So, you want to host a webinar. Certainly makes sense since there are a lot of reasons to host a webinar! To briefly name just a few, webinars

• Are low in cost to host
• Nurture potential leads
• Support growing brand value

One survey found that 89% of marketers’ webinars outperform all other marketing channels when it comes to creating qualified leads.

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That's probably why you’re here, reading this article - because you want to learn exactly how a webinar works so you too can grow your business. Good news, you came to the right place! We’ll walk you through all the steps to get you started with your best foot forward.

Let's start with the basics.

Webinars are online seminars that support two-way communication. They range from 5 to 100+ people and cover anything from educational seminars, B2B roundtable meetings and even product demos. The main focus of a webinar is engagement and interaction between the presenters and the attendees. Webinars facilitate conversation and grow qualified leads by creating valuable dialogue between companies and potential consumers. 

In other words, online webinars are an extremely flexible tool to exchange information and grow interpersonal connections. If you want to learn more we have a great article that goes more into depth of what a webinar is. 

What makes webinars such a great tool for growing qualified leads are the array of features available to engage with your attendees.

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These include:

• Live video
• Recorded video
• Slides
• Integrated social media
• Live attendee engagement (questions, polls, chat boxes etc.)
• Data collection 

WIth all these elements, webinars offer a bunch of opportunities to gain unique insight on your business and connect with people across the world. Before we get more into how a webinar works and uses these features, let's get to know the key players involved in a webinar. 

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The Presenter: 

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The person who delivers the content. If there are multiple speakers, presenters may act as a host in the webinar, guiding the attendees through the programme and facilitating conversation between guest presenters and attendees. 

The Producer:

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The person behind-the-scenes. They make everything come together before, during, and after the webinar. 

Before the webinar they make sure the webinar platform software works smoothly, that there’s a stable internet connection and gather the audience or attendees. During the webinar they que video clips, manage guest speakers, and organise questions from attendees. Post-webinar they may make the webinar available on-demand or share insights within an organisation to be used for other content creation options.

The Attendees:

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These are the lovely folks who’ve come to hear what you and your business have to say. Attendees may come to learn from you, to participate in industry dialogues, or as business partners and prospects interested in learning about what your company has to offer. Attendees are also a wonderful data resource, they offer insight into product demos, presentation feedback, and lead nurturing opportunities.

So now you know who's who, but how exactly does one host a webinar?

Now that you've been introduced to all pieces of a webinar, let's talk about how to maximise their value. Juggling a bunch of different tools can be hard and while every webinar platform does things slightly differently, there are a few universal tips to hosting a successful webinar. 

1. Keep it focused

It could sound like stating the obvious, but a webinar isn’t just about the nifty features you have access to, it's about the content. That's why it's vital to organise your webinar around your goals or focus. 

Are you hosting an educational webinar? Are you leading an industry talk? Are you nurturing leads or potential business partners? Knowing exactly what your webinar goal is allows you to organise and prepare a webinar with all the features you need to succeed. 

For example, if you’re hosting an educational webinar you want your webinar to have access to slide options, video integration or white board accessibility, live chat box options and an easy to use Q&A interface. These features encourage learning and seminar style discussion, making them the best for educational online webinars. 

Did you know that 61% of webinars are hosted by B2B companies? For all those B2B companies hosting webinars, it would be smart to focus on brandability as a key component of your webinar. Alongside growing your brand awareness, it would be highly effective and wise to integrate features like data collections for your sales team to nurture leads and to be able to host multiple live video channels to encourage discussion. 

Basically, don’t get too caught up in all the many things you could do - think about what makes the most sense. Too many features will actually take away from your webinar, so staying true to your focus is key to leaving your attendees feeling satisfied. 

2. Choose wisely

Knowing what you want means you can choose the right platform for your needs. As we just mentioned, webinars require different needs. This is especially important, because not every platform offers you the same opportunities - or the same quality of user experience.

For example, brandability. Brandability is a great feature to have in any webinar because it's an easy way to grow brand value through brand consistency. One study found that brand consistency can increase revenue growth from 10% to more than 20% across business industries! Brandability features include the ability to customise colours, integrate logos and fonts. These features allow you to create consistent branding across your company's platform, which has been shown to increase revenue by 23%. This is an especially important feature if your company plans on leading industry forward thinking talks as it reinforces your company's market authority and grows trust in your brand.

Another feature, the ability to create templates. One of the best features of webinars is their high returns of investment associated with the ease and customisation of webinars for different business needs. 

In other words, once you invest in a solid webinar template, you don’t need to try to reinvent the wheel over and over again! Branded templates make it easy to reap the benefits of brand consistency, while tailoring each webinar to its specific needs. This means one webinar template can transition from a 100+ educational seminar to a round table talk just by switching the feature needed - not redesigning the whole thing. As matter of fact, 82% of organisations already use templates to ensure brand consistency, with 16% of them frequently using them for presentations. 

Other features such as polling, video integration and chat boxes should be well designed and thoughtfully integrated. As webinar host you need to be careful in choosing exactly the features needed, and excluding those you don’t to ensure attendee focus and engagement. These features should be smoothly integrated, so as not to take away attention from the content of the webinar. After all, you want your engagement tools to add to your webinar, not take away. 

Last thing to note is that not all webinar attendees attend a webinar live. Infact one industry poll found that 40% of attendees only sign up for the on-demand event to be accessible to them afterwards. An on-demand event is a webinar posted after it happens. This means it is important to plan your event with that in mind and to choose a platform that lets you easily record and edit a webinar for on-demand purposes. 

3. Kill it on the webinar stage

Moving into the actual presentations of a webinar. Webinars are based on two-way communication, which means it's important to focus on engaging your audience. Some of the most common tools used to engage with attendees are polls, resources, surveys, social media, Q&A sessions and chat boxes.

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One survey found that the most engaging tools are Q&A sessions (81%), resources (69%), and surveys (36%). 

At the end of the day, the most important part of a webinar is having something to say. Good content and engaging presenters make a webinar memorable, the cool features are just the cherry on top. 

Congrats! You’ve just finished learning how a webinar works! And while it may seem like a lot at first, whenever you’re ready to host your own webinar we are here to help. Here at Tame, we offer free demos tailored to your webinar needs and personalised support so you won’t have to dive into this alone. Reach out to us and we’ll help you every step of the way.

References:

1. Thrive my way: “Top Webinar Statistics, Trends, Benchmarks and Facts 2022”
2. CloudIncome: “37+ Webinar Statistics and Facts For 2022”
3. LucidPress: “The State of Brand Consistency”
4. Forbes: “10 Marketing, Web Design & Branding Statistics To Help You Prioritize Business Growth Initiatives”
5. ON24: “ON24 Webinar Benchmarks 2021”
6. 99 Firms: “Webinar Statistics”