At Twenty Over Ten, we are big proponents of webinars. We have hosted hundreds of them, so we know a thing or two about using them to provide information to clients and prospects and drive leads. When it comes to hosting a successful webinar, however, there are tools that you need to be using in order to host the strongest webinars.
In the below video, you can see how to best use webinars to generate leads for your advisory firm.
5 Tools for Hosting an Effective Webinar
It takes more than just great content in your webinar to host strong ones. Here are 5 tools that will take your webinars to the next level.
1. Zoom
There are many different webinar hosting tools that you can use, but at Twenty Over Ten, we use Zoom, and the product has been working really well for us. As many businesses around the world have been working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of businesses using Zoom has grown exponentially.
With this software, users can:
- Utilize Video Conferencing
- Online Meetings
- Chat
- Mobile Collaboration.
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. This is a great price, but if you are going to be hosting 100 participants on less, then you can sign up for free!
Not only does Zoom allow you to host webinars, but it helps with promotion, as well! The registration management features allow you to brand forms and emails and then integrate them directly with your Content Management System. After this, you can easily import them into your marketing automation platform to help with follow up emails.
Additional Options:
Some other options are:
Demio
Demio offers an intuitive user experience for yourself and your attendees while allowing your users to join in just one click. In order to keep it consistent, you can apply your logo and branding to all of your slides and event materials.
WebEx
Webex offers video conferencing and easily integrates with the apps that you are probably already using, such as Google Drive, Office 365, salesforce and others! You can easily share your screen to display presentations, master conference calls and more.
ClickMeeting
ClickMeeting is a browser-based webinar software platform that allows you to :
- Host online events and webinars
- Host online business meetings with easy collaboration
- Showcase your products
2. Canva
When it comes to promoting your webinar, Canva is a great way to do help with this by allowing you to create images for social media and email marketing. It is a free visual content creation tool that was made for non-designers, especially, so you don’t need design experience!
It has a huge library of pre-designed, pre-sized templates and has thousands of premium-quality design elements and custom fonts and coloring so that you can easily stay on-brand with your firm. The tool also offers a Design School for all of its users.
You can really create anything quickly and easily in Canva, such as the image that was used below for a Video Marketing webinar that we hosted on July 16. You can experiment with different images and elements while staying on brand with your font and colors and including an image adds so much to your social media posts. In fact, content with relevant images will get 94% more interaction than those without images!
3. Google Slides
Google Slides is a presentation program that is included as part of a free, web-based software office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service. It’s free and in order to use it, all you need to do is create a Gmail account. Google Slides are easy to use because you can use it wherever you are and has simple sharing capabilities.
It’s important that you are creating a strong visual component for your webinar, and creating slides for your webinar is a great way to do this. Not only do the slides add to the visual side, but they can also help you to showcase your brand and company voice to your viewers.
With Google Slides, you can:
- Easily embed animations
- Build presentations right in your web browser
- Use a plethora of strong template options
- Make edits at the same time as others, making for simple collaboration with your team
Additional Options:
Microsoft Powerpoint and KeyNote are other strong options when it comes to creating slide presentations for your webinar.
With Microsoft Powerpoint:
- You are probably familiar with this tool since you the Microsoft OfficeSuite has been around for a long time.
- It is an extremely compatible tool, making it easy to share with others
- It integrates easily with Microsoft Office
Some of the strong features of KeyNote are:
- KeyNote comes free on all Apple devices
- The presentations look better than most PowerPoint presentations
- The interface is streamlined, stylish and easy to use
4. YouTube
The webinar was a success, and now it’s time to send it out for others to see! No matter how many people attended your webinar, if it is uploaded on your YouTube channel, posted on your social media platforms, including in email marketing, whatever it may be, this will greatly broaden your reach. If you are using Zoom, then you can easily record your webinar and download the raw MP4 file in order to upload your webinar to YouTube.
YouTube is incredibly easy to set up and use, as well, making it a great tool to use. In fact, you can create a YouTube account in six easy steps, just check out the blog below.
5. “On Demand” Webinar Service
You can also use an “on-demand’ webinar service for when you want to record the webinar to use at a later time. This is when you record a live webinar event and re-use that content. You can invite new viewers to watch a recorded live webinar using gated content, which is a great way to easily get contact information from new leads. Depending on the software, these can still feel like a live webinar experience to your viewers. Another thing that is so great about this tool is that it allows for the flexibility of your audience since they don’t have to show up at a certain time-frame to attend your webinar.
When you are using an “on-demand” webinar service, there are some things that you can do in order to make the experience better, such as:
- Set it up so that they can submit a question that will be sent to your email, allowing you to answer quickly
- Set up a “dynamic attendees” tool so that they can feel as though there are other attendees in the room.
It’s all about proving the best experience and best content for your users so that they can get the most out of your webinars even if they aren’t live.
Ready for Webinar Success?
You’re probably eager to host your first webinar, but before you start, make sure you have all the tools you need to set yourself up for success. If you are looking for a way to set yourself apart from the competition then look no further than webinars. To ensure that you get the most out of these useful marketing tactics, make sure you are using the necessary tools to make them a success from start to finish.
Craving Webinars?
Join us live for product demos, trainings and other educational webinars!
About the author
Blair Kelly
Blair is a digital marketing assistant at Twenty Over Ten and has a passion for uncovering what drives online traffic and the highest engagement. She follows more animals on Instagram than humans and her greatest achievement is her daughter, Grey.