Are you considering hosting a webinar for the first time? Feeling lost; where to begin; needing to know what must you do; what all is necessary for a webinar? Fret not, for this guide is precisely the checklist you must go through before you host a webinar easily!
The Perfect Webinar Checklist: Key Actions for Success
Select Your Subject:
Beginning with jotting down the objective or the subject that you wish to cover in your webinar. Conceive ‘why you want to have this webinar’ and ‘what you want to achieve with it?’. Is it for promoting a product or service, for creating awareness or educating an audience about an idea, or is it for generating leads per se?
An idea or a storyboard will help you understand the target audience for your webinar. This, in turn, will help in creating the format, flow, and progression of the content of the webinar.
Know who you are targeting:
Once you are through with settling on the theme of the webinar, next look at the demographics and the nature of the audience that will be attending your webinar. For your chosen topic of the webinar, which kind of people, of what age, and educational background, etc., are a few points to consider in gauging the audience that will tune in to your webinar.
Furthermore, it is of prime importance to know what their pain points, interests, and preferences are! Marketing personas, surveys, or analytics are some tools for seeking insights into your potential attendees.
Topic Coverage:
The keystone to having an engaging webinar with an enthralled audience, who got involved in every bit of it, is to have a relevant, engaging, and valuable topic with enough coverage to keep them hooked till the very end! More importantly, your expertise or solution must flow through your entire webinar discourse whilst addressing your chosen topic or subject.
In the flow of the webinar, it could be quite possible to deviate from the central topic you have been covering. Try to regain control of the webinar and bring back the focus to the theme you have been speaking on.
Select Your Experts:
Having a few prominent speakers or specialists onboard your webinar adds weight to your webinar. Try, if possible, to get one or more experts from the field of your subject to be a part of the webinar, and even allocate them a certain segment for elaborating or sharing their thoughts and experience on the matter of discussion.
The knowledge, credibility, and charisma of the invited guest speakers or influencers add significantly more value and diversity to your webinar!
Do Your Homework:
Begin with writing notes on your opening or introduction for the webinar. Additionally, slides, script, polls, Q&A, etc., ideally should be ready, at least on paper, for moving to the next phase. That is, creating a landing page, a registration form & an attendee confirmation email, and other relevant marketing materials to promote your webinar event.
Once you have these aligned up, it will be quite easy to get them ready on the web platform. In fact, it might occur to you if something different needs to be done or provided, and creating that thereon!
Invoking the Registration:
The most important step is to create a customized registration form for collecting data from the registrants for your webinar. Keep the design and layout lucid and convenient, and secure for attendees to fill up and submit.
Spreading the Word:
Once all is said and done, start composing emails to attract more attendees to your webinar. Don’t hesitate to deploy multiple channels or mediums for popularizing your webinar!
Apart from Email marketing, popular social media avenues, short blog posts, paid ads, referrals, etc., are the leading tools for generating buzz and interest for your webinar!
Acting and Reacting:
Much before the scheduled day of the webinar, make it a point to practice and rehearse each and every stage of the webinar, as you have outlined when creating the introduction, as we suggested earlier. It pays when you are well-prepped to speak to an audience without any interruptions and confidently.
Furthermore, rehearsing beforehand also involves preparing for any questions from the audience that you might not have thought about! You shouldn’t ever be caught unaware of the topic you’re speaking about.
Once you’re done with preparing for your webinar, we suggest checking for certain aspects of organizing a webinar at least a week before the day of the event.
Tools of the Trade:
Pick the very best of components as affordable; that is, a mic, a webcam, or a digital handy cam and, most importantly, lighting that focuses on You; and a stable desktop or a laptop with enough processing power to relay your audio and video to the audience. A relatively high-speed internet connection, which guarantees connectivity at all times, is a fail-safe pre-check!
Read More: 5 best Microphones for Conducting Webinars
Having everything ready and no internet connectivity is the last thing you want your audience to face on the day of the event. If you’re going to use a specific webinar plugin or software for the webinar, or even if you are going to use a screen recording software, get a hands-on experience using it quite beforehand.
Lastly, if you are going to use an online webinar service, pre-check their minimum requirements and any prerequisites to hosting a webinar.
