Creating a webinar is something that you should take seriously if you’re going to do it at all. You want to be creative and use plenty of multimedia. Of course, you also want to make your point or main theme crystal clear. Done right, a webinar is a masterful piece of selling or communications art.
So, like all creative minds, you have to do heavy planning before you host your webinar. Come up with possible speakers or co-presenters; a general format; “events” such as flash media or a soundtrack; a registration and promotion process; a budget; and objectives of the webinar that you can later use to review it and determine how successful it was and how you could improve future webinars.
One great way to put together a highly effective webinar is to conduct a survey in advance. When you start sending out the e-invitations, ask a question such as “What to you is the most important thing that you would want to know about with regard to [the webinar’s general topic]?” You’ll get some different answers back. Organize these answers and grade them on a scale. Make the number one answer the main theme of your webinar; use the other top answers as talking points and transitional points within the webinar. People want to hear about what they want to hear about. They want to be shown things that are important to them, not necessarily the most important things to you. Also, test market some different themes to see what would work best. When you find a tagline, a message, a theme, a phrase that is catching great feedback from people, build your webinar around it and incorporate the top survey responses into that campaign.
Once you know what you are going to give the webinar about, create a targeted marketing strategy. By knowing what people on your list want to learn about and by then targeting the people on your list who are most likely to come to a webinar about that something, you are greatly increasing the effectiveness of your webinar. There’s no point in going through the expense and time to put together a webinar that most people will not be gripped by. Note: always give people on your list the option of inviting a friend or work colleague to sit in on the webinar, too. All businesses thrive on repeat business and referrals.
Your whole sales and marketing team should at least be asked for input into creating every webinar. They are professionals at reaching people and they know your list. When you create the webinar, allow for as much audience participation as you can without losing control. And always include a Q&A session at the end. This is extremely important; this session is going to help you create your next webinar, your next multimedia marketing campaign, and perhaps your next product or service.
Practice your webinar as if you were rehearsing to go on Broadway. Practice makes perfect, and your webinar has to be as nearly perfect as you can get it. Always be prepared for something to go wrong. Rehearse every webinar the same day that it is to be given to do a “soundcheck” and see if anything needs troubleshooting. Do not let anyone who is going to be a speaker or presenter use a cell phone. Land lines or VoIP are necessary and their hands need to be free (use headsets or mics). The webinar has to run smooth even if there is a technical problem.
By Tom Cruz Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Cruz