How to Plan a Great Webinar in 2021
Webinars are back in fashion again. In a world of online events and remote working it makes sense. Webinars are a great tool for anyone to share their event message to a global audience. So lets jump right in and see all the steps you should follow to plan a webinar in 2021.
What is a Webinar?
To start I suppose let’s have a quick look at what we are talking about. You can’t plan a webinar in 2021 if you don’t know what is is. Simply put a webinar, the web version of a seminar is a presentation online by a small group of people. It is usually a short presentation and can either take the form of a lecture, workshop or discussion about a topic. There are really no fixed rules I suppose but Webinars are used as a marketing tool by so many companies that it is definitely worth learning about.
A webinar can be used by so many different people and serve many purposes. Read on to see some of these but I guarantee a webinar can definitely help you in todays world to reach a lot of your business goals.
Pre-Planning: Define Your Event Before You Get Started.
Find the purpose of your event and define it.
Every event gets planned for a reason, it has a message to share. This very significant first step is knowing the purpose of your event. The goals outlined below are some of the most popular reasons for hosting a webinar, but you may find you have a different purpose. As long as you know what it is you can then move onto the next step and plan a webinar in 2021.
Main Event Objective
Education & Training
One of the most popular reasons for planning a webinar is for online training. This is a great way to reach a larger audience across the globe. A webinar is a great tool for learning as you can easily share content and present at the same time.
There are a few reasons why you might be doing a webinar for training purposes:
- Educating fellow colleagues or employees. Like onboarding a new wave of hires, refreshing everyone on health & safety, teaching about a new company tool or showcasing a new product to sell.
- Straight up teaching. In case of school closures or remote learning. Especially in this time of lockdowns and restrictions.
- Teach some of your followers things that they can do with your latest product.
- Teaching for profit. You’re selling tickets to this online training.
Sales
In this case you are trying to use your webinar to sell a product. An important thing here is that hosting an event for the sake of selling a product is usually not a very popular option.
You need to provide value to your attendees to get them to attend. At an In-person event you can always revert to luring people in with alcohol and free food. However online it is unfortunately not that easy.
We will cover this more in the promoting and marketing part of this guide later on. Just keep in mind though that this is key when planning this type of webinar.
If your webinar is a directed sales pitch to a smaller group of potential investors then there is less need to create value to get them. You should obviously just then focus on showing off the benefits of your product or service. Showing value in another way I suppose.
Building brand reach & authority
Planning a webinar in 2021 can be a great way to expand your reach and build brand authority. An important quality of a company is to demonstrate brand authority.
Proving that you know what you are talking about or selling, and that you are at the top of your field. This instills trust in your readers or customers and makes them more likely to purchase your product or services down the line.
A webinar is a great way to do this as you are just providing free value and demonstrating your knowledge and experience. Common formats for this could be interviews or a panel discussion around a certain topic.
You need to show your expertise.
Generate leads
Similarly to building brand authority your main task for this type of event will be to provide value. Usually the easiest way is to provide knowledge and information but it could also be via entertainment or service.
The goal here is to get leads to be used in the future. Mainly email leads.
Email leads are one of the highest converting sources of sales, this is why it is so valuable to collect email adresses and get them as subscribers to your newsletters etc…
It is so worth having that yes, creating a webinar just for the purpose of having leads is quite common. So again here, the key is creating value.
Monetise or Not
Free Event
In a way, are any of these truly free events? As I mentioned before the main reasons why you would plan a webinar in 2021 for free is either for training, to build brand authority, generate leads or sell a product or service. Which are all value back to you if you do things right.
Make sure to set a target for what you are trying to achieve so you can track your performance and make improvements as needed. Whether it’s a number of sales, emails gathered, number of attendees etc… Having an idea on your performance is important for progress. You can then also compare your results with others, did you know for example that the average dropout rate for a free public event is 50%? On a free webinar usually 70% will not attend.
