Hosting a Killer Webinar

Webinars are a go-to tool for many tech startups wanting to engage with a larger audience and position themselves as industry experts. Doing a webinar might be daunting for many, but it's actually easier than you might think with proper preparation.

54% of B2B professionals engage with webinar content every week, so getting your strategy and approach right is vital for engaging successfully with this huge potential lead base. 

Prepare to Share Your Passion

Statistics suggest that webinars solely about marketing or obviously created for marketing purposes can discourage up to 78% of attendees from buying from your company. Your webinar needs to be informative, engaging and add value to your attendees' lives. After all, these are people with their own businesses, and they don't have time for aimless pitching or something they've heard before.

• Pick a topic you can speak passionately about.

• Research how many other webinars exist on the topic to avoid doing something that's been done to death.

• Prepare carefully, plan every slide and visual, and try and ensure your webinar starts with a great hook to avoid people switching off early.

• Advertise your webinar several weeks ahead. Use email and social media to promote it, as well as your business website. 

• Give potential attendees the option to ask a question ahead of the event.

• Test your streaming technology before the date/time of the webinar.

• Find ways to encourage audience interaction: quizzes, games, and Q&A make your attendees feel valued and increase the chance of them staying until the end.

Make sure attendees know how to interact and remind them of this throughout where appropriate. Consider sending a post-session feedback link so you can constantly improve your webinar content.

Consistent Branding

Your webinar materials, from opening screens to slideshows to reports, should all have your company branding, and it should all match the style and tone of any of your other marketing materials. 

Keep visuals simple, use contrasting colors, and keep blocks of text short and jargon-free. Not all B2B buyers will be tech experts. Some just want a product/service that makes their lives easier without understanding the software underneath it!

Consider Accessibility

To make the biggest impact possible, you need to reach the biggest audience possible. Making your webinar more accessible isn't just a good look for your company: It makes the best business sense. Consider sign language interpretation, audio descriptions, and image alt text for visuals. Talk to neurodiverse team members to make sure your webinar content makes logical sense and flows well for all audience members. If you're using an external webinar platform, check if it's compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Remember to consider that not all attendees will be on the same type of device. Optimizing recorded or live webinar sessions for mobile devices could greatly increase your potential viewing numbers. Remove as many barriers to your content as possible.

Final Word

Think about the webinars you've enjoyed the most and the ones that brought you or your company the most value. You can emulate the presentation style and content type—just be sure not to plagiarize directly! If you want more advice on tech startup marketing channels, book a 15-minute introductory call and talk to us about your current project.

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