10 Best practices for fun, useful & profitable webinars
Webinars are powerful marketing tool. It allows you to connect with your audience, share knowledge and sell products efficiently and effectively. The key to creating effective webinars is knowing how to do it well, which takes practice — but some best practices can help you get started on the right foot. Here are the top 10 tips for creating fun, valuable and profitable webinars:
1. Know Your Audience
Who are my consumers is the first question you should ask yourself. The answer to this query relies on your company and the kinds of goods and services you provide. If your audience is global, then obviously, the answer would be everyone in the world! However, if your target audience is a specific niche industry or profession, it will help to know more about who that person is.
Once you’ve identified who makes up your potential buyers/clients/customers/prospects list, take some time to learn as much as possible about them: their names (first and last), ages, gender(s), where they live, and work, how long they’ve been married (if applicable), etc. This information will help determine which messages resonate best with each group and how best to communicate those messages through various channels like emails or webinars.
2. Create Content That Will Be Valuable and That You Can Teach in 30-45 Minutes.
The best webinars are the ones that have a clear and concise message. You don’t have time to go on tangents, so you must ensure your presentation is well thought out and organized before you begin.
Here’s how:
- Create an outline for each webinar topic
- Write down each point you want to cover in your presentation. Ask yourself if any questions or information should be included for the audience member to get value from this webinar. If not, take it out!
- Once you’ve created a solid outline, create a flowchart of how things will play out during the presentation (i.e., intro, Q&A at the end, etc.). Again ask yourself if there are any ways that specific topics could be explored more profoundly or whether some points could be covered better than others within that flowchart format. If so, make adjustments accordingly!
3. Create a Presentation That Is Designed for the Webinar Medium.
- Use a projector or screen share with PowerPoint or Google Docs. You can use your computer’s built-in webcam to record your presentation and put it on YouTube, but if you want to let people download your slides later, prepare them in advance so that they are easy for viewers to read on their own screens. This may mean using PowerPoint, or Google Slides instead of Keynote (though Keynote does have some valuable features for projecting presentations) or exporting a PDF file from either program.
- Use a remote control – If you plan on doing live demo software during your webinar and want to keep things smooth and easy-going, consider getting a remote control for whatever device(s) you plan to show off during the webinar (e.g.,,, clickers). It will allow participants who cannot see what’s happening at all times (due to poor connection quality) to still follow along without having everything pause. At the same time, someone adjusts their computer settings every time they get lost trying to figure out where we left off last time.”
4. Know Your Goals for the Webinar. Why Are You Doing It?
This is the most crucial step of all. Before you start creating your webinar, clearly define the problem you are solving and the goals that will be achieved by the end of it.
It’s easy to get caught up in planning for webinars without thinking about why you’re doing it in the first place. But before we jump into solutions and tactics, let’s spend a few moments defining our goals for this webinar.
First things first: What does success look like? How will we measure it? Do we want more money or more clients/customers/subscribers? Are these our only two options? Not! Think more significant than sales numbers; think about how many people will view your video if they can watch it on their phone while they walk their dog in Central Park at 9 am on Sunday (and then buy that next pair of jeans because they liked what they saw). Think about how many people would benefit from knowing what kind of information could be helpful to them at any given moment – like when they are stuck at work trying to figure out how much time off they need next week because their kid has chicken pox. Again! Now THAT is an ambitious goal worth working towards!
5. Have a Certain Call to Action at the End.
You should always have a call to action at the end of your webinar. This makes it clear what you want attendees to do next: download an ebook, register for another webinar or buy a product (the latter is probably the most common).
If you don’t include a CTA at the end of your event, people will get up and leave without knowing what they should do next. And if they’re not sure what they should be doing, chances are they won’t do anything.
This doesn’t mean that everyone attending your webinar needs to take action, but if even 1% does, it’s worth it!
6. Practice the Presentation Beforehand.
The best way to ensure your webinar is successful is by practicing your presentation beforehand. Not only will you feel more comfortable delivering the content, but you’ll also be able to anticipate any difficulties that might arise during the webinar and address them beforehand.
Once you have completed your first practice session and feel confident with your presentation, it’s time for another round of rehearsals. You should aim to practice at least two times in total before presenting it live on camera—and even then, there are probably some tweaks or changes you can make based on feedback from colleagues or friends who watched it with you! The more times you run through what will happen during the webinar (and any potential surprises), the smoother everything should go when it comes time for attendees on platforms like Zoom or GoToWebinar.
7. Get an Online Meeting Service That Allows You to Record or Archive-It for Later Use.
You can choose a webinar service that allows you to record the webinar or archive it for later use. This is especially useful if you want to post the entire webinar on your site later or share it with attendees who couldn’t attend in real-time. Some services also allow you to easily share the recorded version of your webinar with others through social networks and email newsletters.
8. Don’t Forget About Social Media! It Would Help if You Tweeted About It or Posted to Facebook or LinkedIn Groups and Emailed Your Lists.
Social media is a great way to reach many people quickly and easily. Post your article on a social media platform, and you can get thousands of people in seconds.
If you already have a large following on one platform (say Twitter), consider posting the same article to a different forum (like Facebook). This will help you reach people who might not be following your account on Twitter.
Similarly, if you have an email list of previous subscribers, consider sending out an email with links to your article and asking them to share it with their friends. This will give you even more exposure for minimal effort.
9. Use Good Equipment and Get Help if Needed.
If you’re going to go live with your webinars, use good equipment and get help if needed. Your webinar needs to be as professional as possible. The reason is that “Murphy’s Law” always lurks in the background when you go live with a webinar. What can go wrong will go wrong and often does, so be ready!
When we say “good equipment” and “getting help from someone else if needed,” what we mean are:
- Using a decent microphone – unless it’s a broadcast or podcasting event where you need professional microphones (and even then), use what comes bundled with most computers today;
- Using a webcam that has at least 720p HD resolution;
- Having a reliable Internet connection — nothing worse than having an outage during your presentation; And finally.
10. Follow Up With Attendees Afterward With a Quick Email Thanking Them for Attending, Including Links to Any Materials.
After the webinar, it’s key to follow up with attendees afterward. This can be done by sending out a quick email thanking them for attending and providing links to any materials they might have missed, reminding them about any calls to action you made during the webinar, and providing links to any other content related to the topic (like blog posts or white papers). You may also want to provide links to other webinars you’re hosting to encourage people who didn’t attend this one but might be interested in future events.
Take Away:
Webinars are a great way to share information and engage with your audience, but they can be challenging to plan. Following these ten tips will help you create a well-designed webinar that is fun, useful, and profitable for your business. In the end, that’s the whole point of a webinar—to share information you want people to know about, ideally in a way that benefits them too.
About the Author / Akeem Okunola
