Now that most people are at home, webinars are becoming more popular than ever. Webinars are a great way for businesses to educate others, promote their services, position themselves as knowledgeable in their industry and reach a new group of people. 

 Planning out a webinar can be a daunting task though, there are so many variables that it’s hard to know what steps you should take to set up your webinar and get the word out about it. Today, we’re going to cover all about them.

Preparation

 When prepping for your webinar the most important step is to figure out what you want the goal to be, this will become the focus of your webinar. So take some time to think of what you want the outcome to be and write it down! Then whenever you get lost or stuck you can come back to your goal to guide you and put you back on the right path.

 You need to make sure that the topic you choose is relevant to what you’re selling in order to attract the right audience. You don’t want people to leave feeling confused or that they were misled and wasted their time learning something they didn’t even want to learn.

 In order to make sure you are attracting the right audience it’s super important to do market research. Doing polls in Facebook groups or on Instagram is a great way to learn what topics your audience cares about and what they want to learn about. It also helps you find out what topics aren’t relevant and shouldn’t be included.

Promotion

 Besides doing polls, interacting in Facebook groups helps with the free promotion of your webinar and develops an interest in what you’re offering. This allows you to really learn your audience, secretly stalk them (but don’t be creepy!), have conversations with them and figure how to appeal to them.

 While you’re doing this try to organically promote your webinar and get them to sign up for your newsletter. If you’re still in the early stages then you want to make sure you have an email list or website ready so that you can keep them updated as you work on your webinar and have a way to reach out again when you’re ready to launch.

 Start dropping hints on your social media platforms. Something like a sneak peek video saying you’re working on a training, about whatever it is you’ve chosen, on your Instagram story or a poll asking people what they prefer to learn about. It also helps to make your audience feel involved so that they feel like the training is hitting what they need to know and they’ll be more likely to sign up if they feel like they contributed something to it.

Final Steps

 Next, you need to figure out how you’re going to host your webinar. You can use Zoom, do a Live in your Facebook group or on Instagram, or host it on a website. What you choose is entirely up to you and varies on the results you want, what resources you need, what resources you have and the type of content you’re offering. Just make sure you do your research to figure out what will work best for you.

 Even if you choose to do something simpler like Facebook and Instagram lives, you can still promote it and collect emails to connect with people before and after and grow your business. It doesn’t have to be fancy and take months of preparation, just make sure you’re offering great content and people will be interested.

 Make signing up easy for people. If someone has to go through a lot of steps just to sign up, chances are they’ll get frustrated and might give up. You want to make sure your sign-up page has an easy and shareable link that’s optimized for SEO so it can be found on google as well. The link should be short and relate to your webinar or brand to make sure people immediately know what it’s for when they see the link.

 You’ll also need a landing page that gives people the details of your webinar. You can usually create landing pages in your email service provider, like MailerLite, or you can create them on your website or use a website that specifically creates landing pages.

 After that, you need to set up a success or a thank you page that tells people what to expect and when to expect the final details of your event. This page also serves as a confirmation that they’ve signed up for the website and aren’t just left wondering if their submission went through.

 Now you should be able to start planning out your webinar and have the tools to get some promotion going for it as well. In the Rebel Office Resources Library, we go more in-depth about what else you’ll need to get your webinar set up and also cover how to use Zoom for webinars and set up your email list with MailerLite, so don’t hesitate to go and check it out.