Published on September 29th, 2020 | by Sunit Nandi

Tips To Hosting The Perfect B2B Webinar

A lot of B2B companies are making the most out of webinars these days as part of their thought leadership and content marketing efforts.

Generally, a webinar can be a powerful way to generate leads and engage or reach more prospects. However, in order for you to get the best results from webinars, you should know the ways to host one perfectly.

Like any other marketing technique, hosting a perfect B2B webinar is an end product of proper execution and planning. Regardless of the online webinar platform you’re using, below are some of the tips to host the perfect B2B webinar today:

1. Never Take Planning for Granted

A B2B webinar can only be successful if it’s planned properly. This is the reason why you should never take the planning stage for granted and plan every detail involved in your webinar.

Basically, there are various things associated with webinars, so it’s essential to carefully consider the topic, moderator, presenter, schedule, and so on. You can host your webinar in a Film Studio or you can use online tools for that, but you have to make sure that you have the clarity of why you are hosting the webinar and what your target audience is.

2. Aim to Make A Great Content

One of the primary reasons why your target audience will attend your webinar is the content you’ll be providing them. Without good content, don’t expect to get more attendees. So, always aim to create the best content when planning to host a webinar.

When developing a content, carefully choose your topic or title based on the needs, preferences, or interests of your target audience. It should also be related or relevant to what your company does. However, if there’s one thing you must remember, it’s the fact that B2B webinars should not be promotional. It must be educational and informative so that your audience may find it valuable and helpful for them.

If you can’t think of any content to create, why not research about what your target audience prefers these days? If possible, check the trends that they find interesting and think of how you can create a wonderful content out the information you’ve gathered for your webinar.

3. Use the Right Equipment and Tools

Webinars are only as great as the tools you utilize to create them. Thus, you need to choose the right B2B webinar software. Luckily, there are lots of webinar tools available in the market and there will always be a webinar tool that will perfectly match on your budget, needs, or preferences.

Other than webinar software, it’s also necessary to have the right equipment. It may include the right room to host the webinar, stable internet connection, and headset or microphones that offer static-free and crystal-clear sound.

4. Do Your Best to Spread the Word About Your B2B Webinar

Your amazing B2B webinar is useless if your target audience doesn’t know about it. So, make sure to do your best to spread the word about your upcoming B2B webinar.

There are many ways to promote your webinar. You may set up a landing page for your webinar promotion and create graphics, videos or images that may be used on social media and on your own website.

If you’re using social media platforms often, you may create ad campaigns via LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. See to it that you market it to your target audience and explain the benefits of your webinar and how much it cost to register if applicable.

Apart from social media, you might also want to send out a reminder email to your leads. Usually, it’s best to promote your webinar at least a month before and take advantage of every marketing channel available for you to promote it.

5. Be Ready for Everything

While others might think that it’s easy to present B2B webinars, it’s more difficult than you might expect it to be. Since your audience is virtual, you won’t be able to make an eye contact, notice lack of attention, or pick up on social cues like you could when done in person.

Remember that your audience only has your voice and content to hold their attention, so you need to be prepared for everything. If you’re prepared, the better you’ll be able to connect with the audience. Just practice, know your material, set up early for equipment and sound checks, and time your presentation.

You must also be prepared for the unexpected. For instance, if your attendees find it hard to log in, prepare for the other ways to log in or register to your webinar easily. Identifying various things that may come up and preparing a contingency plan will ensure convenience and peace of mind for you and your attendees.

6. Don’t Forget to Have A Facilitator

It’s challenging to manage comments, questions or switch between screens when hosting your webinar. If possible, you may have a facilitator beside you who can pay attention to questions or comments.

A facilitator may also determine which questions should be answered publicly and privately. This can make things easier for you, providing a more seamless experience throughout the presentation of your webinar.

7. Have Your Own Webinar Production Checklist

Hosting a B2B webinar involves many details and forgetting anything along the way may have a negative impact on how you can achieve success with your webinar. To avoid this from happening, you can make your own checklist for webinar production. It should include every item and activity that must be done to host a webinar successfully.

8. Stick to Your Schedule

Time is money and it applies to everything, especially in the business world. So, be sensitive to your audience’s time because it’s valuable for them.

While it isn’t uncommon for most attendees to be late, it’s best to stick to your schedule by starting and ending your webinar on time. To achieve this, you can time your presentation by allocating time frames for every topic you want to discuss from your webinars. When allocating time, make sure to include break-time as well since some of your attendees may need extra time to absorb everything you’ve discussed.

9. Use Time to Your Advantage

Just like in other projects you do, you might want to ensure that you’re smart with time management when it comes to hosting webinars. It isn’t just essential that you work within your time restraints, but also you should work within the available time of your target audience.

If you’re targeting a worldwide audience, you should know that their availability may vary as every country has different time zones. Although there’s no perfect date to host a webinar, it may depend on the work week of your audience. For instance, in the US, the best days for hosting webinars are during Wednesdays and Thursdays. But if your audience is in Asia, you might want to host your webinar on a weekend or on Fridays.

The golden rule is to avoid the last or first day of the work week of your target audience. Typically, it’s the day of starting a new project or completing their existing projects. Once you have determined the day for your webinar, you may schedule it between 11am and 2pm, depending on your audience’s time zone, to get more attendees.

10. Deliver Your Content Properly and as Promised

The description and the title that grabbed the attention of your audience when they decide to register on your webinar must be exactly the same with what you’ll present.

In short, if your attendees expect something informative and helpful, don’t create a webinar that promotes your products or services.

If you put something that isn’t relevant to your webinar’s description, it may just result in disappointments, which may affect your webinar’s attendance rate in the future. So, do your best to deliver the content as promised and create an applause-worthy webinar by keeping everything educational instead of something promotional.

11. Give Time For Q&A

Another tip to host a perfect B2B webinar is to break some sections of your webinars for questions. Giving time for Q&A may help you determine if your attendees are interested with your webinar or if they’re having a good time.

Depending on what tools you’re using, you may let your attendees ask questions about the topics discussed and give them the answer they need to understand your webinar better. It ensures that your attendees want to know more about what your company can offer them or how you can help them with their needs.

12. Follow Up

When hosting a B2B webinar, it’s crucial to follow up with your attendees. You can thank them for registering and share the slides and recording.

The best practice is to send out everything the next day to hold on to the attention of your attendees. It is because sending your follow-up email as soon as possible may keep your B2B webinar more relevant and on the top of mind of your attendees.

Depending on your preferences, you may consider adding a post-event survey. It can give you an opportunity to get feedback on webinars and gather ideas for your future webinars or things you may need to improve and tweak.

Final Thoughts

While a B2B webinar can be a great content marketing tactic, success may depend on how well you plan and execute it. With those tips above, such will provide you insights how you can host the best B2B webinar effectively. Just make sure to provide valuable and relevant content to your target audience for you to get great results.

Tags: B2B seminar, hosting, perfect, tips

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.