How to Create a Webinar that Converts

How-to-Create-a-Webinar-that-Converts-31561% of businesses use webinars to market their business. This is because they have an extremely high conversion rate.

Businesses use webinars for selling various things from software to services to even online courses.

If you aren’t using them you are missing out on a lot of leads and sales. Therefore, in this post, I am going to show you how to create a webinar that converts.

You will learn not only how to set up a webinar, but also how to set up everything else to promote it and get registrants.

Let’s get started…

Brainstorm webinar topics:

The first step towards creating a successful webinar is coming up with some topics. Picture your audience and think about the current problems they face. Then think about how you can use your expertise to provide solutions. These solutions should be the topic of your webinar.

Come up with at least 10 to 15 webinar topics. You should be able to share plenty of information on these topics as good webinars last 45 minutes to 1 hour. Some webinars are even 2 hours long. So, make sure they are meaty. Once you have a list of topics, prune them until you find the one that your audience will love most and want to attend.

How-to-Create-a-Webinar-that-Converts-1

An example of a Webinar on a great topic is The Anatomy of a High-Converting Mobile Landing Page from Unbounce. As Unbounce is a landing page tool and optimizing landing pages for mobile is a popular topic, this webinar will interest their target audience.

Choose webinar software:

Once you have selected a topic you should choose a webinar software. This can be a big headache as there are so many great options available. On the one hand you have all-inclusive webinar platforms that have everything you need to run a webinar including the landing pages to email autoresponders to the live webinar streaming itself and on the other hand, you have extremely specific ones that only let you live stream video.

What criteria to pay attention to? 

  • Mobile access. Now, most of the attendees take part in the webinar from their smartphones. It is better to choose a platform with access from any device. 
  • Free trial. It is cost savvy when you can try webinar software for free and then upgrade your plan if necessary. 
  • Secure session. Unfortunately, not all platforms are safe. Some have a dozen security and privacy issues. So try to choose the most reliable and safe webinar platform
  • Technical support. Sometimes you need to ask a question about the software. Give priority to those platforms which provide human support teams.

If you want to quickly pick one and avoid confusing yourself with all the options, you should take a look at all the software you have other than live video streaming, like landing pages, email service providers, etc.

If you have this software already you can opt for a simple tool that lets you only live stream, but if you don’t you can opt for a complete tool that has all the features required to run and promote the webinar.

Here’s a great guide on best webinar software to consider your options.

Create content for the webinar:

Some of your attendees will be visual learners, hence, your webinar should include slides to make it easy for people to follow what you’re saying. People will have something to look at instead of just listening to you. So, make some slides. The slides should be a combination of both text and graphs.

The slides will also come in handy should you forget something.

Also, create a PDF document that contains some extra information on the topic you plan to discuss as this can be used as an extra incentive to drive up registrations.

Create a landing page:

Once all the content is ready you can create the landing page to promote the webinar. This landing page should have an attractive headline, a sub-headline (if necessary) and copy that describes the content of the webinar. Write about the problems you will solve during the webinar and how it is going to benefit your audience.

Make sure you mention that it is free and include the date and time of the webinar. If you plan to promote it to people all over the world you should include the time in different time zones.

End the landing page copy with an opt-in form and call to action that asks people to sign up.

How-to-Create-a-Webinar-that-Converts-2

The people at Kissmetrics know how to create highly effective landing pages. Check out the landing page they created for their webinar on How to Build a Framework for Customer Empathy. It has a good headline, excellent copy and an opt-in form with a call to action.

You too should start setting up conversion focused simple webinar landing pages like these to promote your webinar.

Create a thank you page:

The thank you page is the page people are redirected to after they sign up for the webinar. This is something everyone who is running a webinar should create. On this page, you thank the person for signing up and remind them of the date and timing of the webinar.

You should also include links to Google and iCloud Calendars so that people can easily reserve time for them. About 46% of people who sign up for the webinar will attend the live event. Therefore, if you want similar results or higher, getting them to add this event to their calendar is an important step.

Also, add share buttons to the thank you page so people can invite their followers and friends to join them at the webinar.

Write reminders:

Every person who signs up should automatically receive a welcome email. The copy here should be similar to that on the thank you page. You thank them and inform them of the time and date of the webinar and place links to calendars.

But one reminder email won’t be sufficient, especially if you plan to promote this webinar days and weeks in advance. Make sure you send out similar reminder emails a couple of days before the webinar, on the day of the webinar, an hour before the webinar, 15 minutes before the webinar begins and when the webinar begins.

These might seem like a lot of emails. But you need to send them to get maximum attendees.

Write post-webinar emails:

You also need to write post-webinar emails where you send out a series of emails to webinar attendees. In these emails, you will not only promote the same products you promoted in the webinar, but also the webinar replay.

As aforementioned only about 46% of registrants will attend the live event, this is why it is important to upload the recorded version of the webinar onto a landing page and share links to it to everyone who signed up to the webinar. Some of the people who attended the live event will also watch the replay.

The replay will help convert some of the people who didn’t purchase the products you pitched during the live webinar.

You should send at least 2 to 3 emails that inform people about the replay and the products. But make sure you set the emails to pause automatically once the person converts from viewer to buyer.

Promote webinar:

Once you create the webinar and schedule all the automated emails to go out, you should begin promoting the webinar. There are many effective ways to promote a webinar. Here are a few of them…

Write a blog post: Inform your blog readers about the webinar by writing a blog post about it. Let them know everything you plan to cover and inform them of the time. End the post with a call to action that asks people to visit the landing page and sign up. You can place a sign-up form in the post itself.

Here’s an example of a blog post Shopify wrote to promote their Webinar on Dropshipping.

How-to-Create-a-Webinar-that-Converts-3

They also promote the webinar on their blog sidebar.

Share on social media: Share the links to your webinar on the social networks your audience is active on. Schedule several of these updates to go out in advance.

Run ads: Using ads to promote your webinar is something everyone who is running a webinar should do because as aforementioned webinar landing pages have a high conversion rate. Therefore, you will generate more email subscribers for your ad spend. Even if these people don’t convert to buyers during the webinar you can continue nurturing them and sell your products and services in the future. You can also share your latest content with them and increase traffic.

Team up with people: One of the most effective ways to generate plenty of webinar registrants is by teaming up with someone who has a huge email list. Ask them to promote your webinar and in exchange offer them a percentage of each sale made by someone they refer.

You can team up with a bunch or these influencers at a time or only work with one of them. Working with one influencer at a time can be more effective as you can then create a webinar that will only suit their subscribers. You can also create extra bonuses they will be interested in. This specificity can increase conversions.

Practice:

Once everything is set up and the webinar is being promoted, it is time for you to practice. Practice should include going through the slides you created and reading out loud. This should all be done while using the webinar software. This will help you familiarise yourself with the features of the software and will make you more confident.

You will then be able to present a wonderful webinar without any hiccups. So make sure you practice the webinar with the slides and the content 2 to 3 times at least. Ask one of your friends or employees to listen to you as well and offer feedback.

Now go create a webinar that converts…

These are all the steps you need to take to create a webinar that converts. Setting up and running webinars can take up a chunk of your time, but they are worth the effort as conversion rates are high. So follow all the above steps meticulously before you run your webinar.