This content is presented in partnership with Cvent, which powers IPR events. 

The bar for webinars has been raised. A standard slide deck and a single, off-camera presenter no longer cut it. Now marketers must create moments that set their webinars apart and drive deeper audience engagement and participation.

Five Tips to Get Your Webinars Buzzing:
1) Put Your Audience First (focus on their needs, not yours)
To create a webinar worth watching, give away your best content. Taking an approach of giving instead of pushing sales communicates more effectively and people will talk about your generosity and the knowledge you shared while building reciprocity and earning business.

An engaged audience is a receptive audience. Interact with your audience: use the chat, Q&A, and polls to be in the moment with people who want to hear from you and create meaningful connections that they will remember for a long time. It’s important to make yourself available as a reliable, relatable resource and break down the walls that keep people from making real, trusting connections with the people behind the brands. Authenticity and approachability are everything in modern marketing.
It’s also important to think about where your audience is on their journey with your brand. Knowing when to position the right event, to the right audience, at the right time is critical to getting them to attend.

2) Use the Right Tools
A well-executed presentation with thoughtful moments and content will leave a lasting impression. Once you have a plan, you need pick the right tool to produce your content! There are plenty of streaming/webinar platforms out there, but you need to find the one that is going to meet all of your demands without adding a ton of complexity to your plate.

Your list of requirements will likely include:
— Ability to showcase multiple speakers, and easily switch back and forth between who is on screen
— Multiple ways to interact with your audience (chat, Q+A, etc.)
— Broadcast quality production features to add visual interest (lower thirds, ability to show visuals, play videos, etc.)

3) Brand Your Space
Make sure people know where they are and who’s talking to them. Your visual representation says A LOT about your company—more than you might think. It sets the stage and makes a first impression. Make sure that you are a positive representation of your brand and the people who work with you.

Presenters should consider branding their webinars. Within the Cvent Attendee Hub, presenters have the capability to set a theme and brand, create a lower thirds banner, and place logos within the presentation’s screen.

4) Give Away Great Content
By giving away great content you will:
— Position yourself as resource, thought-leader, and/or industry expert
— Build reciprocity with your audience.

If you put your attendees on a thoughtful and relevant journey after your webinar, you will earn their business. Follow up after your webinars thanking people for attending and offer them not only a recording of the session, but also other helpful videos, eBooks, and resources to further their understanding of the topic.

Determine the exact things you want to do after each webinar and create a post-webinar playbook. Events produce a great amount of video content – consider using this to capitalize on the convergence of video marketing and events.

5) Create Can’t-Miss, LIVE Moments
Though there are plenty of advantages with pre-recording, if your audience is willing to take time out of their day to come and listen, they are worth showing up for. A consequence of people realizing that more and more webinars are pre-recorded, is that they lose the motivation to login on time or at all.

There are ways to combat this. Create and promote can’t-miss moments, like a live Q&A with your CEO, a live critique of something submitted by an audience member, a giveaway, or access to free content for showing up. Whatever it is, you might start to see an increase in your webinar attendance.

When optimizing your webinar, remember to give yourself time for trial, error, and testing to see what’s working. Nothing is a quick fix, but committing to a new way of thinking and implementing these best practices will aid your webinar quality in the long-run.

For more information about Cvent’s Webinar Plus platform, please click here.

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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