Webinars have become one of the best ways to create authentic connections with customers. With remote work the norm and countless hours of content available on streaming sites, webinars have become a rare opportunity to hear live from experts on specific topics.
If you aren’t already hosting webinars, you might want to start. According to one poll, 91% of B2B professionals say webinars are their favorite way to learn. That means they tend to attract interested and engaged audiences, which is also the reason that B2B marketers say that webinars bring “above average” leads
Great webinars follow many of the same principles that you would apply to any presentation, like focusing on your audience, telling a story, or using visuals to support your message.
But there are some unique aspects of webinars that require a slightly different approach. In this post, we’ll walk through 5 tips for a successful webinar that can help you create powerful content for your webinar that engages your audience and drives results.
Step 1: Define Your Approach
The first thing to do is ask yourself “why do I want to host a webinar?”
Because a webinar is delivered live, you’re asking your audience to make a big sacrifice: their time. So if you want yours to succeed, you need to have a good reason for folks to attend your webinar.
Making your webinar useful for the audience starts with defining a clear objective for your content. In general, the more specific your objective, the better. This helps you to focus on the material that really matters, rather than trying to cover every related topic.
A clear objective also helps sell your ideas to the audience. For example, “Guide to Better Sales” is a very broad topic for a talk. But “4 Tips for Better Sales Infographics” gets more specific, and helps potential attendees to know that it might be relevant to their specific needs.
Defining your approach is about more than just deciding what your topic is. You also need to identify a unique perspective or idea that only you can offer your audience. This is what makes your webinar unique from the many others that they might attend on any given day. This could be an insight from your experience, a system or approach you created, or just a different take on the topic than others are offering.
Whatever you choose, make it ownable, engaging, and exciting!
Step 2: Consider Your Audience
Once you’ve identified your topic and approach, it’s time to turn your focus to the audience. Assessing your audience starts with a few simple questions.
First, who is attending? This is probably the most straightforward question to answer. Start by identifying who your ideal audience would be. You could write down the 5 job titles you’d like to see in attendance, or more broadly look at attendees from brands that align with your content. Later, you can look at the titles of the actual attendees against your ideal list and refind your approach for future webinars.
Next, ask yourself what does the audience want from this presentation. Are they here for hard-hitting tips? Are they interested in potentially working with you? Are they familiar with the content, or do they have deep knowledge on the topic? These questions help you to fine tune your content to best address the needs of your audience.
If your content is too basic, they might not feel it was worth their time. If it’s too technical, it might be too specific or not relevant to each attendee. Finding the right balance in your content is a key part of keeping your audience engaged and interested.
For more on assessing your audience, check out this clip from one of our own webinars on this very topic!
Step 3: Create Your Content
We’re including this as one step in a larger process, but creating the content for a webinar could easily require a guide of its own. Your webinar is basically a presentation, so all the same rules and best practices you might apply otherwise will also work here. But webinars are unique in their format, audience, and expectations, so your approach to creating content should shift a bit from your standard slides.
This post is focused on the overall process for a webinar, so we won’t get into too much detail here, but there are two key ideas to keep in mind as you’re developing your content.
First, say less than you think you need to. Just because your audience signed up to attend doesn’t mean they want to hear you talk non-stop for 30 (or 60, or 90) minutes straight. Make sure that you are saying enough to make your point, but leaving space for the content to breathe. Keep a slow and steady pace throughout, and if you are finding that you need to rush to get everything in, that’s a sign you need to say less.
Second, design visual-first slides. Virtual presentations are a little different than in-person, but in either you want your audience focused on you and not reading ahead on your slides. So combat the urge to fill your slides with text, which will encourage them to tune you out in favor of reading ahead, and instead use visuals that support the point you are making. This is called visual storytelling, and it’s one of the most effective ways to create stronger presentations.
Step 4: Plan and Practice
Most webinars are brief and to the point, but they often contain multiple steps that need to be taken at specific times. If you aren’t experienced with presenting under time constraints, it can be a challenge to plan, pace, and deliver your content to fit your schedule. Luckily, there’s a simple way to get comfortable delivering your content on time and with confidence: practice, practice, practice.
Ideally, you can practice different aspects at different stages of the process. For example, you might recruit a teammate and walk through your high-level content outline before you send it off for design. Then, you might walk the designer through each of the slides. Finally, once the final designs are complete, you’ll want to do multiple practice runs, both by yourself and in front of your team to gather feedback.
At each stage, you have an opportunity to see the content from the audience’s perspective by sharing it with someone who hasn’t heard it before. You’ll want to gather their feedback, but also note to yourself any moments when the content feels unclear, the transitions feel clunky, or the message needs to be massaged a bit more.
The more you can practice your content, the more chances you’ll have to improve it, and the more likely you are to reach your audience.
Step 5: Promote Like a Pro
Now that you know what you want to say (and how you will say it), there’s one last step before you are ready to kick off your new webinar, and that’s to get people to attend.
To give your audience a reason to get interested in your webinar, focus on the benefits of your content for the audience. They are primarily interested in learning about topics that will benefit their lives or careers. So don’t get caught up in talking about how experienced you are, or how amazing your webinar will be. Instead, explain the benefits they can expect, and let those lead your promotions.
You’ll also want to strike a balance between clear, regular promotions and overselling. No one wants to be spammed every time they open their email or LinkedIn page, so be respectful of their time.
Recapping our tips for a successful webinar
Webinars can be effective tools for generating leads, creating connections, and building your brand. While they borrow much of the basics of traditional presentations, they do present some subtle changes that require a different approach than you may be used to. The five steps we presented above should give you everything you need to get started on an amazing webinar, but we’ll leave you with a few more parting tips for a successful webinar to really take your webinar above and beyond the expected.
Be specific (about your goals and your content): being too vague or keeing your topic too broad means you won’t really get detailed enough about the points that really matter to an audience.
Make it personal: if they wanted to read a blog, they wouldn’t have attended YOUR webinar. Bring your whole self to the Zoom window.
Give them a reason to care: if your webinar is just your sales deck, then do your audience a favor and don’t bother – that’s what individual sales meetings are for.
Make it worth their time: they chose to join your meeting, so don’t just take advantage of their generosity, be sure you are delivering some real value.
Looking for more information about PowerPoint templates and beyond? Check out our resources for expert advice and tested strategies.
Looking for more information about webinars and beyond? Check out our resources for expert advice and tested strategies.
About the author
Kyle Kartz is the Creative Director of Storytelling at VerdanaBold. He is an expert copywriter and strategist, with experience driving major campaigns for global brands in multiple industries. He is passionate about communications, the outdoors, and cooking.