A Comprehensive Guide to Strategic Webinar Planning for Marketers

Webinars are fantastic marketing tools. Not only are they simple to construct with the right webinar platform, but they also allow you to reach a wider global audience, no matter their time zones. Live webinars are especially great for creating hype and excitement about new brands, products, innovations, and services, while on-demand and automated webinars keep brand awareness going strong without making you create new content with every view. They also result in impressive lead generation and consumer conversions because they’re more accessible to fickle audiences who don’t have a lot of time to watch online events.

Because of the Internet’s infinite amount of information and people’s shortening attention spans, your webinar’s landing page has just 20 seconds or less to present your value proposition to your target audience and secure commitment from a prospect. This is why strategic webinar planning is so critical; a successful webinar is dependent on smart marketing efforts and financial investments. So, follow these top tips for priming your webinar for success. 

We’ve compiled applicable and simple tips to craft engaging webinars that are more profitable. This webinar planning guide will enable you to ramp up your online marketing strategy and push your webinars to potential customers more effectively. 

Top Tips for Strategic Webinar Planning

Define Your Goals

Each customized webinar should have its own goal, whether that’s gaining more leads, increasing brand awareness, educating your audience, making more sales, etc. Objectives serve as a framework to build your events around. Work with your brand’s sales team and marketing department to come up with actionable and achievable goals for your upcoming webinar. Common ambitions include: 

• Expanding audience reach
• Converting prospects into customers
• Securing more registrants
• Differentiating your product or brand
• Authentically connecting with audiences
• Increasing audience engagement

Goal setting provides a direction for webinars so you craft purposeful content that offers value for everyone who participates. 

A webinar meant to gain more leads, for example, would have a more sales-oriented and interactive approach, while a brand awareness event would emphasize audience engagement and storytelling. That then leads into choosing an appropriate format for your webinar.

Pick a Webinar Format

Whether it’s a recorded or live event, the format of your webinar largely depends on the goal you have for hosting the online event. If you want to educate your audience or foster brand awareness, for instance, you might opt for a Q&A discussion or panelist format. Or, if you aim to generate more leads and sales, then a product demo or lead nurturing webinar would be a better option to share information. 

The right format allows you to execute a smooth webinar presentation that resonates best with your audience. Common formats include: 

• Case study
• Panel discussion
• Q&A session
• Product demo
• Onboarding
• Thought leadership
• Lead nurturing

Choose the Right Webinar Platform

It’s vital to adopt a webinar platform that meets your needs and has a user-friendly interface. Look for one that possesses the following elements: 

• Analytics tools
• Email marketing campaigns
• Audience engagement features
• Webinar landing page templates
• 24/7 support
• No downloads
• Integrations
• Private and public chat 

It should also be beginner-friendly for webinar hosts and audience members alike. Demio checks all these boxes, making it easy to host live, on-demand, and automated webinars even if you’re new to webinars. Whether you want to build your audience while you sleep or interact with attendees in real time, this platform has you covered. Customize your virtual events to reflect your brand, streamline your webinar content, and widen your audience reach with one of the best live webinar solutions available. 

Promote Your Webinar Through the Right Channels

You can promote your webinar and achieve optimum results with your target market through several means, so make sure you use the right channels. This means leveraging content on social media and other online outlets where your audiences are most active. 

Email, for instance, encourages higher webinar registration rates. Send emails to all prospects, even those who’ve previously registered for a webinar but never attended. 

To convert registrants into attendees, take advantage of your webinar platform’s email marketing tools to create a drip campaign, complete with a countdown to the start time of your webinar. Reminder emails keep your event at the forefront of registrants’ minds and encourage higher attendance numbers. Additionally, include webinar teasers in both email and social media posts to give registrants an idea of the value they can expect from your online events. 

Give attention to your webinar’s landing page as well. This is the short, yet detailed intro that shows potential audiences what your webinar has to offer and includes a brief registration form. Link to it on your website, social media channels, and in emails to capture more sign-ups. Even if registrants don’t become attendees, the information gathered from the registration form they fill out is useful for future promotional purposes.

You can also incorporate paid advertising in your promotional campaign. If you have brand partners, capitalize on their social media clout to push your webinars to their followers as well as yours. Remember as well that your own brand website is an ideal location to plug your upcoming webinar and encourage more registrations. 

