If you haven’t already, it’s time to start including webinar development in your inbound content strategy. Webinar services don’t take a lot of your budget to implement, but provide an immediate lead-capture opportunity and enable you to directly engage with qualified prospects. The best part about them is that they’re a powerful way to offer thorough, educational content to your buyer personas. Webinars have the potential to significantly increase lead generation and ROI when done properly.

Planning a webinar and picking the best webinar platform can be an overwhelming process, so we’ve created a list of the essential steps to take to ensure your next webinar is successful.

Be Mindful of Your Timeline

Every marketing professional knows that timing is crucial, so webinar creation is no different. When choosing the day and time of your webinar, take into consideration the most popular times for people to be watching. 

Webinars allow viewers to learn through a method that can be more enjoyable than reading a whitepaper or ebook. Participating in brief webinars during an afternoon break can be an ideal way to unwind for busy professionals.

The length of your webinar is 30-60 minutes, based on the amount of information you have chosen to share. Don’t host webinars for more than one hour. The long commitment to time could hinder busy professionals from signing up. 

Make a List of Prospects

After you’ve established an appointment time and date, then you’re prepared to identify the audience you want to target.

What kind of buyer persona would you hope to target? What are their issues and how do you tackle them with this medium? Instead of inviting you to all of your databases, build an extensive list of prospects with specific criteria for qualifying. Then, you can focus on the distinct characteristics and issues of the personas you want to target to develop your webinar’s content strategy. Additionally, you can involve a webinar service provider to make a strong and reliable strategy that appeals to your target audience. 

Pick a Relevant Topic and Well-Educated Speakers

Once you’ve identified the people you’d like to reach through your webinar, you’re now able to select the subject and speakers.

Best practices for inbound content dictate that your content should offer benefits to your buyer personas by providing education. Pick a topic that’s current, relevant, and educational and that relieves the pain of your target buyer personas.

It’s time to think about contacts within your network who are experts in this field and are the most efficient speakers. Consider your chosen speaker’s experience and comfort in public speaking. Simple and concise language is crucial to persuasively communicating your message. Webinars in general a two-way communication, so introducing interactive webinar platforms can be a good idea to hear from your audience and answer questions from the speaker, which ultimately leads to personalisation. 

Establish a Content Outline with an Established Webinar Platform

After you’ve identified the ideal expert in the field to talk about your subject, you can then begin to plan the content for your webcast. Prepare your script, slide deck, and any other information essential to your presentation.

Your script could be a bit sloppy or calculated, depending on the tone of the webinar. Short informal scripts are ideal for informal presentations. If you’re covering the topic at a high level this type of webinar is an ideal option. However, deep dives into complicated topics usually require detailed and rehearsed scripts. Find out the level of your subject’s complexity and then choose the style of presentation that is appropriate for your topic.

Your slide deck shouldn’t be overly detailed or text-heavy. It should contain enough information to support your oral presentation. Images and bullet points are efficient ways of keeping information short. As many online webinar platforms offer features to share such as infographics and slides, but be careful before relying on any webinar platform. 

Create a Registration Page with Compelling Copy

The content of your registration page must clearly explain the purpose of your webinar. Include all the necessary information. Be aware of the different time zones when broadcasting your webinar’s time and date.

To aid lead generation, we suggest that users fill out a form to sign up for your webinar. Webinars are typically a middle-of-funnel content-based offer, so the form you choose to use should be in line with the requirements of this stage in the buying process. 

Since the purchaser has shown a lot of interest in the purchase, your form could request personal information without appearing intrusive. The information you collect will assist your team to better tailor their sales-converting efforts and develop relationships with leads following the webinar. Don’t forget to make sure you have set up your landing page to ensure that forms submitted automatically register participants through your virtual webinar platforms. 

Create Promotional Content Using the Appropriate Measurement Methods

Your earnings will be contingent on the efforts you put into marketing. We suggest that you promote your webinar through email and on social media for at least three weeks before the date of airing. It is essential to convey the benefits of your webinar using clear, convincing text. Additionally, you should complement your content with appealing images and CTAs.

The most important thing about your content for promotion is the method you use to determine what it did towards lead generation. 

Create an Email Workflow That Encourages Prospective Customers to Sign-Up

Your customers are busy, and, probably, a single email with a promotional message will not be enough to attract the desired number of registrations. The prospect may initially dismiss your offer as spam but may not realise that they’re missing an exclusive content offering.

Luckily, your automated webinar can assist you in avoiding falling victim to mistakes in communication. Create a workflow that consists of three to four emails with promotional messages to promote registration during the weeks before the date of your airing. When your prospective customer completes the desired step (webinar sign-up) they’ll be removed from your workflow and cease receiving promotional emails.

Be a Webinar Star!

Include webinar development in your content strategy to increase lead generation and increase revenues. If you adhere to the above steps, the next webinar you host is bound to be a huge success. The last tip is to always rely on a good webinar platform to avoid any hassle in terms of customisation and make the webinar appealing.