The webinar is taking the digital marketing world by storm. Also known as web conferencing, webinars are services that allow real-time, multicast video conferencing events to be broadcast live. Participants can join live from any location in the globe, provided they have an internet connection and login details.

Marketers are realising that webinars drive high quality leads and provide organizations with great opportunities to offer value and knowledge to prospective clients and associates. 

In order to run a successful webinar, we at RML Marketing & Business Development Solutions, have come up with the following:

Top 10 Tips for a Successful Webinar

1. Topic: Choose your topic and title carefully. Consult with members of your organization and concentrate on topics that will be of interest to your target audience. Make sure the subject matter can be explained in a short presentation.
2. When to Run: Tuesdays and Wednesdays have been recognised as the best days to host a webinar. Always remember to think about time-zones and where you expect your audience to be based. A 12pm EST start in New York will be 9am PST in Los Angeles and 5pm GMT in London.
3. Promotion: A three week lead-in promotional campaign (email, social media, blogs, paid ads, news articles, etc.) with a final day before reminder is best practice according to ReadyTalk
4. Content & Presentation: Keep words to a minimum on your presentation deck. Use images, graphs and infographics to highlight talking points. If possible use 2 presenters to alleviate the monotony of a single voice. A guest presenter of a happy client or partner can also be a great addition.
5. No Hard Selling: Do not turn your presentation into a hard sell of your product or service, you will lose the interest of your audience. Instead come across as a knowledge leader, addressing a solution to a problem. The fact that your organization sells that solution should be kept to a minimum.
6. Dry Run: Dry run and practice, practice, practice……. Always do a dry run a couple of days before the webinar is scheduled. Ask work colleagues to sit in and give feedback. Test all equipment, links, audience chat boxes, audio links and phone lines that will be used.
7. Make it Light: Try to introduce some humour or tell a customer success story.
8. Duration: 30-45 minutes of presentation with an additional 15 minutes at the end for Q&A is a good rule of thumb, but this will greatly depend on your content and target audience.
9. Audience Participation: It is wise to mute your audience during the main presentation, but actively encourage them to participate and ask questions at the end. Tell them at the start of the presentation that you will be opening up the on-screen chat boxes or phone lines at the end. It makes sense for the presenter to have help from a colleague who will read/field the questions as they come in.
10. Follow Up: Always make sure to follow up with your audience the day immediately after the webinar was presented. Send them a thank you email and if possible a recording of the presentation or a copy of the slide deck. You can also ask questions to open up future conversations.

Roger Leyden is CEO of RML Marketing & Business Development Solutions and has been creating and presenting webinars for many years. If you would like to know more on how RML can help you create and present cost effective webinars please contact us for further information.