How to Set Up a Webinar Your Audience Will Love

5 Types of Webinars You Need to Diversify Your Webinar Program

1. Panel Webinars

Panel webinars consist of one host who interviews a panel of experts or thought leaders about a certain topic via webcam. These webinars are informal and unscripted. Some even allow attendees to ask questions throughout the session. This engaging form of webinar adds credibility to your brand and highlights partners and customers as thought leaders.

Hot Tip: Logistically, panel webinars are best done with software that allows you to broadcast everyone’s webcam at once.

2. Educational Webinars

Educational webinars often take the form of a speaker relaying information through a slideshow. This format is an effective way to explain complex topics, and much like panel webinars, it’s also a great opportunity to include a variety of external speakers.

Hot Tip: Slideshows can be dry, so keep engagement up by adding in polls and videos, or consider breaking up the material into 15 to 25-minute sections.

3. Presentation Webinars (a.k.a. Keynotes)

Presentations and keynotes at live events and are perfect fodder for webinars. Simply set up a camera and live-stream the event. You can collect registrations on your homepage, and keep the recorded version on your website for future on-demand viewing.

Hot Tip: One of the best parts of re-watching keynote presentations is that you can get right to the good stuff. And with Vidyard’s speed controls, you can even watch them at x2 the rate. Before you post the on-demand version, remove parts that detract from the presentation, like the presenter shuffling up to the podium or the barely audible questions from the audience.

4. Product Webinars

Similar to a tutorial or walkthrough, these webinars focus on a product. You might feature a new product release or an overview of frequently asked questions. General product webinars are ideal for late-stage prospects who are ready for in-depth information about your product. Keep existing customers engaged with specific information they can’t get anywhere else, like a sneak peek at your product roadmap.

Hot Tip: Just because it’s about the product, doesn’t mean it should resemble an instructional booklet (snore!). Take advantage of screen sharing capabilities to live-demo your product or add in videos to keep things interesting.

5. On-Demand Webinars

We couldn’t write about how to set up a webinar without mentioning their recordings now, could we? On-demand webinars are any of the above webinars in their recorded format. On average, only 56% of webinar registrants actually attend your webinar when it runs live, according to research from ON24. That’s why it’s important not only to have the recording available for them afterwards but for anyone else who finds their way to your site and is interested in consuming content.

Hot Tip: People are inherently busy, so it’s important to keep on-demand videos succinct or else you’re in danger of turning off your viewers. Consider getting someone savvy with video editing to chop down your webinar to a shorter version if it’s over 30 minutes, or even split up your webinar into chapters so viewers can quickly scan to find exactly what they’re looking for.

How to Make a Webinar

No need to get overwhelmed, planning and a good webinar hosting service will help you create a webinar your audience will love.

1. Have a Clear Goal in Mind

Think about what will provide the most value to your audience. What do they want to learn? Ultimately this should be why you’re making a webinar in the first place. Having a clear goal in mind will inform all the decisions that follow on your path to making a great webinar.

2. Choose the Right Speaker(s)

The success of a webinar largely depends on the host. Make sure you choose subject matter experts who won’t run out of things to talk about and will be able to easily answer questions on the fly. At Vidyard we often reach out to partners, thought leaders, and industry experts who are inspiring us at the time.

3. Get it in the Calendar

Be sure to schedule your webinar well in advance so you can promote the date and participants can set aside the time. Consider time zones before choosing a time. If your audience is primarily North American, consider scheduling your webinar for a time that works for both East Coast and West Coast viewers.

4. Spread the Word

You could plan the best webinar ever, but it won’t matter if no one shows up. Make sure to market your webinar to the right audience, and interact with that audience in advance. Include a calendar invite and schedule a reminder email to make sure your registrants show up ready to learn.

5. Choose a Webinar Software

You’ll need to use a software tool to deliver webinars to your audience. At Vidyard we use Zoom’s webinar feature because it lets us personalize the look and feel of the experience, and manage interactivity in one convenient place. There are lots of options, so do your research and try them out.

6. Get a Moderator

This person will be behind the scenes to troubleshoot technical problems, guide the discussion, and monitor the comments section. The moderator can feed viewers’ questions to the hosts or answer them within the chat.

7. Do a Tech Rehearsal

Anything could happen when you go live. Do yourself a favor and test out everything from the microphones to the slide deck, before you get started. There’s nothing worse than leaving your audience hanging!

