What We’ve Learned Running 198 Successful Webinars For Our L&D Partners (And How To Benefit From It)

What We’ve Learned Running 198 Successful Webinars For Our L&D Partners (And How To Benefit From It)
Summary: As experienced webinar hosts, we thought you'd love to read our tips on how to broadcast successful webinars. From attracting the right leads to engaging your audience, here's our secret sauce! Have a pen and paper and get ready to take notes.

How To Create Successful Webinars: Tips And Tricks

Hosting successful webinars is an excellent outreach and lead generation strategy that presents you with the opportunity to connect with your potential clients. Most importantly, you get to show the world what your brand stands for and how well you can communicate. At the same time, it’s a way to get to know your attendees and even answer any questions they might have.

Above all, a webinar gives you the chance to understand their needs and act upon them. Frankly, there’s no better way to explain how your solutions can solve their pain points! Consequently, you have to find an interesting topic that can subtly reflect your USPs.

But what makes a webinar successful? If you attempt to start planning a webinar, you should know that it takes a lot of work, which means it requires a considerable amount of time as well as resources and experience.

Worry not, because in this article, I’ll cover how you can create a successful webinar with ease, all based on our own experience and results!

Are you looking for ways to create successful webinars and attract L&D pros?
Here's your chance to capture high-quality leads beyond your circle of influence!

Tips To Run A Successful Webinar That Engages Your Audience

Your webinar topic should spark the interest of the community you want to target, but it should also serve your brand. When you create content aligned with your business goals and your audience's needs, success will follow.

Here are a few webinar tips to help you get the best results:

Research Your Webinar Subject

One of the most essential factors of presenting a successful webinar is, of course, subject matter expertise. Before going live with any content, you need to research your topic thoroughly—you may also wish to solicit the feedback of Subject Matter Experts or other organizations that have conducted their own webinars. You might even need to do additional research on the audience you plan to address. Informal conversations, formal interviews, and surveys can all help you assess whether a particular webinar topic is right for you and your audience. You may also want to validate topics by referencing your website analytics. Popular pages are a great indicator of interest from your audience.

Know Your Presentation Like The Back Of Your Hand

Think of yourself as the presenter of your own show! The more confident and knowledgeable you are, the better. After all, running webinars is all about showing off expertise and discussing a specific topic. For your webinar to be successful, you have to keep attendees’ engagement high. To do so, you have to make it flow effortlessly, as opposed to reading your slides straight from your screen. In fact, it would be best if you’re the Subject Matter Expert. Getting a PowerPoint from your SME just a few minutes before the live event is the equivalent of an actor who gets the script minutes before shooting...not ideal. Preparation is key, so please avoid just reading the presentation to your attendees during your live webinar.

Technical Setup

Truth be told, running a webinar is like doing your own live video production. Such an event relies a lot on technology and exceptional delivery, so you have to ensure that your tech gear is set up and running. No one wants to endure low-quality sound or video; hence, it is vital to have everything in check before the event. There are several microphone types for webinar hosting if you want to take your event to the next level. For example, you might go for a dynamic or condenser microphone, or even choose a high-end headset. The same goes for video quality. Relying on your laptop’s camera might not be ideal. Instead, you might want to invest in getting the right webcam for the job. All the above ensure that your video isn’t blurry or that your audio doesn’t cut out or distort.

Do Some Practice Before Going Live

Practice makes perfect! It’s very important to make a demo of the live webinar and test the technology you’re going to use. Open your webinar tool, share your presentation, push some polls, etc., to make sure that everything works fine. For example, for our premium webinars, our presenters run 3-5 prep sessions. Why? Well, in this way our webinar coach ensures that you’ll look like a rockstar during your live event presentation.

Be Prepared To Answer Possible Audience Questions

It's likely your webinar attendees will ask a few questions after your presentation, so be prepared to give solid answers. Doing thorough research beforehand will surely help you anticipate questions you may be asked. If you have an idea of what might come up, you could also create sample answers just in case. This will help you avoid awkward pauses during your live session.

Don’t Show Up Alone At The Live Event

If you’re the one that is responsible for the webinar presentation, it’s a good idea to have at least another person manage the live chat, generate polls, or play any videos. Your only goal should be to make an engaging presentation. Why? Because attendees can sense if a webinar host is rushed or hesitant or distracted by technical issues. If you partner up with eLI, you don’t have to worry about that since our webinar host will be there to support you!

3 Reasons To Partner Up With An Online Community Like eLearning Industry

Large Audience

Is your current audience too small? No worries! eLI is the largest online learning community, attracting almost a million L&D professionals each month. Partnering with eLI will help you target your buyer personas the moment they are searching for solutions concerning their specific business needs.

In-Depth Webinar Experience

In the past few years, we’ve run 190+ webinars, partnering with top L&D vendors such as Adobe, Docebo, CommLab India, InfoPro Learning, Learning Pool, among others. eLI has created a smooth experience and a solid process where you merely have to provide the content—we do the rest. Feel free to check out our webinar section if you want to explore some great webinar examples and ideas.

Premium Guidance And Support

eLI provides a competitive edge with Melissa Chambers, an experienced US-based webinar coach. Running webinars side by side with Melissa has resulted in great success metrics. Our webinar coach has over 20 years of experience in online Instructional Design, eLearning strategy development, and creative media production. Melissa can support and guide you in order to run a successful webinar. She will help you look like a rockstar!

Besides, by partnering with eLI, you can continue leveraging your webinar by publishing it after the event as an on-demand gated asset.  As a result, you’ll gain more leads and have lead access 24/7 through your account.

You’re more than welcome to read our complete guide for more tips on running successful webinars.

Conclusion

Hosting a webinar can be stressful, but there’s no doubt that under the proper guidance you can rock it! Even the most seasoned pros get nervous before their live event. What stresses most presenters is that they fear they might deliver a flat presentation or have major technical problems. We’ve got all the tips and tools you need to help you present webinars that are far from boring.

There’s no reason to risk spending your valuable time and budget on an effort that cannot bring you the expected ROI. Webinar marketing is very effective, we’ve seen its results in lead generation and quality leads. By teaming up with the right partner, you can take it up a notch. Join us and we’ll make sure that your next webinar is an attendee favorite!

Learn more on how we host successful webinars with our partners.

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