Webinars are becoming the latest way to reach out to people online. But how do you do it the right way? How do you host engaging yet interactive webinars? Follow this comprehensive webinar checklist for hosting a webinar.
Webinars help make sales, educate audiences, and boost reach and traffic to your website while allowing you to build a relationship with your target audience. Nowadays, they have become an integral part of digital marketing strategies.
It is easier to generate leads with the right live webinar platform by positioning your brand in customers’ minds.
You can build trust with prospective and existing customer bases making it the perfect tool for your business if done correctly.
But the most important part of hosting a webinar is to host them in an engaging and error-free manner.
Using Airmeet’s premium webinar platform is one way to boost engagement. The other way is to follow this checklist to ensure you do great.
So let’s get started with the webinar checklist for hosting a webinar.
Start listing your goals and KPIs – Make this a top priority on your webinar checklist
While making a webinar planning checklist, starting with the right foundations is essential.
Identify and determine goals: Think about the key end goals of your webinar. Ask questions like what do you want from your webinars? Why do you wish to host a webinar? Do you want more leads, or do you want to earn a profit via webinar tickets?
Set up KPIs to measure success: KPI stands for Key performance indicators. You can’t know if your webinar was successful or not without defining your goals beforehand.
Thus, include setting up KPIs in your webinar planning checklist and drastically improve your webinar success.
Identify the needs of your attendees
Conduct thorough research and get to know more about your attendees.
It would help if you had a fair idea of who will be attending your webinar and their expectations so you can meet them.
Also, have an idea of their goals before sending those final reminder emails. Once you have a fair idea of what they are looking for, spin your webinar email around those pain points to get maximum attendance at your webinar.
If you can, do a lot of guest blogs, and write a high search volume blog post on your website targeting the pain points of your attendees. Drop CTA’s in those blocks with a link to register for your webinar.
This way, you will get full webinar registration.
Eventually, you will develop a plan that offers great value to your attendees.
Your best option is to interact with your audience before the event. When promoting the webinar, you can solicit comments and questions which will inform the content of the virtual event you are planning.
A successful webinar checklist caters to mobile users too
As part of your webinar strategy and goals for webinar performance, bear in mind that not every member of your target audience will attend your webinar using a desktop computer.
While most audience members are unlikely to be using mobile to view your webinar, you still need to make sure the few who do are treated to a flawless experience.
Settle on a great speaker
Onboarding a great speaker is one of the essential aspects of your events. Audiences look for someone they can trust.
Speakers can represent your event and association and be the most vital part of your event. These are some tips on finding some great speakers for your next event.
Thus, make sure the speaker you hire for your webinar, whether from your organization or from the industry, is well-versed in the subject. Your webinar speaker should have sufficient expertise, credibility, and experience to give a high-quality experience.
If your webinar is sponsored and a speaker is chosen for you, you should still strive for editorial control. Remember, it is your brand that is at stake.
Pro tip: Choosing a webinar host is also essential as choosing your speaker. However, you need a different kind of skillset in a host.
A host should be an expert in keeping the crowd engaged while also dynamic enough to handle unprecedented situations.
Even if you are hosting a full-fledged virtual event, having good speakers can be good for business and drive a higher ROI
Meet with all the speakers beforehand
Before sending email reminders or event reminders to attendees of your virtual conferences, you must organize a meeting to walk your guests and panelists through the webinar topic and get familiar with each other.
You can execute a dry run and test screen sharing to understand what the real virtual event could look like with the industry leader you have invited for your online conference.
Your host and your speaker or panelists should never meet for the first time on the webinar day.
Even if you have the perfect webinar script, ignoring this could mean some challenges for the average webinar.
So, ready to add this point to your webinar checklist?
Hype a webinar hashtag or a social media trend
Spark discussions around your webinar on social media.
Build a trend, and associate it with your webinar hashtag. Challenge people to hop on the trend and ride the trending wave on social media to kick start the webinar promotion.
This is specifically helpful when making Twitter, Linkedin, and Instagram for marketing purposes.
You can quickly funnel the conversations that rise around your brand. Remember, having an engaged audience is a significant benefit.
Webinar planning checklist for the day of your webinar
We mentioned 5 points for you to follow before the day of your webinar. However, here is your successful webinar checklist for the day of your webinar.
Make your team super active on social media and email channels:
Maximizing the rate of attendance is a coveted goal. However, your participants might run into unexpected problems while logging in to your events.
Being available on social media would allow your team to help attendees in distress.
Oh, and don’t forget to add final reminders to the stories. Put stories on Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook.
You can also send out a promotional email before and on the day of your event.
