Hey Jo,
I’ve been asked to manage a webinar campaign at work.
It’s my first time taking charge of webinars, and I’m unsure of all the processes to account for and the information I need to gather.
Where do I start with webinars? What do I need to do to make this succeed?
Thanks,
Webinar Willa.
Willa, thanks for writing in.
Putting a webinar campaign together for the first time isn’t always easy, but it’ll be a rewarding experience and a good step forward in your role.
From my time working on webinars over the years, I’ve found there to be a pretty low general awareness from other stakeholders towards the demands of webinar campaigns and the required preparation.
“The concept of your webinar needs to be compelling and have a solid strategy.”
Before you can start to build a registration page, the concept of your webinar needs to be compelling and the strategy solid.
So, before focusing on anything technical, take some time to clarify the fundamentals. Your manager and team are there to help.
Key points to establish:
👉 Purpose: What’s your webinar trying to accomplish? Who’s the target audience?
👉 Content: What’s your webinar about? Who’s presenting?
👉 Delivery: Which webinar software will you be using? Is it integrated with your marketing automation platform?
👉 Promotion: Do you know which channels you’ll use and how you’ll allocate spend? What copy and assets do you need?
Look back at past webinar campaign report data to inform your decisions here.
👉 Scope: Ask a colleague to work with you to develop a webinar blueprint or briefing form that contains all of the relevant information.
This can help to establish and convey the scale of the work involved to other team members as you go through the process.
At this stage, you can start working out the flow of processes and getting stuck into the technical side.
👉 Share your steps: You want all your relevant stakeholders to understand the steps, timescales, accountable team members, and dependencies involved in getting each piece of the puzzle together.
A visualization tool can help you communicate your processes succinctly.
👉 Templates and testing: Program templates are likely to save you some time.
Once you’ve uploaded them with the relevant details, loop a colleague in to test them out.
Play with it until you can register for the webinar, get the correct emails flowing at the right time, and generate a link to access the session.
👉 Self-serve: Self-service updates will make your life easier after you start the program. Create a shared space where relevant teams like Sales can see automatic updates with registrants and attendees.
“Think about how you want to engage your registrants after the webinar.”
👉 Follow-up: Think about how you want to engage your registrants after the webinar, whether you send a follow-up email to suggest other relevant webinars or set up a nurture program.
After you’ve got performance data on the webinar, bring your team together to show how your processes worked and share the results.
You’ll get the opportunity to reflect on what went well and what you can improve for the next campaign.
But this is also your moment of recognition; congratulations, you pulled it off.
You’ve got this,
Jo Pulse.