A good way to focus and define your goals for your webinar is to set a SMART objective:
- Specific : Amount of emails/money/attendees
- Measurable: How many emails, How much money, How many attendees
- Achievable: Something realistic while also pushing yourself.
- Relevant: Something that actually matters with your event message
- Time Bound: Time frame to plan & host or how many repeat webinars it will take.
Paid Event
Are you providing so much content and value that you feel that selling tickets to access your event is justified? If so great! The same goal setting principles apply here, make sure you know your objectives. Then all the same planning steps will apply with the added monetization and ticket sales.
For you the objective is most likely number of tickets sold. So an extra emphasis will have to be done on marketing and showing what your event has to offer. Unless you have a preexisting audience that know and trust you I would suggest leading up to this paying webinar with free smaller ones to gather momentum.
If you’re hosting a paid webinar expect the feedback and reviews to be harsher. Although to be fair some people still feel very entitled on a free event. which as long as you are providing value can feel a bit harsh.
We will go over different ways of selling tickets when we cover the platforms later on but ideally you should try and keep your webinar & payment solutions together for a smoother process.
Pricing
Whilst you’re at it this is a good time to start thinking about pricing. Correctly pricing your event deserves its own article, book or course to be fair but here are the headlines :
- Make sure you cover your costs – Track all of your expenses and then work out how much profit you would like to make.
- How much value are you actually offering
- Competitor pricing for a similar product if it exists
- Have various price points you can experiment with as you go along
And then just before the event maybe a “last chance” offer to those who were nearly buying before.
This will then give you a good baseline for future events as well.
Envision the Content You Intend to Share When You Plan a Webinar in 2021.
Type of presentation
Before you get too far along with the planning it is a good idea to have an idea of what sort of format you would like to have for your webinar. There are a few options that can more or less suit your event goals.
Perhaps it is just you, by yourself presenting to a group about a subject. This could be training, sales or anything where you are just showcasing something.
Then you could also have an interview or a more intimate fireside chat where two people discuss a topic or when one asks the other questions about their experience in a certain domain. This could be a good format to use when you want to get many people to attend if you manage to interview a popular influencer in your niche. It also demonstrates your own knowledge by asking the right questions.
In a more elaborate fashion you could host a panel discussion where multiple speakers express and discuss their ideas on a certain topic. This could be a great way to create interest for your audience and you don’t have too much content to prepare yourself.
If you want to plan a webinar in 2021 though you will have to do a lot more than a basic presentation, prepare a wide variety of presentation support content to ensure success.
Presentation content
Your standard powerpoint presentation is a great place to start but with so many options these day to engage your audience, why stop there? Let’s have a look at a few options you may wish to incorporate before you go too far along with the planning and run out of time.
So yes a slide presentation of some form will be needed and some of the elements it involves will provide the structure of your webinar, you will at least want a welcome page, then intros to sections and then a closing slide for the end perhaps with your contact information, with all of the other content built in the middle.
Then a good way to open or close is to have a well produced video showcasing your brand or the message of your webinar. If you have videos just make sure they are actually interesting and will not put your audience to sleep or worse make them leave. We will also see in the next step that keeping your webinar brief is a good idea so don’t include any videos that are too long unless it really benefits your message. If you plan a webinar in 2021 though you will need to supplement this with some engagement tools.
Engagement tools
After that, it is usually a good idea to leave time for some questions at the end. You could just answer questions in the chat or a better option is to have a voting system. Your audience can then see previously submitted questions and upvote them so that the questions that matter most rise to the top allowing you to prioritise.
Now although a Q&A session is a good start you should think about integrating other popular engagement tools. Consider things like polls, word clouds, quizzes etc… I have a more detailed article about it, but these are the highlights:
Polls are really good to gauge your audience on a subject, or show contrasting sides on a topic. A great way to use them to engage is to ask a question that most people assume wrong and then challenge it.
For example : What percentage of webinar viewers use mobiles?