Find the Right Speaker for Your Product

The audience experience has the greatest influence on how many of your webinar attendees become customers, and who you choose as your guest speaker to showcase your product plays a big role in this experience. A speaker who connects with your audience and presents the webinar well strengthens the impact of your content and helps retain actively engaged screens. 

The right speaker should be interesting and knowledgeable of both your brand and the webinar topic. You want to establish your brand as an authority to help differentiate it from the competition. Your webinar speaker can be a current customer, one of your owners or partners, an industry leader, or even a popular influencer related to your brand (this is a wise choice if you want to grow your consumer base because you’re able to tap into their followers and get them involved in first your webinar, then your brand). Their storytelling abilities should draw in attendees and keep them hooked and excited about your webinar.

Your choice depends on several factors, including your event goals, the subject matter, and the type of webinar you’re hosting. You can select multiple speakers if they fit your brand and the format, but avoid picking a webinar guest solely based on clout or popularity. Interview all potential speakers to find one who can clearly express your message and maximize your webinar’s impact on your audience. 

Ideally, your chosen speaker will be well known in your industry. Audiences you haven’t directly targeted may be more likely to tune in simply because of your speaker, so partner with the right speaker to turn more prospects into loyal consumers.

Follow up With Your Audience

To extend the impact of your webinars and keep your brand top of mind, maintain a connection with your audience even after the event concludes. Attendees are still pumped up from your webinar, highly curious about your brand, and incredibly close to committing to a sale. Failure to follow up with them can thus have serious consequences, including losing promising leads to other brands, missing out on a genuine connection with prospects ready to take the next step on their buyer’s journey, and foregoing new leads via referrals. 

Besides pre-event communication, the best time to speak to your audience is right after your webinar ends. It’s an ideal opportunity to send a follow-up email or a post-webinar survey to gather feedback for future webinar improvement. 

Here’s where robust webinar marketing tools —like Demio’s— really shine. Specifically, your platform’s analytics tool reveals critical data like how many people registered for your webinar versus how many attended, how long audience members stayed in attendance, what featured actions captured the most attention, your webinar’s click-through rate  (and, while we’re at it, your email marketing campaign’s click-through rate), and other important metrics. 

Apply what you learn from your event analysis to refine the audience experience in future webinars. That information is also helpful to form a more specific and well-honed post-webinar survey that’ll contribute to your brand’s online success. Questions to include can be as simple as, “Would you attend another webinar? Why or why not?” or more detailed and open-ended. 

Wrapping up 

Webinars are a gateway to a broader audience across the globe, and the right webinar strategy will guide you to create consistently high-quality, valuable content that captures your target demographic and encourages them to get involved. 

Whether you want to optimize how you use your event creation process using automated webinar software tools or you’re unsure how to advertise them for the widest reach, implementing webinar best practices for execution and promotion will greatly assist the success of your virtual events and your brand’s overall goals. Use these tips to build automated on-demand and live webinars that convert more so you can grow your brand and foster stronger connections with your audience. 

Your choice of webinar platform plays a major role in this endeavor. Consider adopting Demio for its robust engagement tools that facilitate rich interactions with your audience (even if your content isn’t live). Take advantage of its templates to create eye-catching, viewer-friendly webinars and customize the experience to boost your brand. Not sure if Demio is right for you? Book a demo to learn about the many features available. Or, if you’re ready to commit now, you can get started for free today. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Webinar Planning

What is a webinar strategy? 

A webinar strategy is a detailed plan to create and execute a webinar. It encompasses choosing a topic, format, speaker, date, time, and more. It also includes a detailed promotional strategy to support the webinar’s success. 

How do you structure a good webinar? 

The foundation of a strong webinar entails several elements, with your event goals carrying the most weight. However, other important features include a gripping introduction, clearly addressing the main topics and key points, and a motivational send-off with a CTA and engaging Q&A at the end. 

What comprises a webinar checklist? 

The point of a webinar checklist is to lay out what you need to do in the months and weeks leading up to your virtual event, as well as the day of, during, and after your webinars. So, it should include your goals, target demographic, practice runs, outlines, etc., to connect the motivation behind each action.

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