In the world of marketing, a webinar can be one of the most influential tools you can use. Why? Because they enable you to connect instantly with your target audience, create a link between your business and your chosen topic (more on that further down), and build credibility in your chosen field.

By running a webinar for your viewers, you will achieve the following:

1. Capture the awareness of your audience
2. Teach them about your business
3. Develop a connection with prospects

However, what do you do if no one turns up to your event?  

This blog post will take you through a checklist of best practices to ensure that doesn’t happen.

8 Weeks Prior

Choose your date and time

Always consider when your audience is available to attend when picking your date and time. For example, if you’re operating in the B2B industry, during the week in the afternoon is usually best as people have more availability. Remember to take into account time differences if you expect some attendees will be joining from another country. 

Pick a date that gives the attendee ample time to put it in their diaries and to allow you enough time to promote the webinar. We generally recommend allowing at least 8 weeks between starting to plan your webinar and the event itself. 

Avoiding any public holidays or especially busy holiday weeks is also beneficial. For example, we would always recommend avoiding hosting your webinar in August/during school holidays if possible, as many people take annual leave at this time. 

Discuss internally and determine topic

A question to ask yourself could be "Does it solve the problem your target audience is trying to fix?' By doing your research, you can find out goals your attendees are looking to reach, or issues they would like to resolve. Approaching your webinar from a customer-focused perspective will ensure your topic resonates with your audience and is one they are interested in. 

Another tip worth mentioning is to brainstorm a list of ideas you can incorporate into your chosen topic/topics and the key takeaways/benefits the audience will gain from joining. 

Consider webinar format

There are many different format options you can choose from when organising your webinar content. You can mix and match based on your goals for the event. 

Experimenting with various forms is an excellent way to make your webinars more engaging and learn what works best with your target audience. If you use the identical format repeatedly it may cause your viewers to disengage and lose enthusiasm. A few example formats include: 

• Single Speaker
• Panel discussion
• Q&A

Select your speaker and host if applicable

When choosing your key speakers, you need to make sure they are skilled and knowledgeable experts in their chosen field, and of course, know that they are comfortable being in front of the camera. 

Remember, if you don't have any recognised or relevant names placed, then you risk losing potential attendees. 

If relevant, reach out to partners to be featured

In order to maximise the number of attendees to your webinar, consider working with other partners. It’s interesting for your audience to learn from another perspective once in a while, especially when that partner comes from an expert point of view.

5 Weeks Prior

Create webinar landing page and forms

A well-designed landing page will tell guests what the webinar is about, share the time and date of when the event is taking place, and convert the visitors to register. Below is a list of features a landing page requires.

• A title that converts

1. What will the attendee learn from joining your webinar?

• Body copy

1. Include a list of bullet points on the benefits and a brief description of what's to come, guest speakers, for example:
2. Title of webinar
3. Date & time
4. Presenter name, title, (optional: bio)
5. Short description of webinar topic, bullet points covering what attendees will learn
6. Featured image, for social media sharing

• A compelling Call To Action (CTA)  and registration form

1. Arguably the most important part of the landing page, the registration form and button. Ensuring it’s the only CTA and is prominently displayed. 

Set-up joining link and test with external participants

A very important part of your webinar setup is testing your joining link. Whatever webinar platform you’re using, you need to make sure that the right things happen once someone signs up for your webinar. For example, when we use GoToWebinar with HubSpot, the information feeds back to GoToWebinar once someone signs up from one of our HubSpot landing page forms, ensuring that a joining link is created and sent to them. 

Test, test, and test again! Get multiple people on multiple devices to sign up and test the setup. Ensure that the joining link doesn’t just get sent, but that it works when clicked across all possible devices. 

Create an outline for the webinar 

An outline is essentially a directory of items you plan to do and in what order you do them, an itinerary if you will. First, create a list of a series of topics that would work well for a conversation. This can then provide you with the framework for your outline, and you can then refine topics and develop an approach to present them. 

3 Weeks Prior

Produce the first draft of webinar slides

An engaging slide deck plays a large function in your webinar presentation. 

If your slide deck looks excellent and is on-brand, your chances of engaging your participants is much higher. It’s also easier for attendees to memorise details from your webinar and retain information for longer periods of time.

Here are a few best practices to follow when designing your presentation:

• Avoid incorporating too much text, as this could overwhelm your audience
• Leave white space between points
• Avoid using paragraphs; divide the text into bullet points to keep the slides from looking too busy
• Add plenty of visuals such as images, charts and tables
• Include a closing slide that gives recognition to your audience, the contact information of presenters and hosts, and a call to action

Produce webinar banners for promotion

These banners will be used to promote your webinar across various platforms such as social, email and paid ads. Give your webinar prominence with a banner ad on your homepage, an excellent way to keep compelling content front of mind. Including a banner ad on any relevant blogs would also be beneficial. 

