What is Webinar Software? Webinar Tools, Format, and How To Make Effective One

In this guide, we will go deep into what is webinar software? How does it work? webinar formats, benefits, elements, how to make a highly effective one, and the webinar software tools.

Have you ever thought about holding a unique and fun business event for your target audience and clients? An event with engaging content, interactive exercises and networking, all with the potential to improve your brand awareness and convert more leads into paying customers to increase your revenue. 

Instead of inviting participants to a conference room with all the high costs that this involves, plus logistics and inconvenience, business people are looking for an easier, cheaper, faster, and more convenient way for them and the participants – the solution is the webinar.

Webinars (or web conferences) are one of the most consumed types of content on B2B channels and that improve engagement. 

To create a highly efficient webinar it is necessary that it meets the three basic characteristics of quality content: unforgettable, entertaining and useful.

What is Webinar Software?

The webinar is a conversation on the Internet, an online conference with customers, employees, suppliers and partners. You can make a presentation, demonstrate a product and transmit a message at any time and place. 

Participants sit in front of any Internet-connected device (desktop, tablet, mobile device), listening to the presenter in real time, watching a video (WebCam), asking questions and getting answers live.

A webinar is a software in video format on a specialized topic. It is done over the internet and is usually shared in real time, although it can also be recorded in advance. 

You must allow audience participation to ask questions, make comments, or collaborate with the presenter.

How Does a Webinar Work?

The host (and other presenters, if any) should set a date and time for the event and invite audience members to register and attend. Then, you organize the event with the help of webinar software.

The webinar should educate, demonstrate, instruct, or explain something to your attendees and helps your business position itself as an expert in your industry, improve brand awareness, and increase conversions and sales. 

It is recommended that whether your webinar is live or not, it should always be recorded; this way you will have those files for future reference on your website, as webinars are often a great source of permanent content.

What Is a Webinar Software For?

Webinars allow companies to create interactive events for their clients and potential clients, regardless of their physical location. They can be used to generate leads and conversions, improve brand awareness, and increase revenue .

Elements of a Webinar

• Main event
• Host and presenter(s)
• Attendees
• Desktop or laptop computer with camera and microphone
• Presentation (usually in the form of slides)
• Interactive element for attendees to participate (for example, poll, poll, or discussion)
• Webinar Software 

The Benefits of a Webinar

Webinars give businesses the opportunity to host an interactive digital event for members of a target audience and customers, no matter where they are. They are an effective way to reach many people. 

Here are some of its benefits in more detail:

1. Personalize The Content

Webinars are an easy way to create unique and personalized content for your brand, as you can include a variety of presentation features to enhance the experience of viewers and audience members, such as drawing tools, interactive activities, slides, polls. , chat and more. 

2. Low Cost

Webinars are cheap. Think of it this way: if you were hosting an in-person event with your target audience and clients, there’s a good chance you’d have to rent a space, order food, buy presentation equipment, pay for cleaning, etc. 

While if you do a webinar you will save money and you can even organize it for free. 

3. Educate Prospects and Customers about your Product or Service

Webinars are a simple way to educate your audience. You can choose to explain the benefits of your product or service, review capabilities and features, or even focus on how you solve the challenges of your current buyers and customers. 

4. Demonstration of your Product or Service

In addition to educating attendees, you can also provide an instructional demo on how they can use or implement your product or service. 

5. Positioning

By hosting a webinar, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. If you regularly host educational webinars, through which attendees get practical tips so they can learn something new, you are more likely to become more authoritative in your industry. 

6. Increase Awareness

Webinars are another way to increase awareness, as you can target your target audience and encourage members of your audience to share it with others, thereby reinforcing your brand recognition.

7. Drive Conversions

You can use webinars as a source of conversions and revenue by establishing yourself as a thought leader. Prospects will be more inclined to trust you and therefore your product or service. 

Also, as you promote and share your webinar, increased awareness will lead to higher conversions.

7 common webinar formats

1. Expert Panel
2. Interview
3. Presentation or demonstration of product or service
4. Questions and answers
5. Instructive
6. casual chat
7. Case study

1. Panel of Experts

With this format it is possible to attract more audience; you can invite an industry expert, either internal or external to your company, to discuss anything around your business.

2. Interview

Think about the various topics that your audience members want to hear, and then find a suitable interviewer and interviewee to set up an interview. This could be an internal or external thought leader, a member of your team, a current and loyal customer, or even someone outside of the industry.

3. Product or Service Presentation or Demonstration

This webinar format provides your audience with a presentation or demonstration of your product or service, in order to clearly present the benefits and applications of what you are selling. 

4. Questions and Answers

In this type of format, you can invite a member of your board of directors to host the Q&A and have employees (sales reps, service reps, marketers, product managers, etc.) answer any questions they have. the audience members. 

5. Instructions

With a webinar you can teach your target audience how to do something, for example achieve a goal. Take a good look at your buyers and review what their challenges are, choose one of those obstacles and offer them an instruction on how they can solve it effectively. 

