A beginner’s guide for a successful webinar | How does webinar work?
Unfortunately, we are trapped in a situation that we never expected to happen. Social distancing, travel bans, staying at home, face masks, and sanitizing our hands are some crucial things at this point in our life.
Covid-19 pandemic hindered our plans and gatherings that we were supposed to do. How does this webinar become a thing now?
Simply because webinar helps us stay connected, and informs most of all at this time that we need to stay in our safe zone. It is a good thing that webinar is one of the apps we can lean on so that we can move forward and do our stuff without going outside.
Furthermore, organizing online webinar events is easier than organizing events in real life. By webinar, we can still have gatherings and events by just facing our laptop/computer.
What is a webinar?
What is the webinar definition? From its root word web-based seminar, a webinar is an online event that allows you to do presentations, workshops, lectures, meetings, and even conferences by the use of webinar platforms thru your laptop/computer.
The webinar is indeed an interactive online event wherein you can share your knowledge, and engage with anyone across the world in virtual space, it is also a kind of app that can help businesses and companies in many ways.
Types of webinars
There are many types of webinars that you can use according to your purposes and goals. So let’s discuss some types of webinars.
Educational
If you want to inform and enlighten your attendees on the content that you’re professional and knowledgeable enough with, then go with the educational webinar. For a great presentation, mix it up with well-organized slides, slide decks, or whiteboard video presentations so that you will practice the visual capabilities of the webinar.
And don’t hesitate to ask some guides and tips to expert speakers, this might help you to come up to a better event.
Promoting Products
If you are about to promote products, then this one is perfect for you. Make your attendees not only attendees but also as your customer.
You can run an event at the same time promoting your products. By using the product webinar, inform and present them the details and benefits of your products.
In this way, you are educating them and catching their interest and attention to your product. And soon you are making leads and sales.
Meetings and Training
This one is ideal for businesses and companies. Wherein they can conduct team meetings, employee training, seminars, or even conferences.
Not only that, but this is also great for the remote teams who have large scales of participants and audiences.
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Customer Retention and Nurturing
Live webinar hosting can attract new potential customers to your product. But having a loyal customer is another fulfilling achievement.
This one is great for nurturing and for the retention of your already customers. By building a good relationship and being an approachable host will make your customer keep coming back.
Benefits of a webinar
We already talk about what is a webinar and its types for different purposes. Now the questions are: why do we need webinars? What are the benefits of a webinar?
Some benefits of webinar are:
- Webinars will give you the opportunity to have more qualified leads in your target field;
- Webinars will help you build your business and will help you raise brand awareness;
- Webinars will help you engage with your audience easily by using online events;
- Webinars will help you conduct events with less cost and event that is accessible with your participants;
- Webinars can act as an effective marketing tool for your businesses and companies and many more.
How to start a webinar for beginners
If you are only a beginner, maybe you are asking how to do a webinar? Well luckily, we are here to guide you and teach you the step by step procedure.
Know your goal
Before you jump into webinar hosting, you need to first identify your goal. Think what is your purpose in conducting a webinar? Is it to educate, to promote products, to train, to nurture customers, and so on. Knowing your goals will have a big effect on your webinar online event.
Know your topic title, and format
Deciding on your topic, title, and choosing your format will have a big role in your webinar online event. By deciding a topic you need to consider the interests, and needs of your audience, while the title should be precise and catchy, and for your format choose the best one that suits you and your audience’s needs.
Meanwhile, asking your audience, what are they interested in will help you pick the best topic for your webinar. Here, you can use a poll, surveys, or Q&A sessions.
Choose the host, speaker & team
In organizing for a webinar event, you need to choose the most qualified presenter. Your speaker and host should have enough knowledge on the topic, and they are also experts in the presentation.
Plus, the speaker and host must communicate and interact with the audience, also they must have self-confidence and be active. You can have two presenters, it’s up to you anyway.
Then a responsible team can manage the other things while the presenters continue with their job. If you have this host, speaker, and a team you don’t need to worry now. They are the ones who will help you achieve your success in the webinar event.
Plan out the content
Plan your webinar right. Make your webinar valuable and memorable for your audiences.You need to plan out your content, start from the outline up to duration of your webinar
- Outline
Making an outline would be easy if you know well your topic and your goal. The average webinar is about 40-60 minutes long. You need to work with the standard time frame. Not too long and not too short.
- Structure
The arrangement of your webinar should be engaging and interesting enough to make your audience stay with you throughout your webinar event. Moreover, you need to make a solid structure, from a warm welcome, introducing yourself, relatable stories, and up to answer their questions. Another thing, there’s what they called 80-20 rules. 80% is to make your webinar and the remaining 20% is to promote your product.
- Duration
In many scenarios, webinars last from 30 up to 60 minutes long. It depends on their content. Don’t be afraid to go with an hour presentation, most of all if you are confident with your well-structured webinar content. The duration may vary because of different content.
Prep the tech & environment
Being prepared is the best way to avoid technical issues during your webinar. Test your camera, microphone, internet connection, laptop, or computer that you will use, also examine your audio and visual tools.
Checking out of your space and ensuring that nobody interrupts you or distracts you while running your webinar. It is better to log into the webinar room 20 minutes before the start.
These technical checks will help you avoid some technical troubles, though we cannot predict it, just make sure you have another plan if plan A. didn’t work out.
Attend other webinars beforehand
If you are a beginner maybe you are asking yourself, how does the webinar work? Attending other webinars will help you acquire little background on how you will do your own webinar.
By attending other seminars beforehand, you will be more knowledgeable about how will make your webinar more active and engaging. Experience it first before you will experience it with others.
Having a reliable platform for your webinar will be your foundation for a successful virtual event. Just like JetWebinar which allows you to host high quality and high attendance webinars. With this platform you can deliver seamless events to a large audience.
Your webinar will be downloaded directly to the cloud and it will be accessible to all types of devices.
Schedule your webinar
Choose the best time for the sake of many. It is difficult to point to the perfect time and date. Remember your audience came up to different time zones.
So better choose wisely, wherein your audience is more available so that your attendees will be able to attend your event. Asking your attendees what is the best time and date for them will make a big help to decide.
Promote your webinar
No matter how good your content is, no matter how well-structured your webinar is, if you lack the promotion of your webinar, your efforts will be disregarded. So work with your promotions also.
How will you promote your webinar? Use social media to spread the word about your webinar or you can use different webinar marketing tools.
Conclusion
Webinars are continuously becoming popular not only because of its undoubtedly powerful, useful, and helpful but also, this is also our one way to get through with our current situation. In addition, by the use of webinars you can:
- lessen your cost
- increase your revenue
- generate leads
- expand your market
- boost your brand awareness
- communicate and interact with your teams, customers, clients, or even stockholders without any hassle or fear of going outside
On the other hand, if you are a beginner, these step by step procedures will help you achieve a successful webinar.
Ready to host your webinar? Click here.