8. Make the Recording Available On-Demand

You can generate 30% more leads from webinars if you promote them on demand. Plus, you broaden your reach: 36% of attendees only watch “always on webinars,” so if you skip making your webinar available on-demand, you lose out on a big possible audience.

Create a hub where users can easily browse on-demand webinars. You can also distribute them via email, social media, websites, blog posts, paid ads, and your YouTube channel to get the widest reach.

Webinar Best Practices

Follow these best practices to learn how to set up a webinar and drive results.

Build Excitement with Webinar Teasers

Engage with participants before the event to get more eyeballs. Sending a video email is a great way to encourage attendance. Scale-up with a teaser video of the presenters giving a sneak peek (like the one below). Don’t forget to use social media, and engage sales teams to reach out to key accounts.

Try to cover the main value for attendees in your teaser, and make it sound exciting! Always think, “Would I click attend?”.

Chop Up Your Webinars

Trim the recorded version of your webinar into five-minute sections to create a quick and digestible content series. Share these clips on social media or within a Vidyard playlist. Make sure the discussion topics are clearly laid out and easy to hop between.

Create a Webinar Video Hub

If all your on-demand webinars exist in one place, they’ll be easy to find, easy to navigate, and easy to binge!

In Vidyard’s hub, we make all of our webinars available for on-demand viewing. We’ve even added a search feature to let our audience filter out what they really want to know. Try searching terms like, “sales,” or “ABM.”

Score Those Webinar Leads

Hour-long webinars are a commitment. Chances are, the people watching them are your best candidates as future customers.

Keep track of your viewers with the traditional route of gating or use Vidyard analytics to assign a lead score based on consumption. For example, if a lead watches more than 50% of your webinar add score of ‘x’ to the lead.

Stay in Touch with Webinar Attendees

Make sure to follow up with attendees to thank them (bonus points for using a personal video). Include a call to action like, “Watch it again,” or “Book a demo.”

You just gave your audience a valuable gift—don’t let this be goodbye!

Where to Use Webinars

Webinars can be incredibly versatile, which means you can use and reuse them in a lot of ways across a lot of channels.

• Webinar Hub: As mentioned above, a webinar hub is the best place to stream and permanently store on-demand webinars.
• Landing Pages: If your webinar is part of a larger program such as a product launch or an event, you might live stream it from that program’s landing page to keep everything in the same place.
• Social Media: Smaller segments of the webinar are optimal for LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. Include a call to action that pushes people to watch the full version on your hub or website. (You might also use paid social in the same way.)
• Email: Teasers and promo videos can be sent in advance via email to entice people to register, and the entire recorded version can be sent to attendees after the event.
• Blog: You might write a blog post summarizing the takeaway knowledge from the webinar and embed the webinar in that post for readers who want to watch the full version.

Use Vidyard to Host On-Demand Webinars Host, manage and share your on-demand webinars and virtual event content. Sign Up Free

Examples of Webinars That Get it Right

One webinar is good, but many webinars are better. Offering an abundance of webinars (focused on your industry) will set you apart as a leader in your field and a voice to listen to.

1. Trello Webinars

This project management software gets down to the nitty-gritty with product webinars for every specific use of their tool.

2. HubSpot Webinars

Providing educational resources to everyone, not just their customers, is part of the HubSpot brand. Their library of free webinars reflects that. You can find webinars about everything from SEO optimization to increasing e-commerce customer lifetime value. You name it, it’s probably on HubSpot.

3. IMPACT Webinars

This marketing and sales company partners with peers and thought leaders to create educational webinars that are range from the practical (4 Steps to Quickly Growing Your Business Using Facebook Ads) to the high level (How to Make the Best Possible Decisions in a Chaotic World of Advice). IMPACT also offers to let viewers download the slide deck for on-demand webinars.

4. Vidyard Webinars

We wouldn’t have published this blog post on how to set up a webinar if we didn’t believe we were doing something right. Our webinars span the gamut from panel to educational. And we feature industry leaders and experts that bring the most value to our audience. From “How to Become a 1:1 Video Prospecting Pro,” to summarizing our annual “Video in Benchmark Report,” head to our webinar hub for fresh insights.

Get the Webinars Checklist Ready to make a webinar for your business? This list covers all the things you need to know to get it right. Get the List

This post was originally published on February 4, 2020. It was updated on May 10, 2022.