Begin promotion of the webinar

• Email 

Send these one week and one day before your webinar. These act as a reminder to registrants about the webinar's date and time. Many of your registrants may have forgotten that they registered for your webinar and your email will act as a perfect reminder. 

• Social 

Having an active social presence is always beneficially for a business, it shows you're included in the conversation and conscious of your online community, especially as it enables you to use social media to promote your webinar to your audience.

• Blog 

When it comes to promoting your webinar via your blog, there are two options. You could write a dedicated blog post on the webinar or a blog post on the topic you are covering in the webinar and include a CTA to go through to register. Also, having your social media accounts tied to your blog will post auto-updates when a new post is published.

• Partners 

If you have partnered up with other influencers don't be afraid to take full advantage of their promotional reach. However, they'll need to have the correct links for landing pages, images and any other assets required.

• Customer communication 

Create a list of current contacts that you think might be interested in attending your webinar and use this to send out a couple of emails inviting them to join. 

• Paid promotion

Assign a budget to create promoting tweets, LinkedIn updates or Google Ads, this can add to the overall number of registrants for your webinar. 

2 weeks prior

Upload presentation into webinar software 

Once you’ve created your webinar slides, you’ll need to upload them to your choice of webinar software. A few platform examples include:

• Zoom 
• GoToWebinar
• WebEx
• Microsoft Teams

If required, book a conference room for the webinar 

Booking a meeting room in advance ensures you have a private room to host the webinar and reduce the chance of having any background noise/interruptions during the live event.

Another round of promotion on the above platforms

Repeat the promotional activity as above.

1 Week Prior

Send a reminder email to those registered to re-promote the webinar 

• Email 

Here you can repeat the invite information and include a link to add a calendar reminder.

Here’s what you can include in this email:

• The webinar reminder

• Content related to your webinar topic to keep them interested, perhaps a related blog?

Sending relevant content builds credibility, and keeps your reminder interesting rather than seen as spam.

•  Social 

 Add final reminders to Stories and posts to your Facebook/LinkedIn event.

• Customer communication 

Send out a final invite to your current contacts inviting them to join.

Do a dry run of the webinar 

One week before your webinar, you will need to schedule a run-through of your webinar to ensure you’re as prepared as can be.

Here is a checklist of what you need to go through during the dry run:

• Introduce your webinar members, guest speakers and/or presenters to each other. This is the perfect opportunity for any questions and to create positive energy around the event.
• Make sure everyone knows how to use the webinar software, tools, and features. If not, you may need to give them a tutorial, or how-to guide.

3 days Prior

Send a reminder email to those registered 

The day before the webinar is the perfect time to remind people of the crucial information, where and when.

Here’s what to include in this webinar email:

• A clear subject line
• A calendar reminder
• The webinar link

Day of Webinar

Upload presentation into webinar software 

Make sure your slide deck is ready to go on your chosen webinar software.

Promote on social media 

A few hours before the webinar, remind people about the upcoming event by posting on Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn Stories.

Gather webinar team – host(s)/speaker(s)/guest(s)

Have one final check-in with your team, any hosts/speakers/guests that will be talking on the webinar to ensure you’re all on the same page.

During Webinar

Record Webinar 

Recording the webinar ensures those who couldn’t attend the webinar or would like to watch it again can do so.

Consider having a team member manage social to live post, gather & answer participant questions 

During the webinar, posting live updates on your social media platforms and gathering live questions, means those hosting the webinar can answer questions the attendees may have.

Post Webinar

Adjust landing page copy 

Adjust the copy for those viewing the page post-webinar to reflect the on-demand recording.

Convert recording to viewable file 

Make sure the recording is in a downloadable format.

Upload video to website 

Upload recording to your website to host on the landing page.

Send ‘Thank You’ email with recording and slide deck to those registered

Always send a thank you email to thank your attendees for the time they dedicated to your event along with the slide deck from the webinar.

Enrol registrants in nurture flow and inform Sales of webinar leads

Create a nurture flow for webinar attendees to be nurtured by the sales team.

Analyse Webinar metrics & performance 

Analyse your metrics to measure the success of your webinar, such as:

Click-Through Rate:

The Click-through rate measures the number of people who registered for your webinar vs the number of those who clicked to the registration page (it's important to note, visitors to the registration landing page do not automatically translate to sign-ups). This data can give you the essential knowledge to help you predict:

• The effectiveness of your enrolment landing page
• The quality of your message 

Ratio of attendees 

The Attendee ratio measures the % of people that attended compared to those registered. 

If you'd like to discuss your upcoming webinar, please get in touch with chris@enquirylab.com or on 01327 368378.