5 Tips to Creating an Awesome Webinar Content Strategy

Webinars are increasingly becoming a key part of the savvy marketers toolkit and it’s easy to see why InsideSales.com reports that 73% of marketing and sales leaders cite webinars as one of the best ways to generate quality leads.

Why are webinars so popular? Well, they are a versatile medium - they work at any stage of the flywheel - and they are engaging (you get an essentially captive audience for 30-60 minutes).

Best of all, webinar leads tend to be of a higher quality, as you get a multitude of information about your attendees, and data regarding their engagement with your webinar campaign, which can later be used by your sales teams to tailor future communications assets.

What’s not necessarily so easy is creating webinar content that will engage your audience and bring them back time and time again. It can intimidating coming up with creative webinar ideas for for high quality content, but we can assure you it doesn’t have to be difficult.

So, we’ve compiled five tips to help you create engaging webinar content that will delight your audience:

1. Get to know your audience

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when they start planning a webinar is ignoring their audience’s demographic. Instead, they charge ahead with their latest big idea and then wonder why audience engagement was terrible.

Let me ask you this: would you use the same email marketing strategy for a lawyer that you would for a graphic designer? Probably not. So why would you use the same webinar content?

Take a little bit of time to determine what your target demographic is and then tailor the subject and webinar content to them. Not only will this delight your audience, but it will also make it easier to pull together relevant content.

2. Use your sales team

As much as we hate to admit it, sometimes marketers (even content specialists like me) need a little bit of help coming up with webinar ideas. The great thing is, you already have an amazing resource at your fingertips - your sales team.

Sales people deal with customers every day and throughout every stage of the sales process, so they know what questions customers are asking before they even ask it and what information will actually be of use.

Get their buy-in right when you start the webinar process - set up a meeting, a brainstorm, a huddle, whatever you call it, and get their ideas.

It’s a win-win - interesting content ideas and a bit of relationship building with your sales team.

3. Consider what type of online event is most suitable

When most of us think of online events we think of webinars. However, that’s not the only type of event and ensuring you’ve picked the right medium and format will go a long way to creating killer content.

So what are the types of events can you host online?

You have webinars, which are online seminars/presentations. They can be for a small group to hundreds of people. One of the main features is the interaction between presenter and attendee, as there is an opportunity for questions, polls, surveys etc. These are suitable for sharing knowledge with large groups of customers, CPD, and more.

A webcast is typically a one-way flow of information broadcast to a large audience. The audience doesn’t necessarily contribute to the content of the webcast, which could include an audio stream, presentation slides, or video clips. Webcasts work well for broadcasting conferences, town hall events, panels or product launches.

Virtual events are much larger in scale. Think about them like a virtual version of an expo or trade conference, which makes them ideal for reaching thousands of attendees. You can run multiple sessions, keynote addresses, 1:1 interaction and chat and much more.

Thinking about what type of event you want to host will ensure you create the right content for your audience.

4. Go multimedia

I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but the future is video. Whether or not you fully buy into that, the stats don’t lie - people love engaging with video.

What does that mean for your webinar content? Well, static imagery or powerpoint slides - no matter how well put together - can quickly lose audience attention, which will kill your attendee engagement.

Related: Learn more 7 interactive ways to increase webinar engagement

Introducing elements, like video, to your webinar content not only helps keep your audience interested, if used properly, it can be a powerful way to illustrate certain points or act as a springboard to other content.

There are a few important things to keep in mind with video:

• Keep it relevant: using video just for the sake of it is the wrong way to keep audience attention. Make sure any video is relevant to your subject and is actually useful.
• Have a purpose: Defining a purpose for your video can help with the first point. Is the video the main form of communication or is it a way to highlight a particularly interesting piece of info? Knowing this will also help you plan and create your slides and presenter content too.
• Text is still okay: Don’t worry, you can still use slide decks and illustrations. And, text can actually be a better way to demonstrate certain points. Use whatever medium makes the most sense for the content.

5. Be passionate and creative

Is there anything worse than listening to a presenter who isn’t passionate about the content they’re presenting? Yes!

Having to create and present content you have no interest in can arguably be worse than sitting through a passionless presentation. That doesn’t mean you need to be passionate about every webinar presentation you create, especially considering what industry you’re in.

I mean, I wish I could convince WorkCast to let me present webinars on why The Princess Bride is an underrated masterpiece, but that’s not always possible.

Instead, you should find a way to create content that you find interesting. And that means being creative. How would you like to hear about the topic you’re presenting? Are there any creative ways to engage with the content that make it compelling? You can find a way to bring a bit of passion to any subject, it just takes a little bit of thought and creativity.

If you keep these webinar tips in mind, you can create awesome content that your audience will absolutely love.

And the best part? You can reuse and re-purpose your webinar content so that it has a shelf life beyond the 60-minute live broadcast. After all, you’ve put in all of the work to create amazing content, you should get the most out of it.

Learn how to create engaging webinar content by downloading our eBook today.