Only 7% of users use mobile or tablets to view webinars…
Maybe not the most shocking of statistics but I and most people would guess more nowadays and that is where you can grab people’s attention right from the start.
Then similarly quizzes, you can use these to test your audience on a topic or quiz them at the end, it is a proven way to improve retention on a subject. so don’t hesitate to include a quiz.
These are just a few of the option out there to engage your audience and do a bit more than a simple presentation so pick a few and leave time for them in your webinar.
Create a Rough Structure For Your Event
Webinar Length
Before you start planning a webinar you should know that people enjoy a webinar that lasts 30-60 minutes. This of course depends on the purpose of your webinar as well. Your webinar should of course suit your purpose, however if you are trying to get a maximum of attendees and keep them engaged you should aim to stay in that timeframe.
Everyone leads busy lives, your webinar needs to respect that and you need to condense your information to fit in the webinar and maximise value.
If you have too much content to share, then you can consider making it a webinar series.
Schedule
Regarding the schedule it is pretty straightforward. You need time for an introduction where you introduce yourself and the topic of the webinar. Then you get into the main part of your content, followed by some Q&A and a conclusion, don’t forget your call to action.
Even if you want to go over the ideal 30-60 minute mark that’s ok, just keep the content snappy and demonstrate passion and energy and you will go a long way. You just need to motivate your audience and keep their attention. Which these days is no small feat.
Lets have a look now at how to plan a webinar in 2021 to guarantee success no matter your event goals.
Planning: Prepare To Plan A Webinar in 2021
Choose a Webinar Platform
Top Webinar Platforms
To plan a webinar in 2021 you first need to pick your webinar platform, there are many out there so it is quite hard to pick the perfect one. Below are my top three but depending on your type of webinar that you have defined in the first steps then these might not be the platforms for you. You need to pick one that covers all your needs. Most of them nowadays do tend to hit every spot though.
Here are my top 3 :
GotoWebinar
Currently the leader in the webinar space GoToWebinar is a well tested and trusted solution. It does what it says and will be a seamless tool for your webinar needs. Because it’s been around for a while it is perhaps less flexible and lacks certain new flashier features of some other platforms. This however does not take away from its title as one of the top virtual event platforms out there.
Livestorm
Livestorm sure packs a punch, this browser based web conference software is full of trendy new features. It has a really good user interface and the customisation options for your landing page are amazing.
BigMarker
The top rated platform of its kind for customer satisfaction. Another great platform with some great functionalities. It has a good selection of marketing tools as well to expand the reach of your event. It is a browser based platform and it offers great automation tools and video hosting. This is my top platform of choice and the one I will use as an example for the setup.
How to set up your webinar
Now let’s have a look at what you need to do to setup a Webinar.
Title & Description
First off, the title. A very Important step for sure, this might be the only thing some of your potential attendees read before deciding to sign up or not.
You need to pick something that will resonate with your ideal audience. Show them what value your webinar has.
Here are a few points that you can apply that also work for titles on other things like blogs for instance.
- Use power words to trigger a reaction like these : 401 Power Words by Sumo
- Use the allure of lists and for some reason odd numbers: 7 ways to plan a webinar in 2021.
- How to’s are also very popular: How to plan a webinar in 2021
- Indicate clearly exactly the outcome of the webinar: Get 1000% more subscribers to your newsletter by planning webinars.
Once you’ve settled on a title you will probably have to write a description about your webinar. Include things like outcomes, some indications on the content, things like that. Again you want to get people to sign up so show them the value.
I would suggest keeping it short and clear. Get straight to the point so that people who skim through it get the idea and can make their decision without missing half of the information.
Date & TIme
Now you want to choose your ideal time & date for your webinar. This should be greatly influenced by your target audience. However it is worth knowing that the most popular day for hosting a webinar is on a Thursday. With Tuesdays and Wednesday right behind, and the most popular time is 11:00AM.
