When restrictions were put in place at the beginning of the pandemic, in-person events were pushed online as professionals sought to stay connected with their industry while still abiding by local regulations and recommended best practices. Although in-person events are back, virtual events have maintained their popularity in a variety of formats. In fact, over 77% of participants have voiced a continued interest in virtual events because of the convenience they offer. Many businesses still enjoy hosting online webinars, conferences, trade shows, debates and panels, and more.
Those interested in hosting an outstanding webinar should learn what the webinar management best practices are, which will help you accomplish your goals and build your reputation through the event. When you implement these webinar management ideas, you will keep your event running smoothly, boosting audience engagement and creating a webinar to remember. Let’s explore what webinar management entails and the details you want to pay attention to.
Webinars are online events hosted through a webinar platform that often target educational pain points for the audience. They have become a critical component of event marketing for the vast majority of businesses, with 95% of marketers rating webinars as a vital strategy in their marketing.
Typically, the webinar will include a host and a guest speaker or panel that will discuss an important issue. Those who register for the webinar will be able to watch the event live stream and submit questions, participate in polls, and otherwise engage with the webinar hosts.
The webinar management process looks at how you can organize these events and the steps that go into running them to ensure that the webinar runs smoothly and keeps your audience interested. A well-run webinar calls for some quality preparation.
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Webinars have become increasingly popular as a powerful tool for connecting with audiences, sharing knowledge, and driving engagement. However, to ensure a successful webinar, effective management is essential. This section will delve into the key elements contributing to successful webinar management, enabling you to plan, execute, and evaluate webinars confidently.
The webinar platform you select will impact your available features and the type of webinar you create. We will discuss the important features you want to see in your event platform selection in more depth below, but branding is one of the most important things to remember. You want to host an event that belongs to your brand and that people associate with your organization.
Next, you want to determine your webinar goals and objectives. It means thinking carefully about the type of audience you want to attract, the pain point you want to target, and the atmosphere you want to create with your webinar. For example, you might use the time to do a demonstration for people further down the funnel or a debate or Q&A format for top-of-funnel educational content.
Once you know what to accomplish with your webinar, you will select your topic and the targeted content. Identify a topic that will matter to your ideal audience, such as a particular educational topic they want to know about or a debate that has become a hot topic in your industry. As you build out your ideas for your topic and the content you want to present, you can determine what guest speakers you want to invite to your webinar.
Next, determine if you want to invite sponsors to your webinar and what sponsors might fit with your webinar. You want to include those that can add value for your target audience and will have interest in getting their brand in front of your registered audience as a sponsor.
Look also at the webinar format that best fits your selected topic and audience. For example, you might elect to have a Q&A session with a special guest. Labeling your format will help you draft an outline for your content and the flow you want to create for your webinar.
You want to keep your audience interested in your webinar. That is how you use webinars to build relationships and reputation. Audience engagement is paramount to keep the webinar interactive. Make a concrete webinar plan for keeping your audience engaged throughout the presentation.
Analytics help you objectively measure how well your webinar performed and what your brand achieved. Know how you will define and measure your goals and what analytics you will look at before, during, and after the webinar. For example, you might look at registration and open email rates for messages promoting the webinar. You might also gauge audience engagement in conversations and participation in polls. Know what metrics you will use beforehand to use these methods effectively.
Read and Learn: How to Harness Webinars for a 2X Pipeline Boost
When you properly plan and manage the webinar experience, you will have a smoother and more enjoyable event. You will have a strategy for keeping your audience involved and offering content that provides them with value, enhancing your overall success. Here are the 3 benefits of webinar management you will experience.
Proper preparation will help you make the most out of your available resources. You will work effectively as you plan, promote, and run your webinar, which will save you time and effort. You will also channel your efforts to recruit guest speakers, sponsors, and to market your event in the most effective directions, helping you save money.
With a well-planned event and a strong webinar management strategy, you will closely align your target audience with the value you offer. This can help you nurture new relationships with people throughout the entire process. Speakers you invite will appreciate the opportunity to engage with a highly relevant audience. Similarly, sponsors will find it helpful to work with an audience that aligns well with your webinar. Finally, your webinar will give you the chance to engage with a relevant audience and build your brand reputation, will allow you to build relationships with your audience. These relationships nurture your funnel leads and can lead to new customers.
Finally, when you structure a webinar optimally, you will have content that offers tremendous value for your target audience. You can take this same content and use it in a variety of different formats. You might create snippets to post on social media or write blog posts, for example, all amplifying your content and your expertise. You might also offer the recording itself as an on-demand webinar and gated content moving forward.
