Create your own webinar with ease: 10 practical tips

More and more companies choose to use webinars in their marketing strategy. A webinar is usually very interesting for the viewer, and they’re relatively cheap to produce. Moreover, a webinar will help to promote your product or service quickly and easily. But what’s the best method to produce a webinar and what should you look out for?

In this article: "create your own webinar with ease" we share 10 practical tips to make your own webinar from scratch.

Tip 1. Create a webinar: "the idea"

The creation of a new webinar starts with an idea. Translate this idea to a problem and the solution to this problem. Try to be as creative and original as possible in this process. Remember that the success of your webinar is closely related to crawling into the skin of your customer. What is the main problem my target audience struggles with? And how can I help solve this? By answering these questions, you’ll get pretty far already.

Tip 2. Translating an idea

The best strategy for starting a webinar, is by simply asking your target market what their struggles in life are. Obviously, you shouldn’t do this directly, so don’t ask them ‘what’s your problem in life’? But try asking it like this: What are your main struggles in relation to whatever your area of expertise would be. Most potential customers don’t exactly know what they need. By allowing them to reflect on certain questions, you can find out what it is that could help them solve their problems.

Discussing this with your target audience can be done in different ways. The best method is using your email list(s). Send out a survey, this will often result in pretty accurate answers. You can also try using social media. Ask around on Twitter or Facebook, or join a niche-related Facebook group and try to pick their brain.

Another method is using your own website. Use a pop-up or a call-to-action field on your blog, where you ask people for comments on a specific topic. Or contact users of your product directly, if possible. In this way, you are able to collect valuable feedback, that will help you translate an idea into a solution.

Tip 3. Creating a suitable title

An important aspect of creating your webinar, is the creation of an attractive title. This can be done by making a promise. Do make sure you can live up to this promise. For example: “How to create awesome content in 5 practical steps”. And don’t title your webinar: “Learn to write the best content in 5 practical steps”. The entire purpose is to choose a title you can live up to and that is valuable for your target market. Create a title that appeals to people and always fulfill the promise you make in the title!

Tip 4. Create a webinar with a specific result

Before organizing your webinar, you should be able to answer this question: at the end of my webinar, my viewers are able to…? Make sure to pinpoint this learning goal at the very start of your webinar. This ensures that the topic is clear to everyone, but will also emphasize the things participants will have learned by the end of the webinar. This allows viewers to check if you lived up to your promises in a practical and direct way.

At the end of the webinar you could ask participants for feedback, using the practical WebinarGeek marketing tools. You could do this through a poll or call to action, but also by asking direct questions. Participants are able to answer questions directly through the live chat functionality.

Tip 5. Not too short and not too long

To teach your target audience something, you have to take into account two important factors. First, people should be able to understand the lesson. Always make sure to use clear and concise language. Secondly, participants should be able to remember the provided information. A viewer should be able to repeat the things he/she has learned. Viewers should understand a concept and know how he/she should apply and repeat this over and over.

Having new knowledge about a topic without actually being able to actually implement it themselves would be utterly useless. You want to have taught the viewers something by the end of the webinar, and this should be something a viewer can benefit from directly.

Tip 6. The five

When you want to teach the viewers something, use the 5 step principle. This means that you’ll use a maximum of 5 steps to teach viewers something of value. Remembering more than 5 steps is simply too hard for most people. Viewers don’t only need to remember the steps, but also the order in which they were provided.

Tip 7. The optimal day

Choosing the optimal day obviously depends on your target market. When is your target audience online and when do they have some time off?
Generally, the following rules apply for creating and giving webinars:

• Tuesday until Thursday are the best days to organize a webinar.

• Monday usually is a catch-up day.

• Friday is the day to start the weekend early for most people.

The exact time to give the webinar is hard to pinpoint. This depends on your target market. When you serve a business-oriented market, remember to avoid giving your webinar between 12:00 – 13:00, when most business folks are on their lunch break. So always make sure to be mindful of the regular schedule of your target market and the times that are most optimal for their schedule.

Tip 8. Preparing with visual elements

Use slides to keep attendees interested. Don’t use slides with large amounts of text. When you want to use slides for your webinar, make sure of the following:

• Use an introductory slide with the date, time and title of your webinar.

• After that, you can show a slide which explains and talks about the learning goal.

• Follow up with a slide that gives a short overview with the 5 steps for reaching the learning goal, like we explained earlier.

• The final slide should explain what the viewer has learned, a quick recap.

Next to the use of slides, it is important to keep the attention of the attendees. This can be done by being interactive: ask questions and use polls. Prepare your slides on time and make sure they look professional. Put plenty of time into making an preparing your webinar.

Tip 9. Filling the virtual chairs

A good preparation is the start of a successful webinar. That’s why you should start promoting your webinar at an early stage.

It’s important to know that you won’t start too early or too late with the webinar promotion. When you start too early with the promotion, the offs are the attendees has already forgotten about it before it has even started. When you start promoting too late, chances are most attendees already made another appointment at the exact time you will be giving your webinar.

The optimal timeframe to start promoting a webinar is three weeks in advance. Don’t promote it for the first time in the week you’d like to give the webinar. The last week should be used to send reminders to people that have already signed up.

Tip 10. Promoting your webinar

Promotion of a webinar can be done in several different ways. It’s important to think about where you could best reach your audience. This can be your own website, social media or an email list. But you can also cooperate with other people in your niche. You could co-create a webinar and host it with someone else, or agree to promote someone else’s product during the webinar, in exchange for promotion on their website. It’s important that the webinar and the product are compatible to the potential co-host and it will actually provide participants with real added value.

Any more questions about organizing your webinar?

These ten practical tips for organizing your webinar can help you make your webinar a success. Would you like to learn more about the marketing-aspect of your webinar? Feel free to ask us about our practical stepwise marketing plan. Or contact one of our Geeks directly.

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