If you feel like your audience might be more likely to prefer another time then go with that. There is no magic formula unfortunately and you will have to do a bit of trial and error as all audiences are unique. In any case you will record the webinar and then can see when people tend to view it.
Regarding the Interactive vs Webcast settings, not all platforms will have this but I would recommend going with webcast for the better quality etc… Even if there is a delay. I would avoid bringing in anyone to interact via webcam or voice unless it is necessary. You have no control over other peoples sound and camera and you don’t want to ruin the Webinar experience for your other guests. That is really the only benefit to using a “Live” interactive mode.
If you need to set a closing time for the registration make sure to leave it until the end of the event for any last minute attendees.
Create your webinar
Now I was going to outline each step of the creation but this is really a bit more platform based. If you can read this well I haven’t created my BigMarker Tutorial yet!
Each platform will have it’s own tutorial on how exactly to create each item and add it to your webinar. For now if we have the date, time and title we can move onto the steps that are common to anyone trying to plan a webinar in 2021.
Start Marketing: How to Promote Your Webinar - An Important Step to Plan a Webinar in 2021
Marketing is absolutely crucial if you want to plan a webinar in 2021. The topic of Marketing is very complex and there are so many ways to do it that I can’t cover them all and wouldn’t know how to. Here we will look at some of the most common ways to market a webinar.
You will have to engage in at least one form of marketing in order to get attendees for you webinar and I would suggest starting with the following methods.
Email Marketing
In terms of successful marketing you shouldn’t look much further than email. If you already have an audience and you have their emails well you’ve already come a long way.
Email is one of the marketing methods with the highest conversion rates. For all of these marketing methods you will want to start at least 15 days in advance. Some attendees like to sign up really early to an event and some will do it on the day, even mid-show sometimes.
Email Subject
First up you want to optimise your email so it is appealing even before it is opened. Check who the sender is set to, then decide on your subject. Similarly to your title, aim to get peoples attention. Opening the e-mail is a huge first step. Maybe check out in your own inbox what others have done in their emails. See what you opened or not.
There are quite a few words that you should avoid if you want to avoid spam filters. Here is a great list to refer to just in case: SPAM Trigger Words
Email Content
Once you’ve decided on your subject, remember to include all of the information in your email. Don’t forget the date & the time.
Then you want people to register. First off show what attending your webinar will do for them. Maybe you can include feedback or reviews from previous clients. If this is your first webinar though, don’t worry too much about it. Definitely don’t go making something up.
Then a good technique to push for registrations is to create a sense of urgency. If it is a free event maybe there is a limited amount of attendees, or if it’s paid maybe the “early bird” price will expire in 3 days.
Call to Action
Lastly you want to make it clear and easy to register, include a pretty obvious link or button that they can click on to sign up. Make the button stand out so it is nice and easy. Include a clear call to action either before or on the button to incite to action.
Reminders
Once you have started to get some sign ups you will then have another email list of your attendees, you can then usually use the webinar platform to send out regular email reminders as well as build up momentum for the webinar. This will help ensure you get more attendees on the day.
When someone has signed up make sure to stop sending them invitations to register. For those that havent registered yet a weekly reminder is probably enough with a few more emails in the last few days to catch any last additions. Over a quarter of your attendees will register in the last 24hr so don’t despair and leave the registration open until the end of the webinar just in case.
Social Media Marketing
You can also market your webinar with social media, ideally you have a preexisting following for this but you could also expand you reach via ads if needed.
With your existing followers
This is similar to email marketing in a sense that you are trying to enroll existing fans onto your webinar. With social media it is good to try and play a longer game and cultivate your brand over a long time to get a good following. Then you can start teasing your webinar over a few posts allowing you to even gauge interest before you create the webinar. Here regular reminders are the way to go to cover the maximum ground. If you are combining the info about your webinar along with valuable content you could potentially share your webinar daily without annoying anyone.
