Webinar Marketing

The Complete Guide To Hosting Exceptional Tech Webinars

Article Summary

Webinars have become a cornerstone of effective tech marketing strategies, offering a unique blend of personal engagement and broad reach. These virtual events allow businesses to connect with prospects, build relationships, and generate new leads in an interactive environment. However, the process of hosting a successful webinar involves careful planning and execution. Key elements to consider include crafting targeted webinar invites using SEO and customized distribution strategies, selecting optimal timing to maximize attendance, and ensuring the content is audience-centric. Clarity in presentation is crucial; a concise and clear message is more likely to be remembered and acted upon by attendees. Additionally, interactivity, such as Q&A sessions, can enhance audience engagement. Post-webinar follow-ups, including thank-you notes and further resources, can nurture leads and encourage them to take the next steps. With the right approach, webinars can be a powerful tool for lead generation and conversion in the tech industry.

Webinars are among the most effective tech marketing strategies, made more popular by today’s shift toward remote events. A tech webinar allows you to engage with your prospects personally, build relationships with customers, and generate new leads. However, hosting a webinar is no easy task.

Learn how to incorporate webinars into your tech marketing strategies, including some best practices for hosting a webinar. Then learn an easier way of using webinars for lead generation without having to perform the legwork of hosting your own webinar.

Key Takeaways:

  • Webinars are virtual events where you can share information, promote products, and answer questions
  • Lead generation and increasing brand awareness are two of the top webinar marketing goals
  • If you want your audience to remember your webinar, make the message clear and concise
  • Always follow up with your audience to encourage them to take the next step

🤫 PS: Looking for pricing on Tech webinars? Get a price list here

What Are Webinars and How Are They Different from Other Live Events?

A webinar is a virtual event where a presenter shares images, power points, videos, or a verbal message to viewers. Because the event is entirely online, you can have an audience from anywhere with internet access.

The webinar host holds the event through a web conference platform that lets them share a screen or digital files. It also allows them to show their face using a camera tool, which is important for building trust with your audience.

You’ll also need a webinar moderator. This person’s job is to keep the topics moving and on point. They also keep your audience engaged.

While you can hold a webinar through a browser or video conferencing tools, they can limit what you can share with your audience. A dedicated webinar platform gives you the most options for hosting a memorable and effective event.

What Is the Goal of a Tech Webinar?

A webinar is ideal for sharing important information with your audience, which is why it’s a staple of content marketing for tech companies. Your audience can be general viewers who join or an exclusive, invite-only group. You can also select the maximum number of participants you want to allow to help you accomplish your lead generation goals while still encouraging engagement.

Tech marketers use webinars to engage with potential prospects and nurture current leads. You can bring in new prospects by inviting your ideal audience to a webinar, where you share quality content from their industry. Then, when your audience signs up for the webinar, you capture their contact information and add them as a lead.

You can measure your webinar’s success by the number of leads you generate from the event. About 53% of marketers say webinars generate the highest-quality leads. Additionally, 75% of marketers say webinars help them increase their brand reach, while 49% say webinars help them reach their targeted accounts.

You can also invite current leads to your webinars, where you provide solutions to pain points, discuss new products, and address roadblocks your leads often face when purchasing from you. These webinars are ideal for converting current leads.

Is There an Easier Way?

If webinars have so many benefits, why don’t more marketers incorporate them regularly in their strategies?

Hosting a webinar that generates quality leads and encourages customer interaction isn’t easy to perform. Setting up your goals, finding the required personnel for hosting and moderating, and finding the right platform are all time-consuming tasks.

ActualTech Media offers a better way to use webinars in marketing.

We find the audience for you, use our platforms for hosting, and perform the behind-the-scenes tasks that keep your webinar running smoothly. If you want to experience a white glove service where your only job is to bring the content, then explore ActualTech’s multi-vendor webinar programs.

What Content Format Should You Use for a Tech Webinar?

Webinars are flexible marketing platforms that you can use for sharing any message, from product promotions to educational content.

These are some of the most popular formats for webinars:

  • Q&A
  • Interview an industry expert
  • Host a guest speaker
  • Speak to a panel
  • Promote a new product

The best webinars combine several of these formats. In addition, 81% of webinars have a Q&A.

ActualTech Media Q&A webinar

Image from YouTube

5 of the Best Tech Webinar Practices

According to this survey, about 15% of webinar attendees purchase after the webinar, and as high as  40%  of attendees become sales qualified leads (SQLs). Use the following five practices to increase your quality leads and conversion rate.

1. Create a Targeted Webinar Invite

Your webinar invite is one of the essential parts of the webinar because your content won’t matter without an audience. Additionally, your webinar won’t lead to conversions with the wrong audience.

If you’re hosting your own webinar, you need to create custom invitations using SEO, customized distribution strategies, and specialty landing pages to drive the right audience to your webinar.

However, when you present through an ActualTech Media webinar, we perform those tasks so that you can focus on your content.

2. Carefully Choose Your Timing

If your webinar isn’t at a convenient time, your audience won’t attend. For example, if your audience is on the west coast, don't host a webinar at 9am Eastern. Our experienced webinar team can help you identify the best times to see the highest attendance rate.

You want your webinar to be long enough to provide value to those who attend but not so long that your audience grows bored or can’t fit it in their schedule. The ideal webinar length is between 30 and 40 minutes, with 44% of webinar attendees saying they prefer webinars that are 45 minutes long.

To ensure you reach the most of your audience, you should make your webinars available on-demand after the event. This way, you can continue gaining leads even after the event. You can either post your webinar manually or allow your host, like ActualTech Media, to format and share the webinar with your target audience.

3. Make the Webinar Audience-Centric

Make your audience the center of your webinar strategy. Even though your goal might be generating leads or converting prospects for your business, your customers are still the most crucial part of the webinar.

An audience-centric webinar means the topic is relevant to them and doesn’t sound like a lengthy sales pitch. It’s also interactive, letting your audience be part of the webinar. One of the most effective ways of including your audience is through Q&As. You can also encourage them to stay through the whole webinar by offering a gift at the end.

An ActualTech Media webinar giving a gift card reward

Image from YouTube

A positive customer experience starts the moment they log into the webinar. You should always arrive early, play announcements, or share welcome slides as everyone comes to set an audience-centric mood.

4. Focus on Clarity

You want your webinars to be memorable enough that your audience will act on what they learned. Your content can be confusing if you try to stuff too much information into a short webinar. Then no one will know the main message and won’t know the next step to take.

Instead, keep your message clear and easy to understand. You can highlight key points through timely slides or downloadable resources.

5. Follow Up with Your Audience

Your webinar doesn’t end when your camera turns off. If you walk away from the computer, you’ll lose many valuable leads. Instead, take the time to thank your attendees and send follow-up emails to encourage your viewers to take the next step, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.

Schedule Your Next Webinar

Start generating more leads by presenting an IT webinar. Instead of spending countless hours putting together your own webinar, allow ActualTech Media to do the heavy lifting for you. ActualTech Media has all the tools you need to present a successful technology webinar that’s engaging and memorable.

Contact us to learn more about our webinar solutions.