx, or by simply asking for a show of virtual hands.
- Avoid using your slides as a teleprompter. According to Jeff Bullas, “Attendees will retain 65% of your presentation if you use both oral and visual content, compared to retaining only 10% of your material if they rely on hearing your presentation.”
- Lack of webinar promotion. Start as early as four weeks ahead of time to promote the webinar. Most of the registrations will come in about a week before your event. However, you can encourage promotion by asking registrants to share that they are attending. Create a series of social media posts they can copy/paste into their social media profiles.
- Sidestep the sales pitch. Sure, you can give the audience something to remember you by with a call to action. However, a hard sales pitch is a no-no.
- Dodge the desire to tackle too many goals in one webinar. Rather, focus on one topic, with three to five bullet points you expand upon during the session. Then close with a follow-up piece in your call to action.
- Passing on the follow up. You’ve put a lot of time and energy into the webinar. Strike while the iron’s hot with the session follow up.
Let’s get started! You have the success tips and the pitfalls. What you’re lacking is the template. Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. HubSpot offers a free webinar planning toolkit, including a strategy template, checklist, and guide.
Looking for some fun, webinar social media post ideas? Here are some examples from The Bean (https://tinyurl.com/398dfrh8) specifically for LinkedIn. Now that you’re armed with what you need, tackle your next webinar with confidence and style.