6.Casual Chat

Whether with a member of your team or an external leader, this webinar format allows you to create a casual chat with your target audience. This way, audience members can tune in, sit back, and enjoy natural conversation by asking questions and generating new directions during a discussion. 

7. Case Study

With this webinar format, you can invite customers to attend to talk about how your product or service has solved a variety of challenges for one of your loyal customers. Look at your case studies and select which one is the most compelling to show. 

Now that you know what the different webinar formats are and what they are for, we will tell you how to create a highly effective webinar.

13 Tips On How to Create a Highly Effective Webinar

1. Make your content match what your buyer personas are looking for.
2. Use a provider that allows you to have a registration URL.
3. Create a registration landing page to make tracking easy.
4. Design and implement a strategic promotional campaign.
5. Make a promotional video.
6. Automate email promotion using workflows.
7. Set expectations for participation and record your webinar to use as content.
8. Design a visual campaign.
9. Don’t read from a slide or forget about an agenda.
10. Decide which format you will use.
11. Create a communication system with your audience.
12. Get the sales actions in tune.
13. Do an essay.

1. Make your Content Match What Your Buyer Personas are Looking for

Take a good look at the information searches of your target audience and find an attractive topic and headline. 

For example, GROU did a webinar on inbound marketing, but instead of calling it “Intro to Inbound Marketing” they titled it “The Lies of Digital Marketing” to make it more interesting.

2. Use a Provider that Allows you to Have a Registration URL

Contact the software provider for the webinar service, which will provide you with a registration link. The best ones are in English, although they are very intuitive and easy to use. Our suggestions are:

• GoToWebinar : it is a classic of webinars. It has plans starting from 89 USD per month, its results are impeccable and of good quality. It suits you if you offer several webinars per month. 
• WebEx : another classic, even cheaper, with different plans and supports webinars of up to 300 attendees.
• AnyMeeting – It’s free for 30 days on all their plans, ranging from 50 to 1,000 attendees.
• Zoom – Has monthly or yearly plans that allow for 100 to 10,000 participants. 
• ClickMeeting : you can use its trial version for 30 days with plans from 10 to 1,000 attendees. 

3. Create a Registration Landing Page to Facilitate Follow-Up

It is very important to create a landing page for each webinar. This will help you to detail all the information of the event and, in addition, to manage that database as part of your lead nurturing actions. 

All you have to do is ask for the visitor’s email address, as well as their name and organization. 

If you want to know more about their activities, you can ask them to select what their interest is in your content: if they are specialized agencies looking for technical knowledge, if they are companies looking for suppliers or simply professionals who want to delve into a topic. 

Keep in mind that the more fields they have to fill in, the lower the number of responses will be . This can be beneficial if you are looking for a small audience that is highly interested in your offer.

Confirm that webinar registration is complete for each attendee who has registered. You can do this by sending registrants to a new landing page with confirmation details. Another option is to send follow-up emails to attendees shortly after registration is complete.

4. Design and Implement a Strategic Promotion Campaign

You can’t expect your webinar registrations to arrive by themselves. Establish a tactical plan on how you are going to promote it: from 12 posts related to the topic on your blog (3 a week in the previous month), through graphics, infographics for posts on social networks, as well as email marketing campaigns.

You can also use paid posts on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. 

My recommendation is to start the promotion at least 3-4 weeks before the day of the event with more frequent appearances as the date gets closer. 

5. Make a Promotional Video

Develop a 40-second video to describe what people will learn at the seminar. You will be surprised how well this video promotion works, since we are becoming more and more visual.

6. Automate Email Promotion Using Workflows

Prepare the workflow, or flow, of approximately four different emails to promote your webinar. You will send the first one month before the webinar, the second three weeks before; the third, a week before; while the fourth, 2 hours before starting the transmission. 

It may seem like a lot of emails, but most people sign up shortly before the event .

Include details in your messages about the equipment needed to participate in the webinar, such as a laptop with stable Wi-Fi, speakers, a microphone, and a camera. You can also provide information about your presenters or the interactive element of the webinar to get attendees excited. 

Provide clear instructions on how your attendees will join or view the event. For example, you can include a link to join or watch the webinar in the email two hours before the broadcast starts. 

7. Set Expectations for Participation and Record your Webinar to use as Content

Webinars need to be interactive, so it’s important that you set expectations early on and have your presenters reiterate them at the start of the event, so everyone is on the same page. If your webinar is live, facilitate participation and discussion throughout the event, or reserve time for discussion and Q&A at the end. 

If the webinar is pre-recorded, set a window of time after it’s been shared for attendees to submit questions. Presenters can then record or type responses and send them to the appropriate attendee.

In any case, do not forget to record the webinar you are doing . This will allow you to have the content that will generate leads for much longer. Once the webinar is done, you must send a thank you email to all the registrants with a link to that recording, which you will place on your thank you page. 

8. Design a Visual Campaign

Develop a campaign with images and infographics to publish three weeks before. Every day you can publish (both on social networks and on your blog) with the link that leads to your registration landing page. 

Think that most registrations are not generated on social networks, but they are the most important means of creating expectations.