Again share things of use relating to your webinar, show the worth to the attendees and you will get results.
Engage with your social media audience regularly so that they know your brand by the time you want to do sign ups like this.
Advertisements
Advertising your event is a great way to get results especially if you are trying to gather leads. However this obviously costs money so if you are just starting out it might not be the way to go. If you have a marketing budget to spend though, go for it (however you’ve probably already got this part of the guide covered).
If you are new to the world of paid ads, I would suggest starting out slow and trying out different ads to see which works best. You have to make sure the ad is convincing enough to click while also giving out accurate information. If someone clicks on your ad, that is when you have to pay. If on the other side they quit the registration straight away though you’ve lost your investment. That is where you will want a high converting landing page for your webinar that we will cover shortly.
Advertising allows you to reach your target audience really well, the features around demographics are really helpful to get your ad in front of the right people. Facebook ads is probably your best bet, because they have one of the largest audiences and combine Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp.
You could also sign up to Google Ads, this gives you access to YouTube as well which can be great for video content. It all depends on your Ad content as well as your target audience.
Sponsorships
I won’t go into too much detail here because if you are hosting a webinar it is most likely to promote yourself and you ideally want your attendees focused on you and your brand. However in some cases, you may need or want to form a sponsor partnership with another brand. This may be because you need additional funds, or in order to use your product your attendees may need another product…
In that case it is a good idea to use the added exposure that you can get from having such a partnership. Make sure they share the webinar with their social media following as well as their email list. It is definitely in their interest as well to do this, otherwise why would they have bothered partnering with you in the first place.
Webinar Landing Page
Now this is where you will want to make sure you are getting things right. Having an effective landing page to your registration is important for the last effort to convert nearly attendees into attendees.
There are quite a few ways to do this and primarily again show value, you’re selling a product, even if it is free. Especially these days, sharing your email adress can be hard!
Ahem…
You want your landing page to be clear with an obvious call to action. Here is one for our newsletter.
An this one is for one of our courses.
As you can see they are pretty straightforward, not too much information. Gets right to the point. Now I’m not claiming by far that we have the whole landing page thing down to a T. But they seem to work. Please send us a message or comment below if you do have any suggestions though!
Those are in my opinion the key things to do to get a good head start on your marketing and if you follow some of these ideas then you will definitely get an audience for your next webinar. There is also an Event Marketing Checklist available for download in our Event Toolkit, so make sure to grab that and apply it to your event.
For an early access and a huge discount on our upcoming Event Marketing Course give us a hand by filling in this short survey >> Here <<
Find Someone to Help You Plan a Webinar in 2021
As with most things, having someone to work with or share in a project is usually a good thing. Here especially, you might be tempted to do everything alone. Even if your webinar is a small one, get help. You won’t regret it, lets quickly go through each part to play in a webinar. You may end up needing to play all three parts but you should at least get someone to assist you.
Organiser
The organiser will be in charge of all of the planning of the event. If you’re reading this, that’s probably you. Unless you’re a presenter and you’ve hired someone to do all the organising for you. If that’s the case, great work you’ve already got someone to help you and you can probably skip along to the next section. The organiser will usually end up doing most of the planning pre-event and make sure everything runs smoothly on the day.
If you’ve reached this far in the article you can see that there are many steps required to plan a webinar in 2021. Taking on the role of organiser is a big job already.
Presenter
Then you have the role of presenter who is responsible for delivering the content. This could be you again, or if you don’t like being on camera you might have found someone to do this for you which is quite common.
Just make sure the person you pick is a good choice to be on camera and will not cause you more hassle than not. You need to share the workload not add on to yours by having to chase your presenter all the time and making sure he knows his presentation.
The presenter will need to create the content, rehearse it and then present it on the day while interacting with the audience.
Assistant
Finally you should get an assistant to help with all the smaller things like tracking attendees, managing the platform, moderating the Q&A… These things appear small but if you’re trying to plan or present at the same time it just adds up quite fast. This is the role I definitely recommend getting some help with. It is relatively easy work so most people can learn it.
