Top Platforms for Webinars in 2020: Review by Exclusive PR Solutions
Webinars are engaging live or prerecorded events hosted on special platforms that deliver valuable information to a wide audience. In the new age of digital transformation, they replaced in-person meetings and conferences by providing a safe virtual communication space. Webinars have the possibility to host up to 10,000 attendees at one time and according to statistics and analytical data, webinars became the powerful relationship-building solution between businesses and their clients. Furthermore, 95% of companies admitted the effectiveness of webinars as a high-quality lead generation and brand awareness marketing tool. That is why choosing the right platform, timing, relevant information, and strategy is important in achieving the goals and objectives of a webinar. It is not that simple to set up a proper and successful webinar, but this guide will help you to achieve better results.
Webinar formats
The first question you need to ask is what is the purpose of the webinar? Is it to attract high-quality leads? Is it to provide solutions for the main problem in the industry? There are different types of webinars: presentations, sales, training, corporate meetings or shows. Depending on the goal and type you can choose one of the following formats.
One or two speakers and a moderator.
The most informative type of webinar. While other webinars styles have more engagement with attendees, this type provides solutions and shares experience with the audience. It might be used for training, education, presentations.
Interview style.
Influential type of interview with a leader, experts in the industry. Questions in real-time improve engagement rates.
Moderated panel discussion (multiple speakers + Q&A)
Whether the goal is a corporate meeting, discussion, or broadcasting big events, this type of webinars are a good fit.
Which platform to choose?
All webinar tools provide a wide range of features. However, there are some differences between them.
1. BigMarker
Price starting from $79/month - works for the beginning. $159/month - additional features such as automated webinars, include a seven-day trial.
Pros:
● Integrations (Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, etc)
● Real-time Q&A for recorded webinars
● Automatically forward questions from evergreen webinar attendees to your phone via SMS, Push Notification, or Slack. Respond to audience questions as they come in, providing a great experience without having to sit in a webinar all day.
● Presentation, chat, speakers - all on one screen
● Engagement: polls, giveaways, CTA popups, file downloads, etc.
● Whiteboard
● Public, private chats
● Room customization
● Recording
● Landing pages
● Facebook & YouTube Live Streaming
● Powerful Analytics tools
● Implemented translation into different languages
Cons:
● Possibility of some glitches.
2. On24
Prices on demand.
Pros:
● Easy set-up
● Integration with CRM: Marketo, Salesforce
● Auto-generated emails
● Access via browser
● Robust analytics to understand webinar performance and establish benchmarks for success at your organization.
● Speaker bios, related resources, call to actions, questionnaires, etc. that help businesses showcase their brand and value.
● Interactive audience console
Cons:
● Weak follow-up emails
● More expensive than others
● On mobile devices, streams as audio, need to reload if the screen was turned off.
3. WebinarJam
Prices start from $499/year. Plans include a 1-month risk-free money-back guarantee.
Pros:
● Landing page builder
● Live chat
● Calendar integration
● Email automatization (reminder)
● Polls & Surveys
● Easy presentations integration
● File sharing
● One-click webinar registration
Cons:
● Spotty on mobile devices for some people
● One-time payment
4. GoToWebinar
Prices start from $49/month. 500 participants - $200/month
Pros:
● Online payments
● Channel branding
● Pre-record and fully automated webinars.
● Polls & Surveys
● Integrations
Cons:
● Almost no email and landing page customization
● Occasional problems with audio synchronizing
● Inability to pull reports by parameters
● Registration and update forms are not highly customizable
Time, consistency, and duration of the webinar
The perfect time for a webinar, according to statistics, is once a week on Thursday (33% attendants from registrants), Wednesday (27%) or Tuesday (25%) at 2 pm EST. The average duration is 45 minutes. Promoting emails with the registration link should be sent four times: two weeks prior to the webinar (28% registrants), 1-2 weeks (26%), 1-7 days (35%). Best days for invitations are Tuesday and Wednesday.
Most common webinar mistakes.
Low webinar attendance rate.
Design, value, and promotion of webinars.
Weak confirmation page.
Implement social sharing on the Landing Page and Webinar home screen.
Not implemented calendar tool.
Embed calendar tools allow registrants to put a webinar on their business calendar. Include login details and all necessary information.
