Webinars represent a popular and content-rich format for delivering your brand message. Ideally, you'd want to create more webinars, not fewer.
However, the manual steps required for planning a single webinar are already quite demanding for your to-do list, let alone an entire series of them.
Today, we'll explore the most effective ways to plan and execute a high-impact webinar series without overwhelming yourself or your team.
A webinar series is a strategic and effective marketing approach that involves hosting a sequence of online events, often centered around a specific topic, to achieve various business objectives. Typically, these series consist of multiple one-time sessions, also referred to as "episodes," which can be attended live by participants or accessed later through replays.
In other words, a set of regular, repeating branded webinars constitutes a webinar series, scheduled weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Each webinar within the series may feature distinct hosts, speakers, and attendees but remains unified by a common theme.
While a standalone flagship webinar can serve as a highlight within a comprehensive integrated campaign, a continuous webinar series enables marketers to maintain consistent visibility on a topic of significance to their audience. It allows for in-depth exploration of various components with each successive event in the series.
Businesses increasingly favor webinar series to build and strengthen relationships with their customer base, deliver educational content, and launch new products. Engaging in real-time conversations with customers, the webinar series offers a valuable opportunity for attendees to ask questions or receive prompt answers, fostering a dynamic and interactive environment.
B2B event marketers cherish webinar series primarily for their versatility. A robust webinar series allows for targeting specific funnel stages or deploying it across the entire funnel to achieve multiple marketing objectives through a consistent set of repeatable events. A webinar series offers businesses several advantages -
By hosting a webinar series, you widen your demand generation network, providing multiple opportunities for learning and engagement. This approach simplifies the process for prospects to discover your brand at the most opportune times.
A webinar series offers numerous chances to delve into your audience's real challenges, allowing you to develop custom content that precisely meets their needs. This deeper understanding enhances your ability to tailor your messaging to a specific and receptive audience.
Consistency is key to building trust, and a webinar series allows you to address important topics regularly, positioning your brand as a reliable expert in the industry. This consistent presence contributes to establishing and strengthening your brand authority.
Repurposing webinar content into evergreen, easily consumable formats, such as blog posts, video snippets, and on-demand libraries, enables you to amplify your messaging. This ensures that your valuable content continues to reach and resonate with your audience long after the live webinar sessions.
A series of webinars increases the opportunities for businesses to connect with potential customers and leads. With each new session, businesses can build on prior conversations, addressing questions from previous sessions. Tracking progress over time enables timely outreach.
Webinar series provide repeated engagement opportunities and ample time to cover multiple topics of interest. Several sessions are often needed to thoroughly explore a topic, provide examples, and deliver actionable takeaways.
Hosting a webinar series allows hosts to tailor content for each session based on attendees' interests. In contrast to a single webinar where catering to everyone is challenging, a series permits in-depth exploration of various aspects of the subject.
Despite best efforts, only some attendees may show up for some sessions. However, a webinar series enables businesses to re-engage with no-show attendees. Inviting them back for subsequent sessions through reminder emails or social media posts is a seamless process.
The beauty of a webinar series lies in the progressive nature of each session, allowing hosts to craft an engaging narrative. As attendees participate in more sessions, their investment in the conversation deepens, increasing the likelihood of prompt action. Additionally, covering different aspects of the topic in each session prevents audience boredom with repetition.
You're aware that orchestrating a well-structured webinar demands careful consideration, but by adopting the correct approach, transforming your webinars into a potent series of recurring events can be more straightforward than you might imagine.
Here's a guide on launching an end-to-end webinar series in eight simple steps.
Narrow down your audience by considering how your series aligns with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), identifies internal influencers or decision-makers, targets a specific funnel stage, and supports broader sales and marketing goals.
Understand how your webinar series fits into your overall funnel and webinar strategy. Ask questions about the type of webinar experience for top-of-funnel awareness, middle-of-funnel product and campaign-specific awareness, and bottom-of-funnel problem-solving. Choose a straightforward webinar title without using the word "webinar" to enhance registration rates.
Look for a webinar platform with high-quality video production features, multiple attendee engagement options, strong tech specs and support, customizable branding, event analytics, and key integrations.
Develop a streamlined workflow with pre-built templates covering essential tasks such as securing speakers, building content, creating social posts, and more.
Focus on effective promotion channels such as email, social media, employee enablement, in-app promotions, and engagement with communities and creators. Encourage multiple teams to host webinars, fostering a virtuous webinar promotion process.
Treat the first episode as a test by choosing a notable speaker, selecting a timely topic, amplifying efforts on promotion channels, and tracking attendee engagement data. Use the data to assess the success of the episode and decide whether to invest in future episodes.
Repurpose webinar content into various formats, including social media posts, on-demand content previews, promotional material for future events, blog posts, outreach emails, and summaries. Utilize past events to inspire new content and promote upcoming events.
Once you have a successful concept, systemize your process for scalability. Copy and paste the format, change dates and times, and maintain consistency. Execute a variety of webinars easily and efficiently, enabling other departments to handle their setups with minimal support from the event marketing team.
Starting a webinar series comes with its challenges, despite the apparent simplicity of the planning steps. Here are common obstacles you might encounter and tips on how to overcome them:
The pressure to secure a consistent lineup of stellar speakers is a challenge in webinar series planning. Tap into your existing brand community to identify potential speakers. Setting up a speaker registration page with a brief questionnaire can aid in collecting information and selecting the best candidates.
While you may have numerous ideas initially, maintaining fresh content over time can be challenging. Integrate engagement elements such as polls and Q&A to regularly gather insights on future topics directly from your target audience.
Watching multiple webinars weekly is time-consuming. Whether using Hubilo or another platform, choose webinar software with an on-demand library. Additionally, leverage AI tools to repurpose and amplify your content effectively.
Consistency is crucial for a successful webinar series. Ensure that your templates are easily replicable and customizable, facilitating seamless execution regularly.
B2B businesses have discovered webinars as a potent lead-generation tool. However, as the prevalence of webinars increases across companies, marketers must strategize on how to distinguish their webinars. Conducting a webinar series emerges as one of the most impactful methods.
By extending the duration to engage the audience and fostering momentum through diverse topics and compelling narratives, a webinar series proves effective in enhancing lead generation, increasing conversions, and establishing stronger connections with potential customers.
Effective promotion, engaging content, and thoughtful planning play crucial roles in attracting and retaining a larger audience for your webinars. To elevate your webinar experience, consider utilizing Hubilo as your webinar platform. Hubilo, with its intuitive features, can further boost webinar attendance and engagement, delivering a seamless and interactive experience for your participants. Hubilo's marketing and promotion features facilitate reaching a broader audience by seamlessly integrating with social media, email marketing, and other channels. The platform also enables personalized communication with attendees through automated email reminders and notifications, ensuring event remembrance. Request a demo to kickstart your next webinar and let Hubilo showcase how it can revolutionize your webinar success!
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