The earlier you get this person on board to assist with the project the better, this of course depends on if you have to hire/pay someone or not.
If your company is a one man army then maybe ask a friend or partner.
Finalise Your Content
Creating your final content
By this stage you should have a much better idea of the content for your webinar. If you haven’t already it’s time to start creating it.
Slides
Now, even though online you dont have the problem of attendees being seated at the back, make sure your content is big enough. That’s my first tip. You should limit the amount of information on any slide that you intend to share. Use the slides to highlight your main key points and that is enough.
Next your slides will be used on a wide variety of screens. Everyone will have different brightness and color settings. So stick with standard fonts and make sure you have a good contrast between your text and the background. Even if most of your viewers will be on desktops computers there will still be around 20% on mobile. Make sure that your content is suited for mobile viewing.
The chances of you reading this are probably quite low for example.
My last tip on creating a presentation would be to avoid any builds or animations, depending on the platform you may have to export your slides to a PDF file to make it easier.
Videos
I’ve said this before but videos you want to include in a webinar should ideally be pretty short and punchy. You only have a limited time with your audience so just make sure the videos you intend to show are really necessary. If you have a really well produced promo video showing off your product then sure go for it! But if you are explaining in a 10 minute mini documentary how your product is made. This might not be the best time to show it. Unless it is revolutionary and your main selling point I suppose.
MP4 is one of the most widely used formats in video but always check what format your platform recommends and convert the video. Make sure you watch it through entirely once you’ve converted it… You can use tools like Handbrake or Adobe Media Converter.
Extras
Prepare any extra polls, surveys or quizzes as well. Then use your platform features to integrate them, a good back up if needed is Google Forms. Like this one: Survey
Getting your content show ready
A few final steps to do once your content is ready:
- Make a master slide deck with all of the content in the correct order.
- Load your slides and your video to your platform and make sure they play well.
- Input all of your extra content.
- Have someone spell check.
Finalise Your Schedule
Time your content
Now that your content is pretty much final and uploaded you should have a rough idea on a total length. To get it perfect it is good to time your content and presentations. This will help you put together a detailed runner order for yourself and those helping you out. This is to help you keep track during the show with potentially any cues to play content like videos.
“After Slide 15 play Video 1 : Cue is “So let’s have a look…” “
The more detailed it is, the easier it will be to run your webinar and it will keep you to schedule.
I have a template running order downloadable as part of my Virtual Events Course. I will be adding it to the Event toolkit also at some point so keep an eye out for that.
Final agenda
Once your running order is complete you can release a more guest friendly version of the Agenda, this may be useful for adding to your email or social media campaigns. People like to know what to expect so this could give you a boost to your registrations. Just a few of the main items is usually enough.
Just remember to try your best to stick to it, don’t make it unrealistic just to hit the 60 minutes mark. If your webinar overruns too much you risk undoing a lot of your hard work by irritating your attendees.
Now, by this point you’ve made great strides and you nearly have all the tools to plan a webinar in 2021; let’s now have a look at the final steps to get you there and guarantee success.
Last Stretch : Final Details to Sort Out Before The Big Day
Set Yourself Up For Success: Cameras, Lights, Sound & Action
Now I’ve said this before in other articles about Video and Sound having your camera setup correctly is really key to a good webinar. Bad sound or video is one of the biggest complaints of online events. Make sure to take these steps for a better result. Once you’re done, if you’re not sure send us a screenshot, we would be happy to help.
Camera
It is often the case that people believe that having a better camera will solve all of their problems. Usually though cameras these days are pretty good. What happens is that other things like poor lighting or internet have a huge impact on your camera quality. Fixing these first can often be a much easier fix than going out to buy a new webcam or camera.
Now you may still be rocking an old work laptop from the 80’s in which case, yes, you probably need a new camera an I would suggest something like this. But most often the camera is not the problem.
