Webinars that Work: Helpful Hints for Promoting and Hosting a Webinar

We all wish we could be in four places at once, but physics – and L.A. traffic – make this impossible. Instead, communicators must be selective about allocating time and budget to hosting educational events for their key audiences. In our experience at Cause Communications, webinars can be a great cost-effective tool for sharing information with large audiences, and they don’t even require us to leave our desks. Here are some tips to consider before hosting your own webinar.

Choosing to do a Webinar

Webinars are best when you’re trying to share information with a large group of people who are hard to reach because of their demanding schedules. HCC recently hosted a webinar with L.A. Care Health Plan to inform physician staff about Cal MediConnect and California’s Coordinated Care Initiative. Doctors’ offices often close for an hour at lunch, so we scheduled the webinar to take place from noon to 1 p.m. on a Thursday. The turnout was great because it was a time that the audience could be at their desks, tuned into the webinar.

You will need to identify a service and set up an account to organize and broadcast your webinar. GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting, and WebEx are some of the best-known providers for professional webinars.

Promoting a Webinar

It’s likely you will never meet the individuals who participate in your webinar, and if you’re hoping to build a relationship with them, you might not use this method to reach them the first time. But if you’re looking to disseminate information they will find useful, a webinar is a beneficial way to do so.

As a general rule of thumb, send your first promotion e-mail two weeks in advance, and then a follow-up promotion the week of the webinar. The majority of webinar attendees will register the week of. Your promotion e-mails should include the registration link, which interested participants can click to easily register for the event. We also suggest considering other channels for promotion, such as flyers, social media, and inclusion in partner communications.

Just Before and During Webinar

Each service has different features to customize and make the most of your webinar experience. We recommend doing an organizer run-through before the actual event to be sure you have experimented with all the tools and know which features to turn on and off during the event.

On the day of your webinar, be sure the organizing team convenes at least an hour before the webinar is scheduled to start. Just because participants can’t see you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t show up early and be ready to address their needs in a professional manner.

After the Webinar

Another benefit of webinars is that they offer a good opportunity to stay in touch with your participants. Most services enable you to survey participants when the webinar ends, and you can also send a customized follow-up note to webinar attendees. You may choose to include a link to the survey in this e-mail, as well as upload a recording of the presentation, which many participants will likely find useful and pass onto their colleagues. Read the feedback you receive from the surveys and be sure to follow up if anyone had additional questions or requested more information.

See, not so bad! Webinars are a useful tool for sharing information without the cost or complicated logistics of an in-person event.

For more information about how HCC can help you market your cause to the right audience, contact Lindsay Kurs at lkurs@causecommunications.com.