10 Tips to Turn Webinars Into Masterpieces

November 21, 2012 By Eric Vidal

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In the last few years, webinars (also known as "webcasts") have become popular for delivering important information to a targeted—yet geographically-dispersed—audience, and bringing new leads into the sales funnel. Webinars provide the immediacy, intimacy and interaction of a live presentation, but without the need to rent a large room or have participants travel from all over to attend. If it's promoted well, the event can reinforce your relationship with existing clients and prospects, or attract new prospects and show them you understand the questions they're facing in the marketplace.

Yet as with any tool, a webinar is only as good as the people presenting it. These 10 tips will help ensure your webinars grab the attendees' attention, holds it throughout the presentation and deliver the insights they're looking for.

1. Create Goals, Strategy and a Plan
When webinars were first introduced, companies were very careful to ensure they knew why they were offering them and the results they wanted to achieve because webinars took a lot of work. Now, because webinars are so common and the technology is so easy to use, some of those initial steps are often left out in the rush to get the next one out.

Start by defining your goal, and then build a strategy that will help you reach that goal. To get you started, here are the top responses from a recent survey of 341 business leaders on how they use virtual solutions to impact their businesses:

• Get products and services to market faster
• Reach more audiences at a lower cost
• Develop more effective and efficient sales teams and channel partners
• Shorten sales cycles
• Create stronger relationships with prospects, customers and partners
• Reduce support costs by training customers

2. Use a Catchy Title and Description
Having a catchy title and description will help your webinar stand out from all the other emails and announcements your target audience receives and ensure they know there's something in it for them. As you develop your title and description, keep these tips in mind:

• Take a cue from copywriters and use action verbs to amp up the wattage.
• Include searchable keywords if you're promoting your webinar to people outside of your invitee list so search engines will pick up your content.
• In the description, be sure to spell out clearly what the session is about and what attendees will get out of it for the time they invest.
• Use bullet points to make it easier for busy people to read and understand your key points quickly.
• Offering an incentive for participating, such as a free download, can also help increase attendance.

3. Create a Promotion Plan