Whether this is your first time hosting a webinar or you have tried before without success. I’ve got your back! Webinars allow us to put a real human behind our businesses, which helps our audience engage and even become emotionally invested.
Planning your first webinar can seem daunting and I want to take the fear out of it and make it fun for you. So let’s get to it!
WHY DO I NEED TO HOST A WEBINAR?
You probably have “webinar” written down on your goals and to-do list but maybe you don’t know exactly why you should be hosting one. Or maybe you just need a small push to take the leap and finally commit to doing it.
Webinars are a powerful business tool that every small business owner needs. They:
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Help you engage with your target audience
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Develop authority and trust
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Create business relationships
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Invite your ideal audience to enroll in a paid program
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Offer valuable content to your potential customers
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Can be repurposed again and again
CREATE THE CONTENT FIRST
First, you must figure out what your goal of the webinar is. Is it to drive sales to your paid program? Is it for brand awareness? Or is it simply to build your email list?
Next, decide what you want to cover in your webinar. Choose a broad enough topic to attract a large audience, yet targeted enough to provide action items that your attendees can implement as soon as they hop off your webinar.
While you’re planning the content of your webinar, things might change as they start to evolve. So don’t waste time creating a title beforehand that you might end up having to change once you’re finished developing the webinar content.
CREATE FOMO IN YOUR WEBINAR TITLE
It’s really, really hard to get people to click through to your webinar landing page if your title doesn’t resonate with them.
The title of your webinar is your first impression, so make it a good one. It should create a fear that if I don’t watch, I will miss out on some good and valuable information.
BE SPECIFIC ON YOUR LANDING PAGE
This is where you really need to draw people in! Give them ALL the information they need to make the decision to hit the registration button.
Make sure you answer the 5 W’s: who, what, where, when, and why. BUT make sure you explain all of those in detail. This is your chance to prove to your audience that there is major value in attending your webinar.
SET ATTAINABLE GOALS
Setting a registration goal will keep you inspired and help you measure success. Don’t go into this like “oh, I hope people will sign up”. No. Set a goal for yourself, and hit that goal! Or better yet, surpass that goal!
Even if it’s small, you’ll feel great once you hit that goal, it’ll give you the confidence you need to produce webinar number two. It’s also an excellent benchmark to measure the success of your next webinar.
To start, it’s important to note that according to Smart Insights, about 36% of pre-registered attendees actually attend a webinar. To determine your registration goal, think about how many actual attendees you need in order to meet your sales goals.
Here are some key metrics and formulas we always track for measure webinar success rates:
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Attendance Rate: (Total # Attendees / Total # Registered) Target 50%+
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Sales Conversion Rate: (Total # Sales / Total # Attendees) Target 2-3%+
Track your performance on a weekly basis, that way you’ll know if you need to dial up your promotion efforts due to low initial registration numbers. A well targeted Facebook ad can help with this.
REMIND, REMIND, REMIND
No, you’re not being annoying. People often sign up for webinars weeks in advance and possibly even forget about them. So it’s critical that you set up an email campaign to remind your registrants of your upcoming webinar!
The further in advance, you promote your webinar, the more reminder emails you will need to keep your brand top of mind for your registrants. Reminder emails should be sent at least a 1 day before your webinar, one hour prior to start time and 15 minutes prior to the webinar. In these reminder emails you want to remind your registrants that they even registered and why they registered in the first place. Use these emails to get them excited!!
Offering an exclusive discount at the end of the webinar to attendees can help assure your audience shows up and stays for the duration of your webinar.
WRITE A BLOG POST ABOUT YOUR WEBINAR
Use the power of your blog to promote your webinar. Get people excited about the new content covered within your webinar by writing a detailed blog post about it. This post should cover one or more of the sub topics discussed in your webinar and excite your audience.
If you have a blog post that covers a topic from your webinar, go back and update that post with your webinar registration link and a blurb about the webinar. Then start circulating that post through social media!
DON’T LET TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES RUIN YOUR TIME TO SHINE
Technical difficulties can happen to anyone, no matter what platform you’re hosting a webinar on, but by using a reliable platform you can lessen the chances. Here are a few of my favorites:
