5 Tips For A Great Webinar

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Nov 13, 2015 / by
5 Tips For A Great Webinar

Webinars are an excellent tool for improving your niche authority and building better relationships with your customers.


While a content-rich webinar hosted by a seasoned professional can come across as seamlessly brilliant, don’t be fooled into thinking they haven’t put a tonne of time and effort behind the scenes. So i you want your webinar to be a success, here are some of the most important things you should implement.

1 – Offer value

Remember that you are giving the webinar to provide value to your audience, so leave the sales pitch until the very end. Assuming you’re in business for the long-haul, providing expert knowledge and actionable advice through webinars is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche. So instead of considering how you can effectively monetise the webinar for the short-term, consider how to provide value in order to build your reputation in the long-term. This leads me to my next point…

2 – Communicate with your audience prior to the event

In addition to your promotional endeavours leading up to the webinar, also aim to solicit questions from your audience. This not only demonstrates that you care about your audience (which helps to build a sense of community around your brand), but it gives you key insights into the common problems faced by those you’re trying to market to. If you’re able to answer the most pertinent questions raised by those signed up to your webinar, this will certainly boost your niche authority.

3 – Bring in additional speakers

Always choose wisely when inviting a guest speaker to your webinar. It’s important that they are a bonafide expert in their field, but they must also be an impassioned and polished speaker. Listening to an uninspiring speaker is bad enough in real life, but it’s even worse during a digital webinar! Additionally, it’s a good idea to pick guest speakers who are relevant to your audience, even if they are not directly relevant to your brand. For example, as an SEO company, your audience will be primarily concerned about improving the visibility of their company, so a videographer, PR consultant, infographic designer or master copywriter could all be good options for guest speakers.

4 – Think visually

In order for a webinar to be effective, both your audio and visual content needs to be equally compelling. When crafting the presentation intended to accompany the webinar, always remember to think visually. As with blog posts, large walls of text will only result in a loss of attention, so keep your text succinct and break it up with compelling imagery. Remember that your presentation will  continue to cultivate engagement if you upload it to SlideShare, so keep this in mind when planning out the slides. For more information about the best practices for SlideShare, please check out our previous blog post.

5 – Perform a dress rehearsal

Make sure you and the other speakers perform a full rehearsal of the webinar several days prior to the event in order to iron out any kinks

Make sure you and the other speakers perform a full rehearsal of the webinar several days prior to the event in order to iron out any kinks

Make sure you and the other speakers perform a full rehearsal of the webinar several days prior to the event in order to iron out any kinks. Always encourage the speakers to provide feedback to one another. It can be challenging to predict how your content will be received, so this is your best opportunity to iterate and improve before the big event. A rehearsal is also a great way to check that there are no technical hiccups with the webinar software, since you need to be as adept with the software as you are with giving your speech. Finally, please remember to secure a quiet room for the webinar, devoid of panting dogs, screaming children or other potential audio hazards, as these tend to detract from the general user experience!

Even with the best planning, mistakes can still occur. In such instances, content marketing expert Beth Hayden offers some sage advice:

“The difference between success and failure in the webinar world lies in your ability to recover from problems. Stay flexible, keep your sense of humor, and have a good back-up plan. And remember — you can edit almost anything out in the recording after the fact!”

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