Perform a dry run
You may rehearse if you’re hosting a webinar on your own.
A lot of things can go wrong if you don’t. Maybe the technology stack has some unresolved technical issues, or your team may face problems understanding and using your webinar platform’s features.
Performing a dry run can help you plan for all the contingencies in advance.
It’s easy to perform a dry run with Airmeet. Refer to this guide for your future webinars.
Make use of every minute before the webinar
Start sending reminders to people before your webinar goes live. You can do it half an hour before your webinar or even 2 hours before.
You need to remind people about the webinar so they can wrap up what they are doing and make room to join your webinar.
Go live on Instagram, Linkedin, and other platforms, and interact with people directly to remind them about your webinar.
Simplify your event and reduce barriers to webinar entry
Fine-tuning your webinar to meet the needs of the audience that is digitally educated and the audience.
If access to the webinar is free, as a last-minute offer, update the description of your Facebook/LinkedIn event with a link to your upcoming event. An easily accessible link might help you rope in more event attendees.
Do not forget about your webinar planning – have a template for the webinar checklist ready and nearby.
Build the webinar content around the expectations and pain points of your users
What decides webinar success? — It’s your audience. Thus, it’s essential to fulfill the expectations of your attendees. One way of doing that is to include relevant content.
Here are some things that your attendees seek from a webinar:
Industry knowledge (From industry experts, speakers, and more)
Information about the product (If it’s a sales webinar)
Valuable information about the company
On-demand webinar content
Send up Follow up emails post-webinar
Congratulations, you made it! You just hosted your webinar, and it went terrific. The attendees were engaged, and you could collect some hot leads. But what’s next? — Follow up!
Leverage the email database to send follow-up emails to registrants. Make some catchy email headlines, and do a great job!
Preparing for a webinar – Take inspiration from these catchy headings for your next webinar
Because your webinar’s title is the first point of contact with your audience, you must make sure your title is very enticing. This is as important as having the perfect webinar script. It would be best to consider it as important as the impressive features in the webinar you opt for.
All you need to do is identify your audience’s problem and craft a title that offers a solution.
Consider these examples:
“Product Go-To-Market Tips from Airmeet Cloud Product Leader”
“Every day Facebook Live Hacks for any Business.”
“Top 5 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness on Instagram”
“How to Structure Your Work Day Like Tim Cook”
Want to know more about writing inspiring headlines for a webinar landing page? Refer to this guide to building stellar landing pages.
To sum up our webinar checklist
If you’re considering starting your first webinar, now is the time to do it. Webinar marketing is much easier than traditional marketing because it requires less effort and gives results much quicker. In addition, it is a trend since most of us spend our time online.
Here’s what we discussed in the webinar planning checklist
- Start with listing down your goals and KPIs
- Identify the needs of your attendees
- Settle on a Great Speaker
- Meet With All the Speakers Beforehand
- Build a webinar slide deck to share with the attendees that missed
- Send “We missed you” email with webinar recordings
- Make sure that you have a sturdy internet connection
- Invest in an excellent webinar software
Checklist for the day of hosting a webinar
- Make your Team super active on social media and email channels
- Perform a dry run
- Make use of every minute before the webinar to be available for the customers.
- Simplify your event and reduce barriers to entry
Waste no time and launch your first webinar with Airmeet now!
FAQ
Creating a webinar checklist is crucial to ensuring the completion of all essential tasks. A well-structured checklist facilitates a seamless and effective execution of the webinar, ensuring that no important details are overlooked.
Yes, having a checklist can greatly aid in creating successful webinar engagement strategies by providing a structured framework to plan and implement various tactics aimed at engaging attendees effectively.
The webinar promotion checklist should include tasks such as
- Defining the target audience
- Crafting engaging promotional content
- Scheduling social media posts
- Sending email invitations
- Tracking promotional campaigns
- Conducting post-event analysis
This comprehensive approach ensures optimal outreach and attendance for the webinar.
A checklist for choosing the right webinar platform should include deciding factors such as
- User interface
- Interactive features
- Customization options
- Flexible pricing
- Customer support
- Integration capabilities
- Scalability
These features empower organizers to meet the specific needs and goals of the webinar.
A hybrid and virtual events checklist should include tasks such as
- Selecting appropriate event platforms
- Testing equipment and internet connectivity
- Creating promotional strategies
- Creating engaging event content
- Setting up robust networking features
- Coordinating with speakers and attendees
- Sending personalized invitations
Insights for future webinars can be gathered by analyzing attendee feedback, engagement metrics, registration data, post-event surveys, and performance analytics to identify areas for improvement and refine strategies for upcoming events.