When organizing a webinar, selecting the right platform ensures a seamless and engaging experience for organizers and attendees. A feature-rich webinar platform can enhance interactivity, accessibility, and overall user experience. As you start planning your webinar and look at all the different webinar platform options, consider a few key features. Here are the top features organizers should look for when choosing a webinar platform to have an engaging and interactive webinar.
Make sure that you can easily share your screen with your audience. When you have slides, images, or videos you want to broadcast to the audience, this feature allows you to present a clear, crisp image to your audience.
A webinar that is fully accessible to all participants will increase your audience and demonstrate the caring consideration you have for the needs of your customers. Accessibility options, such as captions, allow people of differing abilities to fully participate.
When you invite people to participate in your webinar, you want to make sure they receive a fully branded experience. You want them to have strong, positive associations with your brand as they participate in your webinar, and that starts with a branded landing page. They will see and engage with your brand from the moment they register. Make sure the platform you choose makes it easy to create a fully branded experience.
You also want a platform that will enhance your ability to engage with your audience. There are a variety of strategies you can use to engage with your viewers, such as live chat features, polls, and surveys. A platform that makes it easy to use any of these popular features will also help you properly engage with your target audience.
Webinars can also be enhanced with breakout rooms that allow audience members to continue the conversation in a smaller, more personal atmosphere. Finding a platform that offers this feature can enhance your presentation if it fits well with the rest of your webinar topic and format.
Integration options will ensure that your webinar is as flexible and adaptable as you need it to be. Knowing what other software and apps you want to integrate can help you create a tailored platform that fits your needs. Look for a platform that offers ample integration choices that align with your needs.
By creating a comprehensive webinar management checklist, webinar hosts and organizers can ensure that all necessary tasks are completed, important details are addressed, and potential pitfalls are avoided. This section will provide a detailed checklist covering various stages of webinar management, from pre-event planning and preparation to live webinar execution and post-webinar follow-up. By following this checklist, hosts can enhance the overall webinar experience, engage participants effectively, and achieve their desired outcomes.
As you take those initial steps to plan your webinar, there are a few top factors that you want to keep in mind. These features will help you target the most important aspects of your webinar preparations so that the rest of your planning goes smoothly.
First, consider choosing the right webinar platform with the desired features. Begin by identifying your specific needs and requirements for the webinar. Determine the most desired features that fit with your webinar format and topic. Consider factors such as the expected number of attendees, desired interactivity options, screen-sharing capabilities, recording capabilities, integration possibilities, and accessibility features.
Secondly, you need to select your webinar topic carefully. You want to find one that will draw in your target audience. Look at the latest news and developments in your industry. Consider also popular debates among the industry leaders. Look at the part of the funnel you want to target and what will matter to them as they prepare to move further through the funnel.
Once you know what your webinar topic will be, you need a plan that will allow you to promote the webinar effectively to your target audience. You have a variety of options at your fingertips. You might consider:
Build your marketing strategy based on the customers you want to target and what the best method will be for reaching them.
Note how you want to run registration, including when it will open, close, and what you want to include on your registration form. If you want to include registration options in addition to your webinar landing page, such as registration through sales team members, plan for these variations as well.
Including enough time to do a full test run of the webinar for timing purposes and to check equipment
No business wants to plan and organize a webinar only to have equipment fail when you try to kick off or to realize halfway through the discussion that you do not have enough content planned. Therefore, give yourself time to do a run through of your webinar to see how the content works for timing purposes. Run equipment checks as well so you know how all the different features work and to verify that everything functions as expected.
Before the event starts, you want to have webinar reminder emails scheduled to go out to all your audience members. You might send an email a few days before the event starts and then a reminder an hour before it starts. Make sure that no one who expressed interest in participating misses out because they forgot about logging in.
As you plan for your webinar, you also want to define the audience that will have the most interest. Knowing the type of people and organizations you want to target for participation will help you tailor your webinar invitations and content.
Consider if you want to have sponsors involved in your event. Targeting sponsors based on the audience they want to reach and who will add value to your webinar will help you create a nice alignment that builds your overall webinar experience.
Depending upon the webinar format you want to host, you might also need to bring in moderators. The webinar moderators can help manage debates and keep discussions on track. Consider whether you want the moderator to come from your own organization and the person who might fit that role best.
Your guest speaker will also need careful consideration. You want to find speakers who have value to offer your target audience, as the speakers can help interest a wide audience and expand your reach. You also want to make sure that they align with the value you want to offer.
