Best Practices for Hosting a Webinar Event

Webinars have become an increasingly popular event format for organizations of all sizes. 

Compared to in-person events, webinars provide a flexible, convenient, and cost-effective way to reach a broader audience. However, hosting a successful webinar that engages your target audience takes thoughtful planning and preparation.

Whether you’re hosting your first ever webinar or looking to improve your existing webinar strategy, following these best practices is key to running an event that delivers results! 

In this comprehensive post, we’ll walk through everything you need to know—from initial planning to event execution and follow-up. We’ll also share tips to avoid common webinar mistakes that sabotage your efforts.

Taking the time to host your webinar thoughtfully isn’t just about checking boxes; it directly impacts your ability to meet your goals. Consider what’s at stake if you don’t follow webinar best practices:

By optimizing your webinar strategy, you can avoid these pitfalls and create an event that:

Following best practices gives you the framework to accomplish these goals consistently, webinar after webinar. Plus, choosing the right webinar software makes it easy to scale up and customize your webinars in one place—whether you host a few webinars per year or a few hundred.

Before we dive into planning, let’s define what a webinar actually is.

A webinar is a presentation, lecture, workshop, or seminar that takes place virtually over the Internet instead of in-person. Webinars enable real-time interaction between a host and an audience. They incorporate features like video, audio, slides, polls, and Q&A to encourage engagement.

Organizations use webinars for a variety of purposes, including:

Now that you know what a webinar is, let’s look at how to plan and host one effectively!

Thorough planning is key to running a successful webinar. You need to make important decisions upfront to create an event tailored to your goals and audience.

Before anything else, you need to clearly define what you want to achieve. Ask yourself:

Setting S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals will give your webinar clear direction.

For example, if the purpose of your webinar is to generate new leads for your company, you may set a goal to acquire 250 new qualified leads from the event. Defining a specific volume of new leads makes this goal measurable while setting a lead count you can reasonably achieve with your available resources, and audience size keeps it achievable. 

By outlining crystal clear objectives, you have defined criteria to design your webinar content around and evaluate its success afterward.

Understanding your target audience is key to creating content that resonates with them. 

First, define audience demographics like location, age range, industry, seniority level, etc.

Then, ask yourself the following questions:

Gaining insight into your audience’s goals, motivations, and preferences will allow you to build and promote your webinar strategically. 

For example, if your webinar targets entry-level engineering students, you can focus the content on teaching basic concepts and skills for new engineers using straightforward language. 

On the other hand, if your webinar is geared toward C-suite manufacturing executives, the content should focus on high-level insights around industry trends, emerging technologies, and strategic initiatives. You could promote your webinar using channels like industry publications, social media influencers/thought leaders, and paid search ads targeted by job title and industry.

Customizing your webinar topic, content style, promotions, and visual design to align with your target audience is key to attracting engaged registrants.

The hosting platform you use to host your webinar can help streamline planning, promotion, engagement, and follow-up. 

Look for key functionality like:

Vetting webinar software options is essential to find a platform that aligns with your business needs, audience size, budget, and existing tech ecosystem. Prioritizing an intuitive, flexible platform will maximize productivity for you and provide a seamless experience for your attendees.

With your goals and audience defined, it’s time to craft persuasive content to captivate attendees from start to finish.

Your webinar title and event description provide the first impression that will either attract or deter registrants. 

Here are some tips to make yours stand out:

Incorporate questions or emotions into the messaging to make it relatable, e.g., “Tired of Wasting Time on Manual Data Entry?”

Here’s another example: If your target audience is investors and financial advisors, a title like “Introducing Cutting-Edge Ways to Reduce Risk and Maximize Returns” speaks directly to their pain points and goals. In contrast, a title like “Introduction to Financial Management Strategies” is vague and fails to connect with your audience’s specific motivations.

Outlining your webinar content in advance is essential to developing a logical flow that makes your message easy to digest. 

First, clearly state your central theme or message upfront so attendees understand the core purpose of the webinar. Then, provide a roadmap that breaks down the content into digestible sections and subsections so attendees can follow along with the flow.

During the presentation itself, use transitions like “Moving onto our next topic…” or “Now that we’ve covered X, let’s discuss Y” to guide your audience between topics and speakers.

Make sure to incorporate highly engaging segments every 8-12 minutes, such as polls, Q&A, or activities. This resets attention spans and prevents monotony.

Finally, leave ample time at the end for interactive live Q&A—this is often where attendees get the most value!

Remember: thoroughly planning and practicing your content outline will go a long way in delivering an accessible presentation that keeps participants engaged from start to finish.

While your speaking content needs to be compelling, complementary visual aids are invaluable for reinforcing points and enhancing your message. 

Follow these best practices when preparing visuals:

Compelling visuals make your webinar more dynamic, memorable, and impactful.

Strategic promotion is essential for driving registrations and attendance for your webinar. You need to get the word out early and consistently to maximize reach.

Start promoting your webinar 4-6 weeks in advance of the event date. This extended runway gives you time to execute a multi-channel promotional strategy for maximum impact.

Some key tactics include:

The key is layering multiple promotional channels over an extended window to maximize reach and get your event on the top of your audience’s minds.

In addition to early promotion, use reminders to keep your webinar top of mind leading up to the event. 

We recommend sending reminder emails 1 week before, 2 days before, 1 day before, and 1 hour before the start of the webinar. You can also set up automated browser notifications through your webinar platform that notify registrants the webinar is starting soon.

