Since we started Livestorm, we have been pretty active on Quora. Mostly on the webinars and web conferencing topic. We gathered our best answers on webinars.
When we first started, we wanted to build visibility in our target market. Eventually, we learned a lot about the market and the other webinar tools.
What makes a great webinar?
First, define your goals. What do you expect from this webinar? This will help you define what kind of presentation you want to give. It will drive the whole content creation process and even the tool you want to use.
1. Spend time on your webinar headline.
Eventually, this will be the first attribution factor of conversion in the registration process. Great headlines make people want to hear what you have to say and maybe even join the conversation.
2. Define success metrics.
Again, be specific. You want something from this event, otherwise, you would not spend so much time on this. Find actionable metrics.
3. It's ok to give a sales pitch. Sometimes.
Yes. It is. But only when you are doing a demo webinar or an onboarding webinar. People are coming specifically to learn about your product. Stay classy. Avoid frustration.
4. Attending your event must a no-brainer
This point is critical. It will impact your conversation rate and the only way to solve that problem is to get the right tool. You should look for no download, a smooth onboarding process, and a registration logistic. Find a webinar tool that offers those features.
5. Take care of everyone
People will register and not come. But it does not mean that those people are not worth your time. Try to deliver a special attention to those people at the end of the webinar.
6. Have guests
In every use case, it is always great to have guests for legitimacy and expertise. Have two guests max. I found that having more than 2 guests will affection your attention rate.
7. Data is good. Get to know your audience.
Even if you're not doing a lead generation webinar, try to drill down into your data. Data is great for improving your content as well. But not every webinar tool provides relevant data.
What is the best webinar software?
Funny question. There's an obvious bias here. I guess the best webinar software will fix the webinar problem. They are a great business driver. But the existing webinar tools are diminishing it potential.
Here are the main problems:
- Poor UX (extra installs, antique UI...)
- No real relevant data on your audience
- No communication between tools
You should look for a tool that will solve those problems 😉
What time is best to host a webinar?
The common idea is that you should:
- Aim for mid-week webinars for best attendance (Wednesday - Thursday)
- Schedule it one week before for promotion
- Run webinars between 10am PST (1pm PST) and 12am PST (3pm PST)
- But it depends on your audience too. But why not doing some in-webinar research? Send a poll to your attendees asking the best time for them to attend.
How do you drive people to your webinar?
Never underestimate your content during the webinars and what you do afterwards. People might talk about you and share your content. This will give you more acquisition leverage next time.
Search for leverage inside your network
- Related blog/LinkedIn post
- Blog widgets
- Homepage promotion
- Build a relevant twitter list
- Twitter cards
- Email database
And Outside your network
- LinkedIn groups
- Slack communities
- Forums or Facebook groups
- Growthhackers.com or Inbound.org
What are some good examples of B2B companies who do webinars?
My personal favorites are :
- Kissmetrics for marketing and analytics
- Invision for tips around design
- Uberflip or Mention for content marketing
- CartoDB or MongoDB give great weekly demos of their solution
They have one thing in common, great execution for promotion and great content. No surprise that webinars have become their main source of leads.
Conclusion
Hope this helps you. We thought you might enjoy having a post that gathers some of the most asked questions. You can ask more questions below on the comment section or on Twitter. You can also follow me on Quora or ask on the web conferencing topic.
Keep streaming.
