7 Must Have Items for Your Webinar Planning Checklist

Hosting a great webinar doesn’t just happen by chance. The best and most successful webinars require careful planning to make sure that you get your message out there. Careful planning will also make sure that you have enough content to keep your audience engaged.

The very fact that you are planning to host a webinar shows that you are interested in growing your business. Webinars are one of the most powerful marketing tools at present. You can use them to boost sales, build your brand, and educate your customers.

If you are planning your next webinar, what are some of the ‘must-have’ items for your checklist? Here are 7 items that should be on every webinar planning checklist.

1. Send Promotional Emails

If you want your webinar to be successful, it’s essential that your customers and potential customers know about it. So, you should have a schedule for promoting your webinar beforehand. What should you incorporate in your promotion schedule? There are a number of ways you can promote your webinar and emails are an effective way to generate customer registration.

You should start sending out promotional emails about than 10 days in advance. Two or three emails spaced over this period should be enough to inform customers and then remind them to attend. Remember that we all receive a lot of emails in our inboxes every day, so make sure that your message is communicated clearly and that the value of the webinar is explained. You can also try A/B testing – send out 2 different kinds and see which has the better response.

2. Promote on Social Media

Social media is a powerful platform to promote your webinar. Most social media platforms allow you to promote your webinar for free on your news feed. You can also pay for ads to reach a wider audience.

For example, Facebook allows you to create a private event for your target audience. You can add a link to your webinar landing page. Another social media platform which is great for promoting webinars is LinkedIn. Your checklist should have reminders to join various related groups, write a blog on the subject, and contact groups which are related to the topic of your webinar.

3. Prepare an Agenda

Part of any webinar planning should incorporate preparing an agenda. It is an essential factor in hosting a successful webinar because it gives your webinar structure and flexibility. So, well before the event, you should start planning how to structure your webinar.

You also need to think about if you will have polls and surveys, Q&A sessions, audience interaction and give away free material in your webinar. If you have others working with you preparing the agenda, make sure to regularly receive updates from them as to their progress. This means that you don’t have to leave everything to the last minute.

4. Plan Your Content

At the heart of any successful webinar is good, high-quality content. It always wins over flashy presentations and slides. So, assign each type of content a place on your checklist.

What kind of content should you incorporate in your webinar? A good, well-presented webinar will always have a mixture of the following:

• Authoritative content from respected sources. Make sure and back up statements with facts from studies and research.
• Good visuals and slides. Bulleted points are good at reinforcing your main points. Make sure that slides are easy to read and that the message is instantly obvious.
• Have good infographics designed. They can incorporate pictures and text, show graphs and charts. They are very easy to remember.
• Take advantage of all the tools offered by quality webinar providers: desktop sharing, interactive whiteboard, audio modes, webinar room rebranding.

5. Plan to Give Away Value

Part of your webinar planning should include what kind of value items you will give away during and after the presentation. You could prepare some PDF files that can be given away as instructional eBooks.

You could offer a summary of the webinar in PDF form after the event. You can incorporate the slides and infographics. You could also record your webinar and share it with your audience after it’s finished.

6. Test Your Webinar

Always make sure you test your webinar before you go live. This will give you a chance to see how the equipment, interactive components, and technology work together. Make sure and do this a few days before the webinar. This is also a good time to get some feedback from colleagues or friends, and make last minute tweaks to the presentation.

7. Your Contingency Plan

No webinar planning is complete without a contingency plan on what to do if something goes wrong. So, you should include in your checklist a backup plan in case the internet goes down, a speaker doesn’t show, or your computer crashes. 

If you make sure that you plan well for your webinar and have all of these points on your checklist, you will be able to deliver a successful presentation.