The COVID-19 pandemic created a shift in the way businesses hold events. Because of the immediate shift to digital, businesses now host webinars to showcase their expertise and market their products and services while offering a learning opportunity for consumers.
This marketing strategy can help businesses expand their reach and visibility to their potential audience. Actual data show that around 20% of webinar attendees convert to actual consumers, revealing how the wide audience reach of webinars can generate more outbound leads for your business.
Handling a webinar, whether it’s live or pre-recorded, may sound easy at first, but it can become rocky as you go down the road. Unlike a seminar, engaging your audiences particularly in an online space may prove to be difficult and daunting at times. To resolve this, here are some tips to help you plan the perfect webinar.
5 Important W’s When Planning Your Webinar
Before heading out and planning all the logistics, you must start with WHY you want to host a live or pre-recorded webinar and WHAT you want to achieve.
WHY do you want to start a webinar?
Having a concrete and specific reason and purpose for conducting a webinar can help translate the specific key results you want to produce. Remember that the core message lies in why you’re hosting a webinar in the first place. Is it because you want to share valuable knowledge? Do you want to teach your audience how to do something?
WHAT do you want to achieve?
This is an opportunity for you to set your goals and the results that the company wants to accomplish with the webinar.
- Do you want to increase online traffic for your website?
- Do you want to generate high-quality leads?
- Do you want to increase brand awareness?
-
Do you want to gain customer feedback?
Identifying an end-goal at the beginning can help you stay grounded and consistently aligned with your potential ideas throughout the planning and implementation stages.
Like any successful event, planning is one crucial factor in maintaining a smooth process throughout the webinar.
WHEN will this all happen?
Live or pre-recorded webinars take approximately six to eight weeks to plan depending on the size, content, and extent of the event. Having a meticulously planned timetable with defined dates and deadlines will help guide you in overseeing the logistics, direction, and execution of your event.
American technology company ON24 discovered in a survey that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to host a live webinar, so make sure to keep those days open to attract more live attendees.
WHO is your target market?
Identifying the demographics of your participants can help you effectively approach and engage your target audience.
- What are you looking for?
- Customers
- Prospects
- Learners
-
Clients
- What age category are you targeting?
- Gen-Z
- Millennials
- Gen-X
-
Baby Boomers
- What type of professions do you want to reach?
- College students
- Working Class
- Professionals
- Upper Management
-
Entrepreneurs
Focusing on a specific target audience can help you market and communicate your webinar effectively.
WHERE can you promote them?
Promoting your webinar ahead of time gives you the opportunity to attract every potential lead. One effective way to attract potential attendees would be to create a landing page or website for the event as it can give you the opportunity to provide full details. According to Adobe Connect, site views can provide a high registration conversion rate of 51%.
An email campaign can also be a great medium to promote your webinar. In fact, according to a report from 99Firms, 45% of marketers agree that the use of email campaigning is a useful promotional tool. The report also states that email invites can widen audience reach as it attracts around 73% of webinar signups.
This begs the question: When is the best time to send emails? ON24’s survey shows that most people tend to register for webinars when emails are sent on Wednesdays, making it the best day to distribute invites than any other day of the week.
Conclusion
Both live and pre-recorded webinars prove to be an effective marketing strategy for businesses today, with more than 60% of marketers already using it to promote their content. It has also been a way for companies to reach a wide audience and translate them into actual consumers.
Remember, having a clear WHY, a realistic WHAT, a meticulously planned WHEN, a specific WHO, and a strong WHERE are the keys to a smooth and flawless webinar. These five W’s will put you in the best position to plan your perfect webinar!.
-Written by Vinnie Vinculado