Sending a “Webinar Starting Now!” email 15 minutes before the start is an effective way to nudge last-minute registrants. Text message reminders can also be very effective in getting late registrants to show up live.

Getting in front of registrants multiple times through various channels ensures your event stays top of mind, resulting in higher live attendance.

Simply presenting information often results in lower engagement. Use these techniques to captivate your audience during the live event!

Get your audience involved by incorporating interactive elements throughout your webinar. 

For example, live polls and surveys let you collect feedback, opinions, and data from attendees in real time. Poll your audience at the start to grasp their knowledge levels.

Then, schedule dedicated Q&A sessions during your webinar to satisfy attendees’ desire to have their questions answered live by a presenter.

You can also use chat features to enable discussions between attendees and hosts during the webinar’s presentation portions.

Introducing features like quizzes and gaming elements encourages a fun, competitive environment that energizes people and boosts engagement.

Your presenters and speakers set the tone for the entire webinar experience. 

To maximize engagement, make sure to select passionate, personable speakers who connect with audiences. Look for great storytellers.

You also need to set expectations ahead of time that the webinar will be highly interactive and conversational versus a one-way presentation.

When it comes to the webinar itself, share presenter backgrounds upfront through short introductions to establish credibility and trust right away.

Find the right balance between natural, organic dialogue and high-level talking points or presentation scripts. Then, have a host or moderator ready to facilitate smooth Q&A portions and transitions between speakers or segments.

Well-prepared and engaging speakers are key to captivating your webinar audience and keeping them tuned into the discussion. Leverage speaker prep and training if needed.

A webinar’s success hinges on seamless technical execution. Glitches or issues during the live event can ruin the experience for attendees. Be sure to take the following steps to minimize technical difficulties.

Conducting thorough technical checks before your webinar is crucial. Treat it as seriously as a dress rehearsal for a stage performance. Walk through and test all equipment, links, slides, and presentations. 

Confirm that:

Running through the event start-to-finish will identify any technical issues to resolve before going live. Don’t skip this step!

Choppy audio or video ruins the viewer experience. 

To prevent lag and freezing, request that attendees keep their video off and close other bandwidth-heavy apps. Presenters should use wired ethernet connections over WiFi when possible for maximum stability. Limit the number of devices connected to WiFi during the webinar to minimize strain.

Tip: Have a dial-in number or hotspot ready as a backup audio solution in case of internet drops.

The work isn’t done just because the webinar is over! Strategic follow-up keeps your brand top of mind for the next event. 

Send a thank you email within 24 hours recapping webinar highlights and key takeaways. Include links to access the full webinar recording, slides, worksheets, or other assets. 

Most importantly, include a feedback survey or poll link to gather insights while everything is fresh. Offer an incentive like a gift card to encourage participation.

Get more mileage from your webinar content through repurposing! Here are 4 suggestions to get started: 

With a great webinar in the can, finding creative ways to reuse it beyond the live event will help you get closer to your long-term goals. 

Analyzing performance data and feedback is crucial for optimizing your next webinar. Let’s break down how to leverage analytics for a successful webinar program. 

Carefully analyze key performance metrics to evaluate how your webinar did and identify areas to optimize for future events. Important metrics to review include:

Again, carefully reviewing metrics against your benchmarks identifies successes to repeat and opportunities to improve for future webinars.

Gathering feedback is crucial to understanding how your webinar went from the attendees’ perspective. 

Actively collect feedback through:

Again, consider offering incentives for completing surveys to boost response rates. Plus, you can categorize feedback by theme to clearly see areas for improvement.

Participant perspectives point the way forward for enhancing your future webinars.

As an event planner, avoiding common webinar mistakes is crucial for delivering a smooth and effective webinar aligned with your goals. Failure to sidestep these pitfalls can sabotage your efforts and reflect poorly on your abilities as a planner. 

We recommend steering clear of these common webinar pitfalls:

Without having a clear sense of your desired outcomes, your decision-making lacks focus. Not to mention that you won’t have measurable criteria for evaluating the success of your webinar. Always start by defining the purpose and targets for your event.

Generic content often fails to resonate. Take time to understand your audience, including their interests, pain points, and level of knowledge. This allows you to craft messaging and content that speaks directly to what they care about and need to hear. Otherwise, you risk losing their attention.

Nothing derails a webinar faster than audio cut-outs, confusing interfaces, or platform glitches. Invest time upfront to methodically test all equipment, run through presentations, confirm platform features, and validate stable internet. This dress rehearsal sets you up for smooth technical delivery!

Webinars shouldn’t just be online lectures. Build in Q&A sessions, live polls, chat features, and other tools to make it a two-way dialogue. Interactivity is key to attendee engagement and an overall positive experience with your brand. 

Cobbling together standalone tools for webcasting, engagement, registration, etc., makes executing webinars labor-intensive. Streamline efforts with a unified webinar platform integrating everything needed to seamlessly manage, promote, and host your webinars.

Hosting compelling webinars takes strategic planning and execution. By following these tips and best practices, you’ll be on your way to successfully engaging your audience, delivering value, and driving consistent results in no time!

Plus, choosing a flexible all-in-one webinar platform like Attendease by Tripleseat makes it easy to manage and customize every aspect of your webinars in one place.

Ready to uncomplicate your webinar and events program? Book a demo today!