Webinars are important marketing tools for generating quality leads. Though many brands were aware of the amazing benefits of webinars, the pandemic-fueled virtual events brought more brand participation in recent times. 

Webinars are a cost-effective substitute to scale brand awareness and an effective medium to connect with potential customers. Around 60% of marketing experts use this tool to engage their customers and to showcase their products.  

Although webinars pose a huge role in building a brand image, hosting a successful webinar can be quite challenging. From the right content for the event to finding desirable speakers, a lot of effort goes into planning and executing a perfect webinar. To help you keep track of everything that goes into webinar hosting, we have a checklist prepared just for you. 

Creating On-Point and Rewarding Webinars

#Get the best webinar hosting platform

To ensure the successful launch of your webinar, you need a trusted platform to host the event. Before you commit to any platform, make sure it meets your webinar requirements. You need a hosting solution that offers a seamless experience for the users and ensures hassle-free event registration. The platform should offer multiple-device support and should be able to support a significant number of attendees. These are a few of the primary requirements for the right webinar platform. 

#Connect with the audience before your webinars

Audience engagement is a key factor for any event’s success. One of the smartest ways to ensure your event meets the brief is to interact with your audience through social content before your webinar. Curate creative promotional content and share them on social channels. You need the content to reach the right audience. To ensure audience engagement, even before the webinar, ask them for suggestions through your promotional materials.  

#Promote event hashtag

Since everything new and happening is quickly updated on the social platforms, creating a hashtag for the webinar will scale your audience reach. Make sure to come up with a catchy and unique hashtag. This will ensure that all the feeds in the social channels pertaining to the hashtag are connected to your webinar. Promoting the hashtag before the webinar will help in creating an audience following, and you can use it during the webinars to address questions concerning the event. After the event, the hashtag can be used for follow-ups. 

#Find the right speakers for the event

For your webinar speaker, find someone who is an expert on the topic and is charming enough to keep the audience engaged. If there is more than one speaker involved in the event, make sure they interact with each other instead of giving a monologue. Setting up a meeting between the team and the speakers before the event launch will ensure a hassle-free event experience and lead to smooth interaction between the speakers. Having industrial experts as your webinar speakers will scale your event reach by additionally bringing in their followers.  

#Plan ahead your audience engagement strategies

You should have a foolproof plan beforehand to ensure audience engagement during the webinar. Resort to creative measures to liven up the event. Use animation or any other short videos to share your webinar content. Add in downloadable content to offer additional info for the attendees. To ensure active participation in the event, organize live Q&A sessions, event quizzes, and encourage the attendees to share their opinions. 

# Conduct an event dry run to find and resolve technical issues

Doing a webinar dry run is essential to avoid technical glitches on the day of the event. For instance, if the event requires the speaker to share their screen during the presentation, then encourage the speakers to try it beforehand to avoid any technical errors during the actual event. Also, make sure the equipment used for the webinar is all in good shape. Do a proper soundcheck and a webinar platform check to ensure event success.

#Choose the right time to host the event

Choose a time zone that will work out for both your team and your target demographic. This is a crucial step while planning to host the webinar. You do not want to scale down the attendance rates by choosing a timezone that does not work out for your audience. To resolve this issue, have a proper conversation with your marketing team and come up with a desirable time slot that works for all parties involved in the webinar.

Planning a webinar is no easy feat. You need dedication and a proper strategy to host a hit webinar. Following the above steps will help you increase your audience engagement rates and will bring in more attendees in future endeavors. 

Ready to host your next webinar? eventplus, the feature-rich event management platform, supports all your webinar requirements. Connect with the experts today for a free demo!