Audience interactivity.
Make a webinar console interesting and interactive to grab users' attention. Communicate with the audience.
Selling instead of helping
Audiences come to webinars to get answers to pressing problems and to consider new ideas.
Poor audio quality.
Sound-check every presenter 30 min before the webinar.
A must Q&A at the end of the webinar (92% of attendees).
About 10 min long. Prepare the most common FAQ in case there are no questions.
Engagement improving
93% of webinar participants prefer desktops. Therefore, 79% of all webinars have video content and remain the most popular type of data. Implementing Q&A (81% engagement), surveys (36%), polls, live chat, and display messages keep attendees interacting and from quitting before the webinar ends. Call-To-Actions Popups and social sharing buttons also provide key analytical data to measure the success of the webinar.
Target audiences insights
One of the main questions which are always in the mind of every marketer: who is the target audience? However, every business that has clients already has the answer.
1. Begin with the Company's Email database.
2. Use insights from analytics tools i.e. Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel from the business site.
3. Look-alike audience on SM (FB & LinkedIn).
How to promote a webinar?
After choosing a platform that meets your requirements, a webinar Landing Page, which contains information about Who? What? When? Where? Why?
With a registration link it can be promoted through:
1. Email marketing
2. Paid advertisement
3. Launch unique hashtag for the webinar
4. Social media - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
5. Partner marketing
6. Corporate website banner
7. Promotion in the email signature
8. Influencers
9. White paper syndicate sites
10. Add CTA to all corporate files (link to webinar, button, etc)
11. Share past webinar snippets on Social Media
12. Through speaker guests
13. PPM financial, entrepreneurial websites / FB, LinkedIn
Examples of topics for webinars
1. Digital transformation for businesses O2O (offline-to-online). The era of O2O (offline-to-online) business transformation.
2. How to recover small businesses in 14 days by moving your business online?
3. Three anti-crisis management strategies for your business.
4. How will the Coronavirus pandemic permanently change business models for offline business?
5. How long businesses will recover after COVID-19?
6. Five types of business models that will save your business during and after Pandemic.
Webinar slide examples
Slide 1
Intro: how to log in and what time webinar will begin.
Slide 2
Introducing each presenter, including job title, organization, and photo.
Slide 3
Statistics about businesses offline , increase of online businesses - with numbers. Online sales statistics. Main problems of offline businesses + explanation of necessity to move online now. Increasing digital advertising costs due to volume.
Slide 4
Main platforms for e-commerce.
Slide 5
Case studies with on product ROI and benefits. Example of already digital transformed business + show improvement KPIs (ROI, UA rate).
Slide 6
Anti-crisis management strategies.
Slide 7
Why is rebranding so important? How to implement new technologies and strategies? What to offer your customers online. How to stay connected with your clients.
Slide 8
Main mistakes of currently running ads. How to measure ROI? Limited patience of prospects due to high competition.
Slide 9
Q&A: problems and questions.
Guest speakers
1. Leader in the industry
2. Partners
3. Colleagues
4. Brand advocate
Post-webinar follow up
1. Thank you email + Webinar feedback
2. Offer on-demand access
3. Provide relevant post-event content (such as PDF, ebooks, etc)
4. Next webinar promotion
5. Offer a free consultation during or after the webinar or SEO analysis of the existing website.
Lead evaluating
After the webinar gathering the following information can be used for future webinars promotions and narrowing the target audience.
1. Location
2. Age
3. Company Size
4. Department
5. Interests
6. Industry
7. Job Title/Seniority
8. Email opens
9. Landing Pages visits
10. Webinar watching duration
11. Free consultation (SEO/site analysis) requests
12. Webinar registration vs webinar attendees
How to measure the success of a webinar?
Key metrics that should be measured to identify the effectiveness of a webinar.
1. Sign Up to attendees
2. Revenue generated from webinar
3. Call-To-Actions responses
4. Unique visitors for Landing Page vs registrations
5. The engagement rate for a webinar
6. Time spent on we
7. Brand awareness (traffic for the corporate site and social media, follows, etc)
8. Webinars retention rate
9. New vs Returning users
10. Content download on webinar page
11. Sharing from landing or webinar page
12. Leads (clients)
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