The Complete Guide to Creating a High-Converting Webinar

When they’re done right, webinars can be engaging and educational for viewers, while being a high-converting branded resource for your business. With unparalleled access to online event hosting platforms and live video options on various social media channels, now is the time to take advantage of hosting high-quality online webinars.

Many businesses and brands have found that webinars are helpful in building email lists, converting leads into funnel-based prospects, and even increasing their bottom line. Regardless of whether you’ve hosted an online webinar before, we’ve compiled this complete guide to creating a high-converting webinar for your brand or business.

1. Define your goals

The first step in planning any online webinar is knowing the purpose that you want it to serve. Will it be a sales-driven webinar, or will you be conducting an interview with a fellow industry professional? The goal of your webinar will drive your topic choice, and if you’re looking to create a high-converting webinar, your main goal will probably be to sell your brand, service, or product to engaged viewers.

Choosing the topic isn’t the hard part; generating interest in it is. If you’re in the social selling stage of attempting to engage with leads before they are led through the sales funnel, creating a captivating online webinar topic is key. An optimal webinar topic will solve a problem that you can explain in its entirety. You should be an expert on this topic, as it’s necessary to know your topic inside and out if you’re explaining its inner workings to a live audience.

If you’re unsure if your topic of choice is solid, or if you’re having a hard time finding the right topic for your next online webinar, do your research. Think back to webinars that you’ve attended, and consider how specific the topic was, and the problem that the speaker was aiming to solve. Furthermore, you can look at other high-impact webinars online for some inspiration.

2. Provide valuable insights on your area of expertise

Once you’ve decided on a rock-solid topic which can help your target audience overcome a challenge that they’re facing, it’s time to create the content that will generate interest, captivate your audience, and hopefully convert prospects into paying customers. Plan for your webinar to be around 45 minutes to 1 hour, as the average viewership for a webcast is 53 minutes, as reported by ON24.

Even if you’re not a strong public speaker, your webinar can be an overwhelming success, as long as the content and information you’re sharing is accessible, engaging, and actionable. When developing your presentation notes – and slides, if you’re including them – for your online webinar, set out with the goal that you’ll be solving a single problem for your audience. If you’re trying to explain the how-to’s of five different topics, your audience will leave with more confusion than clarity.

3. Create an event for your webinar

Whether your goal is to create a webinar that converts leads to active prospects or prospects to loyal customers, you need to make sure that your target audience is aware of your webinar. Often, webinar tools require that participants sign up to attend your webinar ahead of time. Ideally, you will have a registration page developed to make the registration process easy for your potential attendants.

The first step in creating a high-converting webinar is ensuring that you’ve developed a high-converting registration page for your online webinar.

A social selling strategy and well-rounded social media presence will help you broadcast information about your event to your followers and active leads. To generate traffic on your webinar registration, utilize cross-sharing capabilities of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

According to Get Response, you should begin promoting your online webinar at least a week before your scheduled webinar date, but no more than 10 days ahead, as early registrants may forget exactly what webinar they signed up for, perhaps losing interest along the way.

Get Response also highlights the importance of communicating that you’re running a free training webinar that will help solve a specific problem that your target audience is facing. According to them, the other elements of a high-converting registration page include:

• Creating a bulleted list of the information your webinar will provide participants.
• A quick sign-up box that includes an area for the participant’s name and email address. This information can be used to send email reminders a couple of days before the webinar, and about an hour before it begins.
• A testimonial, case study, or other resources that demonstrate the credibility of your brand.

Some brands and professionals pair their webinar with an in-depth workbook to be used during the online webinar. This could be a survey, questionnaire, or simply a resource that reiterates the information you’ve shared in your webinar.

Remember, getting sign-up information from a webinar prospect is just the beginning. For a webinar to be high-converting, you must have an active audience present while the webinar is live. To increase the chances of an individual signing up, you must keep them engaged leading up to the live broadcast. An informative email nurturing sequence is a great way to connect with a potential participant while invoking brand awareness. Use this sequence to share helpful resources from your own website, along with those from third-party sources, to develop a narrative that keeps an individual engaged with your brand and looking forward to your upcoming webinar.

4. Convert prospects into sales

On average, webinar attendance rate sits at 40-50% of registrants, according to ReadyTalk. After creating a well-rounded online webinar strategy and valuable content, it’s time to host the best webinar you’ve ever developed. Remember that participants are here to learn something about the industry in which you’re an expert, and you’re prepared to answer their questions with ease and sell your service confidently.

You can use interactive features of various webinar tools to engage with your audience, answer questions, and keep them connected to your message. If you’re attempting to sell a service or product on your webinar, present a sense of urgency in your discussion. For example, you can offer a value-add to an existing package for webinar attendees who purchase your product or service within a week of the webinar.

Keep in mind that although your live webinar may be over, the live discussion is just a drop in the water during the creation of a high-converting webinar. Follow-up with webinar participants with a valuable email nurturing campaign to maintain a positive connection and awareness of your brand.

Conclusion

When done right, an online webinar can help generate new leads, inspire new prospects to make purchases, and engage with those still in your online sales pipeline. Best-in-class online webinar events keep the goal, topic, and method of delivery crisp, simple, and accessible to your target audience. As with any social selling strategy, ensure that you’re on the right social platforms to engage with your ideal clients, and develop multiple touchpoints of communication to pique their interest.

Online webinars provide a platform on which to share your expertise and connect with your prospects and loyal customers in a way that is beneficial for all parties involved.

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