WEBINARS AND BEST PRACTICE

As we move more of our business online and face to face communication is soon becoming a distant memory, businesses are having to quickly adapt to manage their work, staff and clients.

Professional Services firms (what is considered a more traditional sector) might face more problems than others transitioning to an online structure. Luckily, with the digital age, some are more up to speed than others, especially when it comes to their digital marketing strategy. Lawyers, Accountants, Financial Advisers are all used to standing up in front of people delivering and hosting presentations, seminars and events as part of their marketing plan. Webinars can now take that place as the ‘virtual conference’ and keep you connected with your audience and generate leads.

Webinars can be very engaging, aren’t very expensive to create and can be done from the comfort of your own home!

Best practices for running a webinar:

1. Team
It’s best practice to have an organiser and a presenter. The organiser can create and develop the webinar and the presenter can be the expert delivering the presentation. This means there isn’t too much pressure on one person and the organiser can take control of the running of the webinar, how it looks and handle any technical issues and the presenter can concentrate on being the expert and deliver the content.

2. Format
It’s important to decide on your webinar format. Will you have single speaker delivering a presentation to the audience or will there be a Q&A session, an interview style or perhaps even a panel discussion?

3. Visuals
The sound and appearance are what makes a successful webinar. Wherever possible, a webinar should feel like a face to face experience so having the presenter on camera when talking and including slides throughout to keep the audience engaged with questions and involve the audience in the webinar.

4. Webinar platform
There are many webinar platforms available from Zoom, Webinar Ninja, Go To webinar, Vimeo and lots more. All platforms have pros and cons and vary in price so its worth doing some research to see what will work best for you.

5. Promote your webinar
It’s vital to promote your webinar as much as possible to get as many sign ups. Make sure you share this on your social media, create a page on your website for your webinars and sign up link and perhaps even create a landing page with a call to action to sign up. Remember to send countdown reminder emails to registered participants.

6. Choose the right date and time
Make sure you pick a suitable time to have your webinar. Avoid days like Monday’s and Friday’s and make sure you pick a right time zone depending on where your clients are located. Research suggests Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are the best days to host a webinar.

7. Follow up with attendees
Don’t put all your effort to waste and stop after your webinar. Send participants an email with a survey to share their feedback including a call to action for future webinars. Send an email with a recorded version of the webinar to people who signed up but were unable to attend. Evaluate feedback from delegates so you can improve future webinars.

Webinars that are well planned and organised have the best success. Spend time practising your webinar and test it first to strip out any issues. It’s also worth thinking about your topic and ensure it is of interest to your target audience before you put all the effort into organising your webinar. Cal Partners is an award-winning marketing agency helping professional services firms. If you don’t have the time or are thinking about starting your first webinar, get in touch and we can help turn your vision into reality!