How to Host a Webinar Using Zoom, Your Computer, and YouTube – That’s it!

With the advent of the digital age, hosting webinars serves as a great way to generate leads, showcase your expertise as a financial advisor, and transform your ideas into lively, engaging events!

Look around, do you see other financial advisors offering webinars? While it might not be something that is super trending at the moment among your peers it is a great (and affordable!) digital marketing tactic to seriously consider adopting. At Twenty Over Ten, we work with a lot of financial advisors. And we know that some of the main reasons advisors aren’t hosting webinars are due to time commitment, the technology curve, and cost. Today we’re here to break down all of those roadblocks and share how you can easily host your own webinar for prospects and clients with just three simple, cost-effective tools.

After hosting a myriad of webinars ourselves throughout the years it’s safe to say that we’ve learned some secrets to creating high-quality webinars in simple ways. We have recognized the do’s and don’ts as well as what tech to use and what not to use. You would be surprised to learn that the only tools we use are Zoom, a computer, Google Slides, and YouTube.

Webinar Hosting for Financial Advisors: Barriers to Entry

Advisors shy away from the idea of incorporating webinars into their digital marketing strategy because it seems like a daunting task. However, in the digital era, conducting webinars serves as a fabulous way to not only reach your target audience but also interact with your current followers and clients.

Among the many things advisors may assume you need to host a webinar, some include a presentation, a graphic designer, screen recording software, video hosting, webinar automation software, headsets, email marketing software and more. After reading such a long list of items such as this we can understand why most would pass on incorporating webinars into their digital marketing strategies. Rest assured, many of these technologies are optional, and we think that you can create great quality webinars without using many of the above mentioned features.

The Only 3 Tools You Need to Successfully Host a Webinar

We are here to bust all your webinar myths and outline the only three things you need to start hosting killer webinars right away!

Tool #1: Google Slides

First things first, to create a webinar, you should create a presentation. You can make this presentation using many different resources such as PowerPoint or Google Slides. However, we typically find Google slides to be easiest because of its sharing capabilities and the ability to use it wherever you go! Creating slides to accompany your webinar will contribute to the visual component of your webinar, so it is important that they are properly designed. Not only do the slides add to the visual component, but they also assist in showcasing your brand and company voice to your viewers. Once you create a killer presentation, you are ready to record it once the day finally arrives!

The best part of all about Google Slides? It’s completely free! That’s right. You just need to create a free Gmail account and you can access Google Slides through My Drive. Looking for step-by-step instructions on how to use and customize your Google Slides? Check out this handy guide from Google.

Tool #2: Zoom

The day of your webinar has finally arrived. You might be a tad nervous and second-guessing yourself at this point but you are going to do just great! You have your presentation, and now you just need a screen recording device. There are a plethora of webinar hosting tools you can use, but here at Twenty Over Ten, we use Zoom and are huge fans of their product.

Zoom is a software that allows for video conferencing, online meetings, chat, and mobile collaboration. Of their many products, Zoom Video Webinars proves to be very useful. Zoom Video Webinar has a multitude of options, letting customers pick plans that range from having 100 participants to 10,000 participants starting at just $14.99 per month. You can even sign up for a free, basic plan if you’re only hosting 100 participants or less – score!

Zoom Video Webinar provides audio and video capabilities, and as a host, you can share your screen. This is when your google slides come into play! In addition, with Zoom, you can mute your participants or you can interact with them through a chat and Q&A feature.

Not only is Zoom an instrumental tool to host your webinar it also helps in promoting your webinar as well. Zoom’s registration management features allow you to brand forms and emails and integrate directly with your CMS to seamlessly import them into your marketing automation platform for follow up.

Tool #3: YouTube

Now that you have created your slides and successfully conducted your webinar, its time to broaden your reach! Maybe you had 100 participants in your webinar, or maybe you had 10. Whatever the number is, it is still integral to put your webinar on the internet in order to give thousands of people the opportunity to view it.

Videos are now a key digital marketing tactic as the majority of people are willing to watch a video about a topic rather than read about it. If you’re using Zoom you can easily record your webinar and download the raw MP4 file in order to upload your webinar to YouTube. Once you have uploaded your webinar onto YouTube, you can pat yourselves on the back as you have successfully completed the webinar process! If you want more information on how to best use YouTube, check out A Financial Advisor’s Guide to YouTube.

Now, that wasn’t too bad was it!? We hope this quick rundown has helped instill some confidence in you to host your own webinars. It truly only takes three tools: Zoom, Google Slides and YouTube to create amazing webinars. Now, you can be confident about hosting webinars, as you know know that it doesn’t require too many tools, expenses, or manpower!