Quite popular services such as WebinarPress have quite a lot of live hosting features built-in, doing away with the tedious hassles of setting up! They’re even quite user-friendly, making user registration and logging in a smooth sailing affair for the webinar host as well as the attendees!
Moreover, consider scheduling your webinar on the date and time based on your audience’s availability, time zone, and preferences.
Go Live!
Login about 30 to 40 minutes before your scheduled time of beginning the webinar. You can do away with any anxiety or panic that might be playing in your mind. Certain early bird attendees can have a tete-a-tete with you, putting all of you at ease with each other.
Once the scheduled time arrives, announce the welcome speech, greet your attendees and the guest speakers, if any, introduce yourself and the subject matter of discussion, proceed with your presentation, and engage with your audience.
At the end of the webinar, emphasize the call to action clearly, inviting and lightly stressing the after-event follow-ups and communication from both ways. Recording your webinar is necessary for further learning as well as tracking the audience’s interaction throughout the event.
Hail Your Audience Back!
Quite shortly after you are done summarizing or scrutinizing the webinar event, take out some time daily, or better, a whole day for composing follow-up Thank You emails, along with a link to the recording if you did record the webinar and a feedback survey in it.
In case you organized a webinar with a view to generate leads, or promote a product or service, ensure that you send them relevant resources or offers of the product or service along with the email or maybe the email after the Thank You email!
Analyzing data and metrics from your webinar platform helps improve your performance for future events, as well as gives you more data for scheduling the next webinar.
Smart Tips & Tricks No One Told You About!
- Going by online statistical studies, Tuesday is considered to be the perfect day to host a webinar, followed by Monday, Thursday, and Wednesday in descending preferential order.
- Google Calendar or Outlook are some of the best tools for sending reminders and notifications in advance to your attendees.
- Sharing your list of questions or outline of your webinar with guest speakers or more experienced individuals beforehand will garner more learning from them.
- Begin a minimum of 15 days in advance of planning for your webinar. On day 1, begin with ideating your topic.
- By the 5th day, all theorizing should be done with. By the 8th day, your registration page and outbound emails should be ready and sent
- On the 10th day, you should arrange for equipment or thoroughly check all components that are required on the day of the webinar.
- Between the 11th and the 12th day, rehearse and practice your speech or discourse for the event. Recheck the equipment again on the 13th day.
- Send a reminder email on the 14th day that is, the day before the webinar event. Relax the rest of the day without worrying at all about the webinar. Sleep better on this night.
- Wake up refreshed, even if it means waking up a bit late. Tone down the caffeine, and eat light before the webinar.
- Have drinking water within your reach during the webinar. Keep hydrated, your throat lucid, ears sharp, and vision clear.
FAQs
How to get more Signups?
If you do receive any email communication from attendees about them being unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances, write an email reply with a simple “Not sure if you can make it? Register, anyways, so we can send you the recording after!”
I can’t afford a decent microphone or webcam, will it impact my Webinar?
Worry not! There are several operators that are keen to rent out such equipment to willing customers. Check them out, and pick your choice. Just remember to return them in the same condition as when you received them.
What if I can’t answer a certain question?
Be confident that you can answer almost anything. In case any rarity occurs during the Questions and Answer session, briefly speak about the case, and have the guest speaker take over for further elaborating in finer details about the question. You can even segregate it and let the audience know that you will cover this question in the next webinar with the latest research and data on it. Don’t pass it on to anyone in the audience unless you know the person beforehand and are knowledgeable enough to answer it.
Should I charge a fee for attending my webinar, and if so, how do I set the right price?
Charging a fee for attending your webinar hinges on the perceived value, exclusivity, audience, and delivery quality, as well as the reputation of the speakers or experts involved.
How do I handle potential technical issues or glitches during the live webinar?
To handle potential technical issues during a live webinar, be prepared by checking and using quality equipment, conducting practice sessions, and having a backup plan for internet or streaming problems.
What analytics and metrics should I track to evaluate the success of my webinar?
Tracking analytics and metrics will help you evaluate the success of your webinar and improve your future webinars. There are various metrics to track. However, some of the most important ones are:
Audience size and Attendance, Engagement, Performance rating, and Bottom Line Impact/ROI.