9. Don’t Read from a Slide or Forget About an Agenda

Since you will give a webinar focused on the area in which you are an expert, you must show ease and confidence in what you say. It is not recommended that you use your slides, infographics or any other visual support as a substitute for your speech, nor is it necessary that you follow a script to the letter.

The best thing is that you write a brief topic and some phrases that help you direct the conversation. Write these guidelines and subtitles so that there is a common thread throughout the session. 

10. Decide What Format you Will Use

Will you be the only speaker on this webinar? Do not forget that you can have guests who add value according to your agenda. You can even have presenters to help you encourage the audience to generate positive expectations for the meeting. 

You can also opt for a panel discussion with other speakers or attendees. This will be very useful if you decide that there will be a maximum of 20 or 30 people, with whom you can talk openly, especially if they are specialists in a niche or representatives of companies with similar challenges. In short, explore all the format options you already know.

11. Create a Communication System with your Audience

Choose a tool that allows you to communicate with your followers and with each of the people who decided to enter the webinar. 

Most programs allow a chat window where you can read their questions. Later in this article we mention some free webinar software.

You can also leave an open quiz on your landing page where participants submit questions in advance. This will also help you organize your agenda and know what specific focuses your audience is interested in. 

12. Get Sales Actions on the Same Page

Whether you have a sales team or you do this work on your own, it is important that you know what you will do with all the leads that you generate. Create segmented mailing lists, according to the content needs of the attendees and make your offer reach the right moments. 

If your webinar was to promote a product or service, you can follow up by email two or three days later. This way you can ask post-sale questions for those who did buy your offer or specific questions for those who did not, but are interested. 

Steven Essa, a specialist in webinars and digital education, suggests sending an email offering financing plans to those who showed interest, but did not accept the initial offer. You can do it, for example, if you promoted a course or a consultancy. 

13. Do an Essay

Create a rehearsal webinar a day or two before the actual presentation. Ask some of your followers or friends to attend the virtual event to check that everything works correctly: from the audio and video to the live chat. 

This way you will have the security that you will know how to solve technical problems in case they occur.

Free Webinar Software

Free service is good, but at some point you will realize that the companies that provide you with free webinar services are not doing it out of your generosity. After all, they are a business, just like yours.

If you want to do a test webinar or paid software options are not for you, you can create your own event with the help of these tools:

Skype

Skype was created in advance as an Internet conversation system and, in fact, it is the most popular system in this field.

When it comes to Webinars, Skype has limited capabilities both in number of participants (up to 10 participants) as well as lack of screen painting, pre-meeting scheduling and recording capabilities; all these required features are not in Skype.

Skype webinars cannot be scheduled in advance because the system does not allow it and everything is done now, on the spot. In other words, to set up an event in Skype, you need to set it up in terms of setup, invite people, and run the webinar on the spot; not everyone is fit for this method of action. 

This corresponds perhaps to a family reunion or a group meeting day at a certain time known to all, but in this way for most business activities with clients, as a means of internal communication, it is not appropriate. 

So I prefer to manage with clients, other webinar systems, such as GoToWebinar.

Free Conference Call

Create your virtual webinars with the help of this free software, where you will have the option to share your screen to offer visual support to those who attend. A free account allows up to 1,000 participants.

To get started, you simply need to create an account with your email and password. The best thing is that there is no time limit per event, you can change the presenter and you will have a whiteboard at your disposal.

Apache OpenMeetings

Apache OpenMeetings may not be the most visually friendly option, but it does have adequate functions, since you can share audio and video, record your webinars, select the area of ​​the screen you want to share and create a moderator system in the chat.

You will also have a private message area and an integrated calendar. Without a doubt, it is an option worth trying. 

BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton is open source software that is focused on delivering conferences and facilitating education around the world. It is recognized for its audio and video quality, even in large groups.

In addition to these free webinar, you can use your YouTube channel or Facebook brand page to host your next webinar, via live video. 

Tips During the Webinar to Make it Highly Effective

Now that the time has come to carry out the webinar, we suggest that it should not last more than 45 minutes (with extra time for questions). Here are some tips to make it highly effective:

• When starting your webinar , the first thing you should do is introduce yourself (perhaps many know you, but there will be people who don’t), then give a general introduction to the topic and mention what topics you will address during your presentation.
• Focus on solving doubts rather than showing off your talent as a speaker. Speak simply and directly trying to cover the most common problems faced by consumers in your industry and their causes. Then, offer your vision on how to solve them. Always think about providing valuable and useful content that attendees can put into practice for quick results.
• Leave the promotion of your products or services at the end , without being too commercial. Show the link of the pages where you offer more information for those who are interested. 
• Finally, make sure to record the webinar because many of those who sign up will want to watch it again or share it with people close to them. 

After the webinar, it’s good to send an email to all registrants with a link to the recording. We recommend that it be the next day, although many do it the same day, it is your decision. 

Consider that the majority of webinar participants are qualified leads. Some will be competitors because they want to see what you do, but most will be potential customers who require the solution you offer. Take the opportunity to approach them!