Lights
This is where you can truly make or break your camera setup. Here are some really easy steps to follow :
- Dont have your main source of light behind you.
- Have a light, preferably a window, facing you from the front or slightly to the side.
- If it’s night time get a powerful front light. Bounce it off the wall for a nicer image. Or get a ring light.
Sound
Now you’re looking good you want to sound good as well. Really go and have a look after at my full Microphone Guide it will have much more information about different microphone options.
Here I will just say, your laptop microphone or your headphone microphone will probably not do. You will need a better microphone and then it needs to be setup correctly.
After that do a test record of yourself. Play it back and keep an eye out for any issues. Like echoes or reflections that may be caused by your surroundings.
A quick and easy fix if you have too much echo is to use blankets and towels hung around the room to dampen your sound if you’re not yet ready to turn your lounge into a recording studio. Although… will this be the only webinar you plan in 2021?
Action
Lastly, Action, a few extra tips to optimise your setup.
- Clear up your background. Not saying you need a white wall. But tidy up the clutter that may distract your viewers.
- Check you Internet connection. Get a wired connection if possible. Use Speedtest.net to check your download, and upload speed. In this case your upload speed matters most.
- Set your camera up at eye-level.
- Frame your upper torso and head.
- Don’t wear small intricate patterns. Plain clothes are best on camera.
Rehearse your content
Speeches
Learn your texts! Trust me it takes less time to learn what you intend to say than to figure out a way to read your script. It will look and feel so much more natural if you know your subject and just talk about it to your audience rather than reading. I’ve tried both while recording Courses and the results are really quite different.
Learn it, then rehearse it. Check your timings and make sure you can track them on the event with your running order and a clock.
What I like to do is rehearse while recording, then look back and hopefully not cringe too much as I see myself. This lets you spot any weird ticks you might have while presenting or realise you’re not actually looking straight into the camera lens.
Presentations
Here I really mean know your presentation. There will always be someone at the end asking “On slide 11, you said you were going to teach us how to plan a webinar in 2021 … but … ” You need to be able to talk about your content in more detail if required and not rely on reading it.
I would suggest doing a full rehearsal with all of the content and the interactions with the audience to make sure everything is perfect. Then do it again.
Practice With Your Platform
Functionalities
This is an important step, too often this gets skimmed over and some results can be quite funny or embarrassing. Know what you are doing with your webinar platform and practice, hopefully with an assistant you will have found to help you.
You don’t want to be the next internet sensation because you accidently applied a filter to your camera and don’t know how to turn it off. The chances of that happening are pretty low. However, in a way it can be just as bad if you announce you are going to launch a poll and it takes you 5 minutes to start it.
You should know where each of the features you need are, make sure your helpers or moderators know as well.
Remember that you will need to explain it to your viewers as well. Showing them the question upvote feature or how to answer a survey and give feedback etc…
Logging in
In the same way that you need to know the features of your platform you should also know how to log in. You could even post a little guide on your webinar landing page. It shouldn’t be too complicated to log in but you may want to share a contact email they can reach your assistants on for help with login.
Make sure that the login experience is pretty easy and seamless as you don’t want to lose any of your attendees especially if they’ve made it to this point.
That is pretty much everything you need to know in order to plan a webinar in 2021. If you’ve followed all of the steps so far you should really be in a great place to produce your own Webinar. All that is left now is actually the show day. Let’s have a look.
Event Day : Go Get Them Confident That You've Planned A Great Webinar
How to Present With Confidence, Even Online
With all the preparation you’ve done up into this point you should be feeling pretty confident already. And although some consider presenting to a screen less scary then presenting to an audience it is natural to still be a bit nervous.
Here are just a few tips to get you over that initial stress and make you present like a natural and smash those event goals.
- Look at the camera. This will help you establish a connection on the other end.
- Give yourself little cues on post-it notes, like smile & move. This will remind you to act natural and not just get stuck in your text.
