How to Host & Promote a Webinar Successfully: Part 1

A Forrester survey suggests that an increasing number of companies are relying on live webinars to communicate with their customers, target market, global partners and employees. This increased use of webinars as a vital component of a marketing campaign implies that a webcast should be educational and intriguing enough to meet the expectations of the target audience.

At Grazitti, we understand the key elements of hosting a webinar successfully. We have conducted webinars in collaboration with experts from top brands, and we have driven a good number of quality leads with these webinars.

In this post, we are sharing the best practices for hosting a webinar and promoting it on your website and blog.

1) Developing the Content

Conducting a webinar is easy but, encouraging people to attend your webinar is difficult. And, that is the ultimate goal – engagement. Be very clear about delivering a user-centric message, which is reflected in how well the webinar is being hosted. So,

• Choose the topic carefully: Present webcast on a topic that is broad enough to meet interests of a wider audience, yet well-targeted to provide actionable insights. Don’t forget to follow it up with a catchy headline.
• Trim the script length: A common belief is that duration is often a reason for low attendance in webinars. So, keep it concise by shortening its length, but do not compromise on information.

For instance, we conducted a webinar in December 2016, titled ‘Salesforce Lightning Communities Demystified’. Lightning is fast becoming a game changer in building user experience, and, we being Salesforce certified experts, sharing insights on this topic made absolute sense. The registration and attendance numbers were pretty good and every attendee participated until the end. If you missed it, you can check out the recorded webinar here.

• Set a goal for your webinar: Setting a goal is vital to measure success. Initially, you need to set up a target on the minimum number of registrations you expect. However, not all the registrants will be attending the event, so a strategy needs to be in place for elevating attendance rate.

Quick tip – Send reminder emails, surprise coupons, teasers, etc, to keep webinar on the top-of-mind of expected attendees. This will be shared in detail in the following post.

• Make it a learning experience: Do have a plan in place on how you are going to engage the audience in the learning process. Survey their needs beforehand to make the content more targeted, meaningful, and helpful. Make dynamic interactions a part of your webinar to make it look like a two-way learning experience.

2) Scheduling the Webinar

Choose the best day and time to schedule your webinar, for ensuring maximum attendance.

• The right day of the week: The middle of the week is supposed to be the best time to host a webinar. On Mondays, people are busy ‘catching up’; Fridays are meant for handling the last minute tasks. So, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays make the perfect ‘webinar days’.
• The right time of the day: To maximize attendance, host the webinar between10 AM and 1 PM.

Reminder – Make sure you are present for the webinar at least half an hour in advance. A good practice is adding the event to your Calendar.

3) Promoting the Webinar

To ensure your target audience knows about the webinar, your promotion strategy should include the following:

• • Design informative landing pages: Set your expectations right, and be clear about the context when creating the layout of the landing page. Take a look at the landing page we created for our webinar:’Lightning Community Demystified’ (available here on-demand).

• Leverage your website homepage: Homepage is, perhaps, one of the most visited pages of your website. So, why not leverage it for promoting your webinar. This is a good technique to present your webinar as a company-wide initiative.

For instance, We added a banner on the homepage to announce the upcoming webinar ‘Lightning Communities Demystified’.

• Blog about the webinar: Blogging about the topic your webinar covers and adding a webinar-specific CTA with links to the registration landing page in it works well. Here’s an example:

Keep watching this space, as we will soon be sharing ‘best practices to promote a webinar’ in our next post.

And, don’t forget to share what’s your ideal strategy to ensure the attendees do not leave the webcast in between. Share with us in the comments section below.

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