Do you want to become a champion in webinar hosting? If yes, it means you know the digital trends inside out. Video marketing and webinars are on the rise! They took over literally every business sector. How do you host a webinar to make things work? Let’s pull back the curtain!
As we spotlighted in our latest State of Webinars Report, video marketing and webinars have changed the game rules.
According to Wyzowl’s Video Marketing Statistics 2019 report, 87% of businesses use video marketing, and they put it to action at each stage of their customer journey.
And webinars? Quoting after Wyzowl, 41% of video marketers have used webinars as a marketing channel.
Business players of all sizes, from solopreneurs, through small and medium companies, up to large enterprises, have embraced webinars as an essential marketing and sales tool.
So, whether your goal is to be a thriving online teacher, successful sales specialist, digital marketer, brand manager, or a super-active recruiter, you need to inject webinars into your marketing strategy.
Here are the three pillars of outstanding webinar hosting:
Table of Contents
1. Create relevant and valuable webinar content
Let’s face it – creating real value for your webinar audience is a must. That’s why, before you start exploring the web to find the right webinar platform, you need to do some serious homework when it comes to your content.
Setting your offer and products in stone is one thing. But the essential (and fascinating at the same time) part is about getting to know your audience, their needs, questions, and pain points.
What do your customers search for?
It does take some time and effort, but you cannot skip that part. Make the use of digital tools’ arsenal to identify what’s valuable and relevant for your future customers. Explore your topics, global trends, and specific keywords:
- Google Trends
- BuzzSumo
- Ahrefs Content Explorer
- SEMrush Topic Research
- AnswerThePublic
- KWFinder
- Keyword.io
Also, go through the questions added on Quora, and – just like Brian Dean from Backlinko advises in his top-notch Copywriting: The Definitive Guide – dive into the ocean of Reddit and specific subreddits – your audience can unintentionally give you hints what you can use in your upcoming webinar content.
Put it all together
As soon as you find out who your participants are, and what you want (and need) to communicate to them, you can put your foot forward. Creating a webinar starts with building a presentation.
Bullet-list the elements of your webinar topic and create slides. Make it neat, entertaining, and engaging. What you should also work on is a webinar scenario – write down what you will be talking about while switching the slides.
Make the use of the video hype. Record video material to attract people to your presentation. A compelling video clip will be like a breath of fresh air during even the most fascinating slideshow.
Prepare a survey – a list of questions you would like to ask your future customers, to get to know them much better.
Ok, it’s time for the second pillar:
2. Prepare for webinar hosting – choose a webinar platform
After you wrapped up your content into a compelling presentation, it is a high starting point to host a webinar.
Then, you need to focus on finding the right technology – an agile webinar platform, which will give you the chance to scale up and customize your future live events.
Whether you want to run online courses or whether your business goal is about lead generationand increasing sales results, make sure your webinar software covers the entire A-Z process of running live webinars.
Next:
Show your customers who you are and what you do
It takes only 7 seconds to make a positive, first impression. We, as the Internet users, are in a hurry most the time, and very willing to bounce from sites when we feel confused about the content.
Although it’s getting harder and harder to grab users’ attention, with a video conferencing platform that is equipped with Custom Branding tools, you will knock down the problem.
Design your webinar room, registration page, waiting room, and other webinar pages, with just a few clicks. Upload yourlogo, pick your brand colors, and finally – choose a professional photo and make it as your background image. Let it describe who you are, what you offer, and what is your webinar about.
Record your webinar and stream it on social media
Running a live webinar is the essence of every reliable webinar software. But what’s also critical about the software is that your provider enables you to record your live online event.
Some of the webinar attendees have become very picky when it comes to attending live events. They instead wait for an e-mail giving them access to the recording they can watch in their spare time, on-demand.
Besides, On-Demand Webinars are a lead generation engine. After recording your event, you can score more leads by sending them the recorded material. If it’s valuable for them, they will leave their e-mail addresses to get your webinar in their inbox.
But that’s not it:
Don’t forget about expanding the reach of your webinar. Stream your event live on Facebook or YouTube and engage your social media contacts with your webinar content. Make them like and share your material like there’s no tomorrow!
Webinar features and integrations – what’s in there for you
Very briefly – we are living in a golden era of software solutions. Dozens of SaaS platforms are out there, coming in handy with the sales and marketing tools.
Why do we say it here? Because when you decide on a webinar platform, make sure it is integrated with:
- Web analytics and remarketing tools, like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or Facebook Pixel;
- Social media channels, including the giants like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,and YouTube;
- CRM platforms, such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce;
- Business and office collaboration tools like Office or Dropbox.
What’s more? If your main goal is to earn money directly via webinars, then your primary focus should be on the Paid Webinars feature and how it’s integrated with top and secure payment provider – PayPal.
So, when you have chosen THE ONE AND ONLY webinar platform and created your free trial account, it’s time to take a closer look at the third pillar of the blooming webinar hosting.
3. How to host a webinar – be a public speaker
Now it’s time to switch from thinking about technology and jump into your presenter’s shoes. Do you feel confident with public speaking? It might be scary, but it’s not rocket science.
Have you heard about Will Stephen’s viral talk at TEDxNewYork? The video itself hit nearly 8 million views on YouTube!
Now, you might think – he’s mocking public speakers, he’s stripping their body language, gestures, and tone of voice. He’s making fun of this form communication – and you’re right, he does all that in a hilarious and super-intelligent way.
So, why do we mention him here?
First and foremost, for us, he mocked the phony presenters. Those, who don’t have anything to say, but with a set of body language tricks, they seem to be smart and inspiring. That’s laughing at loads of so-called-influencers.
However, if you have meaningful and valuable content and knowledge to share, there’s nothing wrong with using charts, numbers, slowing down the pace, emphasizing essential parts of the speech, and gestures. On the contrary, you should do all of that. And it is something you can master with practice.
How about talking in front of camera and not seeing your audience?
No worries. You can learn it, rehearse it, do some dry runs, and find your confidence and flow.
And in the meantime, we highly recommend watching as many professional webinars as you can.
Choose your style
As we have hosted dozens and seen hundreds of live webinars, we got to know many styles of webinar hosts.
Our latest guest host was Arturo Tedeschi, an Italian world-class computational designer. As he’s selling his unique expertise and teaching his technology skills, his style is professional, a bit academic, but still friendly and conversational.
Check him out yourself! Click here to get access to the webinar recording.
On the other pole, we invited our previous webinar host – Owen Video, American video marketing superstar. He’s a natural born showman! Owen’s style is extravert and energetic. He engages his audience and powers it up with personality and anecdotes.
Take a look at it yourself:
Our third example represents a slightly different approach. Andrea Wahl, an American publisher, social media expert, and a stand-upper has a very friendly and warm flow. She smiles a lot, uses her gestures wisely, and has a steady pace:
So, which style is the closest to yours?
Or, maybe do you already have a unique style you want to pursue?
Are you ready to start webinar hosting?
Alright! What we have covered here was the three pillars you should build as a thriving webinar host:
- valuable and customer-oriented webinar content,
- agile and feature-packed webinar platform,
- professional and engaging style of presentation.
Are you ready to start running webinars?
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