Webinar Best Practices Series: Before Your Webinar
Okay, so you have your fancy new webinar platform (hi, hopefully) and are ready and raring to put on your first event. Sloooow down. First, you need to get a few things in order. What, exactly? Here’s our (condensed) webinar best practices guide of how to prepare for your webinar, with everything you need to do beforehand.
INTEGRATE WITH YOUR MARKETING TOOLS
Your webinar is going to generate a wealth of data. When preparing for a webinar, make sure you’re set up to quickly and easily spread those data-rich insights across your company by integrating your webinars with your marketing automation, CRM platform, social media channels and more. Direct access to your data will help you understand what your audience wants, so you can optimize future webinars.
How ON24 Drives Demand with Webinars
There’s a lot that happens behind the scenes to make sure webinar data gets integrated across marketing operations… it gets messy fast. Our VP of DemandGen, Neal Amsden, gives an inside look at the nuts and bolts of our own webinar marketing operations, so you can get your own engine running fast.
DESIGN A PRESENTATION THAT RESONATES
We all know first impressions count—so don’t put your audience off with cluttered presentation slides filled to the brim with dull stock imagery and cheesy clip art. In preparing your webinar, keep your slides clean, with no more than three bullet points per slide. If you are going to use imagery, choose eye-catching photography that adds value to your talking points, and beware of low-res images that look grainy or pixelated.
How to Build the Perfect Webinar Presentation
What’s the first rule of a great webinar presentation? It’s not about YOU; it’s about your audience. Get the scoop on how to design your content around the people you’re trying to engage, and add interactivity throughout the entire experience.
EQUIP YOUR TEAM FOR SUCCESS
Nothing ruins a great webinar faster than lousy video or audio. Beforehand, equip your team with the technology they need to create a captivating webinar. For audio-only webinars, invest in a good-quality headset and do your best to dial in from a landline or use the microphone on your computer. Even better, use your webcam to present by video during your webinars. A video presentation puts an energetic subject matter expert in front of your audience, humanizing your brand and making an emotional connection with your audience. Make sure you’re using a good quality camera with a built-in mic, and test it before you deliver a live event.
5 Ways to Integrate Video into Your Webinars
Death by PowerPoint or a live-streamed talk show? We agree, the latter! That means you’ll need to run a video webinar, which takes a little skill to master. Luckily, we have the Chief Webinerd himself sharing tips and tricks for adding video to your webinars.
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
People are busy and getting busier every day. Asking someone to give up an hour of their time in the middle of a hectic workday can be a big ask. That’s why scheduling your webinar at a convenient time can make a big difference. Avoid times when your audience is likely to be away from their desks, such as commute times and the lunch hour. Don’t ask your audience to start their days early or stay late. Avoid weekends at all costs.
This is how to prepare for a webinar and make sure it will succeed – by accommodating your viewers at every opportunity!
ON24 2023 Webinar Benchmarks Report
Take advantage of the lessons learned by the thousands of webinars running through the ON24 network every day and get a sense of optimal timing for your webinars.