Throughout this past year, one of our initiatives has been to increase the number of training and tangible resources that are available to our valued clients. From success guides, to eBooks, and webinars—we’ve created a comprehensive content library.

While writing an email marketing guide requires hours of brainstorming, writing, and editing, the delivery—sharing it online—is relatively simply. On the contrary, a webinar’s success is solely based off of the delivery and its performance, so to speak. Fortunately, hosting bimonthly webinars has required us to jump headfirst into the unknown, and to discover a few tips and tricks along the way.

Practice makes perfect.
There’s no escaping the fact that a webinar is a speech. Just because you’re behind a computer screen doesn’t mean that you should be practicing any less. For us, we have hundreds of listeners tuning in and being unprepared just isn’t an option.

In the weeks leading up to the webinar, we schedule a multitude of dry runs. This helps the presenter not only understand the material, but most importantly, shows what is working and what needs tweaking. It’s one thing to put together a slide and think about a point, but it’s a different ballgame to talk through the point out loud.

The shorter, the better.
We can’t stress this point enough. During the hectic work week, no one has time to devout hours to a webinar. Aim to keep your full presentation—including questions—to under an hour. People signed up to learn, not to hear you ramble.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people only remember around ten percent of what they hear a week later, but over forty percent if they write it down. Try and structure your webinar to have specific action items that the listener will be able to document and implement.

Back to the sales basics.
In sales, it’s not what you say, but how you say it, and the same rings true for a webinar. It’s so easy for a listener to lose interest if you aren’t pulling them into your presentation. Being passionate about what you’re teaching will lead to increased engagement. Your listeners want to be inspired to take action.

If you don’t feel like you’re passionate about the subject matter, you might not be familiar enough on the topic—and that’s okay. Take a step back, and drill down even deeper to determine what you should be presenting on. You listeners will certainly appreciate it.

Press record.
A simple, yet highly effective tip. Thanks to webinar hosting programs like GoToWebinar, you don’t have to be a video pro to record a webinar. Not only do we record the practice runs to help better prepare for the day of, but also the live presentation.

Your listeners will be more than thrilled when they receive an email containing the recording to reference the takeaways, and share with their coworkers. In addition, YouTube makes for the perfect platform to host the recording and can increase your engagement and help to establish you as a thought leader.

Hosting a webinar doesn’t have to be a daunting task. In fact, with a little trial and error, it can establish you as a thought leader, and keep your pipeline full.