- Know your content, especially your intro to start off with a bang. Put yourself into a state of flow by building momentum with a great start.
- A bit of a cliche but just imagine you’re presenting to a friend, especially on a webinar where you aren’t likely to be able to see anyone.
- Start your webinar with an easy win for yourself and your viewers.
- Remember that if people have signed up, they accept you as an expert. So go be one.
Record the show
Recording the webinar is really important. It allows you to do a few things.
Firstly, it is a great way to review yourself post-event and see what went well and what didn’t. You will quickly see that a section you were pretty keen on, well is possibly quite dull and useless. It will let you trim the fat off your webinar and show you you might need a bit more rehearsal time next time.
Secondly, it is really useful for all the things you need to do with the recording after the event :
- Send it out to those that had registered but failed to attend.
- Use it as a teaser for a future webinar or event.
- Take extracts for future landing pages and social media posts.
- Set up Evergreen Webinars.
- Send out to your list letting them know that a replay is available if they register.
Get feedback
As well as, you reviewing yourself after the event make sure to gather feedback from your attendees. If you don’t ask, you probably wont get much and usually those will be either great or bad. When you ask your attendees you are likely to get more answers from a broader viewpoint.
If your platform has a survey or feedback function use that, otherwise it’s as easy as creating a Google Form.
Just share it at the end of the event. Now, don’t expect it all to be amazing. You can do 99% a good job and people might remember the 1% you messed up.
Just take it all as constructive criticism, see peoples reviews from their point of view. Do more of the things that were positive and do less of the negatives and by the time you plan another webinar in 2021 you will be all over it.
You can only improve if you get feedback so make sure to ask and implement it.
Repeat or Replay
I would hope that after all this and the effort I’m sure you put into your webinar that it was a great success. So why stop there, unless you’ve hit your goals in one go in which case, well done.
The benefit that you have now is that you know how to plan a webinar in 2021, and you’ve done it before. So what’s next?
Repeat
You have two main options. Either schedule another one, and improve. Use your reviews and testimonials to gather a larger audience and do better. This would allow you to make better content and improve your presentation skills.
If there are improvements you might even get some return viewers. This is a great way to progress and could lead to a larger webinar series. Helping you reach any event goal you set up to do, and more.
Replay
Your other option if your first or second webinar went great is to set up an evergreen webinar. A webinar that pretty much runs itself and generates new leads or whatever your goals was on autopilot.
There are two ways to do this, you could either create a scheduled webinar that runs every Thursday at 11:00 for example, have ads pointing to the landing page to gather sign ups and then see your sales go through the roof every time your webinar plays.
Or you could have an On-demand webinar that just is available as soon as someone registers. Both options have different merits.
For instance, with the scheduled webinar you could possibly still have some interactivity to it for example via the chat and Q&A. Both options work as long as your recorded webinar is good.
It won’t usually be as successful as the main webinar as Live Events do tend to be more popular but it will be a lot less work.
How to Plan a Webinar in 2021 Conclusion
I really hope you’ve made it this far and have enjoyed my guide on how to plan a webinar in 2021. This has been a really great article to put together, the subject has so many facets and webinars can be used for so many different goals it’s great.
It’s still in the works but we will soon be releasing a Full course on How to Plan a Webinar with even more details and demos. So make sure to check that out on our course page and pre-order the course to get it at the “early-bird” price. It will never cost so little again I can tell you that!
You can also sign up to our newsletter if you haven’t already. You will be the first notified when any of our new courses get released and get the best offers on those. I mean if you’re reading this you must have read the whole article and in that case I’m sure you’ve already signed up.
Best of luck with planning your webinar and please leave a comment below if you have any questions. Once you’ve planned your webinar please send me a link to attend. I would love to see what you’ve put together – mattias@event-tip.com.
And if you’ve enjoyed this guide please share it with others so more people can reach their webinar goals for 2021.
