Setting up your next webinar for success

Whether this is your first or you’ve hosted hundreds (like us), there is always something to learn or improve on for your next webinar. 

First things first. Key considerations for your webinar (or any event):

• What is the purpose of the webinar?
• What are the KPIs of the webinar?
• Who are the target attendees and how many attendees are expected?
• Is the content heavily focused on slides or the speaker?
• Is engagement important during the webinar and if so, what type?

Purpose & Target Audience

You may be hosting a webinar for a variety of reasons however the most common fall into two categories – 

1. Education, whether that is for your membership community or CPD; or

2. Offer launch.

An educational webinar may require certain presenter/content layouts, reporting and engagement. Whereas a launch webinar may need more time managing customer service questions during and after the webinar as well as defined reporting on attendee type. 

Determining the purpose of the webinar will help you create KPIs that will equal impact. 

The purpose of the webinar will also identify who the target audience is and what style of webinar will work best for the attendee type.

KPIs/Metrics

The purpose of your webinar will likely lead back to an overall objective for your organisation in some way. To ensure that the webinar is contributing to this, ensure that the KPIs of the webinar align with your desired outcome. 

Below is a starting point of just two metrics that we would consider key track:

1. Number of registrations

• Existing contacts vs new
• Booking lead time
• Qualified vs qualified sales lead

2. Number of live attendees vs Number of playbacks (if recorded)

• Duration online of live attendees (important for CPD tracking)
• Most engaging topic (tracked by polls or Q&A)
• Top attendance and contact tracking (click rates etc for proactive follow up)

Style of presentation

Content heavy webinars need to have presentations that are visually engaging. 

Sales focused webinars need to capture attention, provide value and express urgency. 

The impact on the viewing experience for misaligned presentation styles can be critical. 

Webinars are not just a small video box on a screen with a slide presentation to support. The content, script and speaker need to be carefully crafted for the best results. You may wish to consider what program is used to run the webinar when you have decided on the style of presentation. Not all webinar products are created equal! Some popular suggestions include; Zoom, Demio, Webex, GoTo Webinar and so many more!

An unpopular opinion is to also consider the speaker. Some speakers are excellent on a webinar and some speakers are more engaging in person and struggle with the one-sided aspect of a webinar. If you have a speaker that needs extra help with webinars, plan in advance for this and plan the webinar around a presentation style that best suits the speaker and serves the webinar purpose. 

Engagement

An often overlooked element of webinars, is attendee engagement. By design, webinars are one-sided but that doesn’t mean that the delegate experience should be overlooked and what type of engagement with delegates may help achieve your webinar KPIs. 

Common ways to create a two-way conversation with delegates:

• Q&A:
  • Live Answers: During or at the conclusion of the webinar the delegates can ask for questions with their video/voice directly to the presenter. 
  • Submitted questions: This can either be submitted prior to the webinar or in the Q&A section of the software during the seminar. This is a great option if you wish to moderate the questions either for content relevancy or to ensure key questions 
• Polls:
  • Best used in real time in response to key content. This does mean that you need to have the webinar content pre-planned and scripted, with polls designed to boost interaction with a specific topic or learning objective. 
• Live chat between attendees:
  • Less common as all comments are public and require constant moderation.

---

There are just a few ways you can plan to engage with attendees. The purpose and style of presentation will determine what engagement is best to achieve the KPIs of the webinar. 

Finally, conduct a test run in full. Please test test test and then test again. The quickest way to lose attendees and have a frustrated speaker is tech issues on the day.

---