The time for worrying is over!
You’ve finally decided to adopt a new marketing tactic & are ready to host your first ever webinar; only to be faced with a number of hurdles that leave you questioning if this was indeed the right move to make. Well, fret no further!
You’ll find comfort in the fact that while hosting a webinar comes with its own set of challenges, most of them are pretty common & the solutions are easy to take on. Today, we’ll be laying down some of the commonly faced problems while also highlighting quick fixes that you can adopt to have a seamless webinar!
Turning challenges into opportunities
1. where do i promote my webinar?
The obvious answer may seem to be social media platforms but recent research has shown how it’s actually one of the least effective channels; instead what stands out are utilizing mediums such as email, co-marketing with other organizations & using employees/personal social networks to get the word out. At the end of the day what matters is the number of people that register for your webinar; so while you may show up on the Facebook timeline of 1000 people, there’s no point if the majority just scrolls through. However, add a personalized touch through an email or personal contact, and you’re more likely to get them to register.
Don’t let this hold you back from marketing on social media platforms too because remember, the more – the merrier!
2. when do i promote my webinar?
While individual timelines may vary owing to a variety of reasons, most research suggests the optimum time for marketing to begin approximately four weeks before your webinar. This creates a steady flow for registrations and does not create a burden on the promotional channels. However about a week before the webinar is when you pick up the pace and increase promotion across all channels, since research shows how a significant percentage of registrations occur in the week prior to the event, with usually an upward trend on the last day.
Remember it is important to space out your promotions and to not bombard these channels with a huge number of posts at the same time; instead, take it slow and build up the marketing mix as you go.
3. how do i get more people to register?
There’s no point in creating amazing promotional material and also marketing at just the right times if you’re unable to cultivate that into participant registrations. Appealing to the audiences is of immense importance and can lead to better conversion rates on your registration pages.
Try and keep the registration form as short as possible by including only necessary fields. More so, rather than explaining what the webinar will focus on, add in a short video to catch the audience’s attention. Ensure that the page isn’t too filled with text and use language that both motivates and inspires your audience to register for the webinar.
4. how do i keep my audience engaged?
Many times webinars tend to create an atmosphere that bores audiences, loses their attention, and inevitably leads to them leaving the webinars; not something that you would want at all! While presentations are indeed at the core of webinars, what matters more is your ability to keep the audience engaged throughout the session. You can do that by routinely utilizing polls & surveys during the seminar and also allowing the audience to ask questions to create an interactive environment.
The motive here is to keep the audience tuned in to the seminar throughout.
5. how do i know if my webinar was a success?
One word – KPI’s. Most webinar hosting platforms offer analytics and report a wide variety of information back to the host which is of great use when judging the success. However, the analysis is useless if you don’t have accurate KPI’s to measure them against. Sit down with your team and discuss what you wish to achieve from the webinars and what matters to you the most! It is only when you’ve set realistic targets and goals, that you can go on to use the analytical tools to gauge success rates.
6. can i create an impact even after the session is over?
Research shows that a large proportion of the total views come from audiences that view the webinar once it has been recorded and shared across a variety of platforms. So if you’re hoping to create a long-lasting impact, then recording your seminars and posting them on a variety of channels will definitely help you achieve your goals. Moreover, through the analytics you will gather during your seminar, you can gauge audience engagement and identify channels/platforms that were most utilized in order to market your next webinars on them instead. Lastly, scheduling on-demand, limited audience webinars also help establish close relationships with recurrent audience members.
7. how do i work through technical disturbances?
Practice. Rehearse. Practice again. Webinars are held over the internet and like everything in life, the internet can also get pretty unstable, pretty quickly so one has to prepare for any lags or technical disturbances before going live. Whether its microphone or connectivity issues or difficulty sharing screens across large audiences; all those problems can be identified and worked upon in these pilot runs. So, if you’re looking for a smooth webinar session where you don’t have to repeatedly ask the audience if “they can see or hear you”, then conducting pilot runs is the way to go.
8. should the speaker prepare a speech or work on-the-go?
While this may differ for each speaker and their comfort levels, what we suggest however is a mid-way approach. Here, the speaker prepares a list of pointers beforehand so they know what they’re supposed to cover and can ensure that all important aspects are talked about. Once the webinar goes live, they can utilize those pointers to carry the conversation in collaboration with the audience’s interaction. What this does is that it not only helps with audience engagement but also ensures that the speaker does not look like they’re rote learned their part for the webinar.
So, you’re now ready to enter the world of webinars and conduct your very own sessions without being afraid of the challenges you might face!
Good luck!
