Top Ten Webinar Production Tips of 2016

Webinars are increasingly becoming a larger part of a marketing team’s budget – and right fully so. Consumers are continuously demanding internet video traffic (such as webinars), and this is forecasted to rise by almost 25% by 2018, according to Cisco’s whitepaper. About 85 percent of marketers believe that webinars are a great tool to develop thought leadership, and 3 out of 4 marketers agree that webinars can create brand awareness and benefit relationship building.

Now that we’ve established how important webinars are, not only to consumers but marketers as well, let’s dive into some of our best Production Tips from 2016. These tips will help you better understand webinars and how you can get the most out of them.

Before the Live Webinar

1) Get Your Sales People Involved

The first thing you should be thinking about as a marketing representative is getting input from your sales team. This is the team that is in communication with your consumers or clients daily, and they will be a huge asset to the pre-planning and post webinar stages. A sales person will let you know what types of webinars would be beneficial for clients and most alluring to consumers.

It’s important to get feedback from sales members to see what aspects of the marketing plan are working and which aren’t.

To read the full blog post or to download our free optimizer template click here.

2) Construct a Buyer Persona

This brings us to our next tip: creating a buyer persona. Creating a buyer persona for your potential customers or clients can help you develop appropriate and focused content. You can add on to your buyer persona before, during and after your live webinar to make it as robust as possible. However, creating an outline for your buyer persona before creating your content will help you to better target your webinar subject.

To download our Buyer Persona Template, or to read the full article, click here.

3) Map Your Content Around the Sales Cycle

Along with your buyer persona, mapping your webinar content around the stages of the sales cycle will assist you in focusing your content even more to attract the right people. The rule of thumb is that whatever content you are producing should be used to target a specific group of decision-makers while they are at a specific stage in the sales cycle. While webinars are applicable at any stage of the sales or buying cycle, you will receive a better ROI if you’re able to pin-point people depending on what stage they are involved in. For example, there is no point in doing a broad educational webinar with minimal mention of your product when your audience might be ready to purchase and was hoping for detailed information on how to use your product or service.

To read a detailed outline of each sales cycle (and who you should be targeting), click here.

4) Find the Right Speaker

This next step might seem simple – but it is an essential part of your live webinar. Finding the right speaker can either make or break your presentation. You’ll not only want someone with strong speaking skills, but someone with experience and a deep knowledge of the topic.

Check out our blog post to figure out how to select the right speaker for your presentation.

5) Select the Best Webinar Format

This tip is often overlooked during live webinars, but determining the optimal webinar format can be a key aspect in creating an engaging presentation. Many people don’t realize the variety of webinar formats that can be utilized. Each webinar style can be tailored to the type of content you are presenting; for example, a product demo style webinar is best suited for teaching your audience about a certain type of product or service. An interview structure would be best for engaging your audience and really grabbing their attention.

Refer to our blog post on webinar formats to see all six types.

6) Have a Killer Slide Deck

This tip cannot be overemphasized! If you have a great slide deck, you will have your audience’s attention from the start. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your slide deck, but keep text to a minimum, and try including some fun icons, images or even GIFS.

Here’s our simple guide to jazzing up your presentation slide deck, or download our free template.

During the Live Webinar

7) Utilize Poll Questions

Poll questions are often an underutilized method of engaging the audience, while also collecting market research. These live multiple choice questions are a great break in the webinar presentation. They engage the audience and might even bring their focus back to the presentation by voting for the live poll.

There are many different types of poll questions, as well as different ways of using them to your advantage. Most poll questions are used to learn something about the attendees, or gage their knowledge level. You could also use a poll as a fun icebreaker or introduction to the webinar. Feel free to have some fun with poll questions and really make them your own.

If you’re not too familiar with poll questions, or want some more detailed tips, click here.

8) Include an Interactive Q&A Session

Like polls, a question and answer session can be highly interactive and captivating. The best way to prepare for a Q&A session is know your content. You’ll want to make sure to give a detailed, but concise, answer to any audience questions.

If you receive an off-topic question, or you don’t know the answer, you can always let your audience members know you’ll follow up with them after the webinar. A Q&A session makes the audience feel like they have a voice, and that they’re involved in the webinar.

Here are some more reasons why you should host a Q&A session, and how to make the most of it.

After the Live Webinar

9) Repurpose Your Webinar Content

Now that your webinar has ended, you probably think that your job is done. However, there’s a lot of potential in your webinar content even after the live broadcast is over. The material and data from your live webinar is a goldmine for future marketing, promotional and even sales endeavours. There are many ways you can repurpose your webinar content, from offering the full archive, creating a blog post or even designing an infographic!

Learn about all the things you can do to repurpose your webinar.

10) Follow Up on Your Webinar Leads

Probably the most important aspect of hosting a webinar is following up with all those potential leads you’ve accumulated. However, the process of reaching out to these leads can be tedious and time consuming – that means a lot of missed opportunities and unobtained ROI.

Check out our guide on achieving the best ROI from your leads.

Got some more tips to add to this years round up? Comment below and let us know!