As an organizer, you also need to consider how you will manage the webinar throughout the event. You will need to keep your audience engaged and make sure that all the different parts of the webinar go smoothly. Here are a few things to plan for and keep in mind during the webinar.
Webinar hosts generally want to provide recordings of the discussions to offer people as a resource for after the event. Know how you want to record the sessions, particularly if you have any special features, such as breakout rooms. Make sure you have the webinar platform and equipment needed to create a quality recording and know who will be in charge of overseeing the process.
During the webinar, you need to be proactive about keeping your audience engaged. Know the different parts of the webinar when you want to focus on engagement, such as polls or Q&A portions of the conversation. Note when these parts arrive and your goals and strategies for keeping your audience interested.
Build your audience for your webinar through social media. Encourage people to share about the discussion on the various platforms. You might also post tips or clips from the events on your own pages. Create a social strategy, including a hashtag for the event, and know how you will use it.
If you plan on polling the audience or offering surveys during the discussion, get everything setup ahead of time so that you can use these features smoothly and effectively.
Life Q&A sessions can be a great way to give people the chance to participate live in the conversation and ask any questions they have about the event. Know when your Q&A session will take place and how much time you will allot for it. It is also a good idea to prepare with a few prewritten questions in case you do not get too many from the audience or if it takes a minute for them to start asking so you do not have downtime on the air.
As the webinar runs, know how you will check in with people about the technology, such as how they can let you know they have a technology problem and who is in charge of managing the technical side of the conversation. If people have trouble connecting, know how to troubleshoot your platform to keep everyone listening.
Once the webinar ends, you will still have some tasks you want to take care of. Managing the post-webinar tasks can help you get the most out of the event, including learning how to improve future opportunities. Here are the top actions you should take after the webinar finishes.
Begin by updating the landing page and the marketing copy, when it is applicable. You can transition your landing page to gated content for those who want to download a recording or other resources about your webinar topic, for example.
You also want to send out post-webinar emails (suggest link to other pieces) to keep engagement with your audience. You can offer them a recording of the event and include other resources to help them continue to learn about the topic of interest. This encourages the audience to keep coming back to your business as an authority in the industry.
Make sure your email campaign also includes a thank you email and a post-webinar survey. Your survey will help you see what did and did not add value for your target audience, helping you create an improved webinar next time around.
Webinar content offers ample opportunities for repurposing. You can create gated content from the insights you have gathered. You might also create social media posts with tips from your guest speaker, use the material to create enticing emails, and use the discussion to inspire ideas for articles and blog posts. Encourage the content creators within your business to use the material in a variety of different ways.
Download Hubilo's Essential Guide to Repurposing Webinar Content
Once the event is over, you will want to look over all the analytics you collected throughout the webinar. For example, some of the webinar data you may have collected include:
Bring together all the information and debrief with your team. Get their feedback on how the event went and look for ways to incorporate this data and feedback to improve your webinars moving forward.
Planning a webinar effectively requires a well-thought out webinar management strategy. There are a number of moving parts that businesses need to keep track of if they want to produce a quality webinar experience. Webinar management plays a pivotal role in the success of webinars, enabling organizers to deliver engaging and impactful experiences for their audiences. From selecting the right platform to planning and executing the webinar and following up afterward, careful consideration of various factors is essential. Choosing the right webinar platform with desired features is a critical step. It should align with your needs, including interactivity options, screen-sharing capabilities, and integration possibilities.
With the right webinar platform, such as Hubilo, organizers can streamline the entire process and deliver exceptional webinar experiences. Hubilo offers a comprehensive suite of features, including interactive tools, customizable branding, accessibility options, and seamless integration capabilities. By leveraging these features, organizers can create engaging presentations, foster audience interaction, and measure webinar performance effectively.
Our team will guide you through the platform's functionalities, demonstrate how it can enhance your webinar management process, and answer any questions. Discover how Hubilo can help you create impactful webinars and connect with your audience meaningfully. Take advantage of the opportunity to elevate your webinar management with Hubilo. Request a demo today and unlock the full potential of your online events.
Hubilo is the webinar platform built for marketers that helps you 2X your pipeline. Founded in 2015, Hubilo's powerful engagement features, dedicated client experience team, and custom branding tools have helped create over 12K virtual events & webinars, creating hundreds of millions of minutes of high-engagement experiences and counting. Headquartered in Bengaluru and San Francisco, Hubilo's 200+ employees are dedicated to enabling webinars & virtual events that convert.
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