How to run a webinar series
We at Redbox Mobile wanted to put down our thoughts in order to help you to go ahead and launch your own webinar series. If you have done already, that's great, maybe you'll find some of our tips useful anyhow. A few questions to ask before your company starts building out its very own webinar series. Are you looking to educate and inform? Do you have a unique voice as a company or as an individual that will make people want to listen? In the new world order where Webinars are commonplace, and everyone is claiming to have the 'best and most informative' speakers and content – how do you cut through? If you have a clear answer to the above questions and it's not being driven by 'we have to do as our competitors are doing so' or clouded by 'we think our product is great and the webinar will give us a great sales platform to boast about' – Be brave and go ahead.
Webinars are likely to form the mainstay of B2B communications as events morph into virtual events and 2020 has seen 'zoom culture' become the norm. People are happy to sign up and listen live ( or importantly register in order to consume at a later date ) if it's relevant and finely tuned to their needs.
Our top 10 tips
Two heads are better than one! Redbox Mobile decided to team up with Adjust, one of the leading MMP's globally. That way you bring more clients with you, more expertise internally, more hands making lighter work of organisation of creating the content, getting speakers onboard, creating assets to promote etc.
Create a brand for your webinar series. Don't forget we work in advertising – how many generic webinar invites have you had this year that are not distinguishable! We wanted to create an informal, chatty atmosphere, where clients were happy to share knowledge freely and openly. In order to do this, we created 'Mobile Afternoon Tea Talks' – we deliberately placed the sessions mid to late afternoon in Europe and actively encouraged attendees to take a breather with a cup of tea or coffee while they listened in. All marketing featured the distinct branding, and this was also echoed within the sessions.
Will there be 2 or 3 clear takeaways from your webinar? Give clear signposted content discussion points and what the attendee will learn or hear debate around. Try not to then stray too far from the content advertised during the session. It's all about utility – What can I learn that I can translate into my job or my life?
Decide on the format. There is no one size fits all – but the same 'talking heads' for one full hour might be a little too monotonous. Mix up the presenters, mix up the panellists. The variety of deep dive client presentation or case study followed by a breakout panel is a good mix. An industry leader for a 'fireside virtual chat' can be followed up with a stat heavy PPT presentation on 2020 trends. For a webinar we ran for smaller clients with limited marketing resource– we created a 'how to' webinar where we gave practical tips on how you can brush up your own ASO for your app and how to set up and track your own Apple Search Ads campaigns. Up to you – mix it up. Too much presenting can get boring and impersonal, too much discussion might need some facts and figures to bookend the hour and give it some shape.
Choose your speakers and hosts well. It doesn't necessarily follow that the more senior the person, the more engaging and insightful they will be. Listen to a wide range of webinars or events and earmark presenters who you will think would give your webinar a lift and approach them. They'll usually be flattered you've asked! You want people who can hold their own on a specific topic. Whilst you probably don't want a full-blown argument on a panel – it really makes sense to have potential opposing views or speakers from a different vertical with differing experiences. People you know can express themselves well and succinctly is the key.
Brief everyone well. Simple enough right? You wouldn't believe how poorly briefed some speakers feel prior to a webinar. Do a dry run if necessary, run speakers through expectations, sample questions and topics given well in advance for prep time. Fully recommend everyone synch in advance, make sure mics and screens are working fine and that PPT's load correctly, people have branded backgrounds if needed. Timely prep is key and gives everyone confidence. Tripping up your own speakers and presenters by poor prep is a big NO-NO.
Create some good marketing collateral. I'll need to give major credit to Adjust events team here – but we've been able to get great traction through social channels with clearly labelled and branded social posts, videos and the like.
See an example Social post here from Tea Talks:
See our branded video ad here:
Get the audience to interact. Depending on what webinar software you use – you should be able to get audience to post live questions. It's good practice to answer the questions post webinar even if you didn't get time to do so in Q&A time. Polls are also a great way to engage attendees. They can be as serious or as fun as you want – as long as they're on topic. We recently asked, 'Have you ever played Candy Crush Saga?' as an example poll question while Performance Director of king was speaking.
We think offering all attendees the chance to win something for engaging by asking questions or responding to polls is a good idea. Similarly, when we were speaking to smaller clients on our 'how to' webinar – we offered everyone who attended free credit for them to use on our platform as a 'thank you' gesture. An engaged audience is key to further building your webinar brand and getting good word of mouth and virality.
Post Webinar follow up. Do send out follow up emails to all attendees and those that registered that couldn't attend promptly. Recommend you host and send link to the video content and any slides presented. Encourage attendees to share the content. Be clear that they can contact you for a meeting or follow up information.
Analyse the data. Take time to look at attendees and registrations. Share pertinent information with sales teams for targeted outreach if needed. If you can get direct feedback from some attendees as to content and tone, that will be very useful information to feed back into the next webinar. Have fun building your branded Webinar Series from all at Redbox Mobile!
View our Tea Talks Webinar: https://adjust-video.wistia.com/medias/zpqtmar14z
Look out for our next webinar in December!
Get in touch if you would like to join our next webinar in November: marketing@redboxmobile.com