Having organized my fair share of unsuccessful B2B webinars, I’ve learned the hard way what works and what doesn’t. While writing this article, I realized that despite its seemingly mundane topic, there’s a lack of practical advice out there on organizing effective webinars. This guide not only draws from my own experiences but also includes insights from my peers. Although I refer to them as webinars, these tips are applicable to various types of video content you might want to create. Here’s how to turn your next webinar from mediocre to magnificent.
Many marketers host webinars simply to check off activities in their OKRs, believing these events will boost inbound leads, awareness, or TOFU metrics. However, this approach is misguided. The majority of people reading articles about webinars are looking to copy tips for their own use, with only a small fraction sharing the information or contacting us for services. The goals of generating traffic, increasing attendee numbers, and boosting audience engagement are often unrealistic and superficial.
Webinars should be seen as a long-term investment rather than a quick win, especially when it comes to lead generation. While they may not provide immediate results, webinars are incredibly valuable for enhancing your brand's visibility on search engines like Google or YouTube. They also serve as excellent sales materials; instead of relying on a pitch deck or brochure, you can share a webinar link, which feels more genuine and engaging.
Additionally, webinars help build relationships with guest speakers, who can become valuable partners. Remember, the purpose of a webinar isn't to create immediate buzz or generate leads on the spot. It's about producing entertaining, valuable PIECES of content that contributes to your brand's long-term success and visibility online.
----
Normally, I should start by talking about setting up “objectives” or “goals” for the webinar, right?
This is a pure waste of time. If you do, you'll start obsessing over the number of attendees and the ROI of the webinar. Forget it. Next.
----
Don't overthink this. You don't need overly elaborate roles, responsibilities, timelines, post-webinar follow-ups, or milestone and deadline sessions with your team and partners. It's a webinar, not a massive project.
In 2024, hosting a webinar is almost a one-person job. The more internal people you involve, the more you end up becoming a project manager—assigning tasks, chasing completions, asking for permissions, and so on. Plus, involving too many people can cause you to lose focus on creating good content.
----
If you're reading this, you probably already have a topic in mind or have been told what to cover. However, it's important to ensure the topic is trendy and relevant to your audience. Here's how you can double-check:
If you're starting without a specific topic in mind, consider these steps:
Instead, be opinionated to attract the attention such as, "Sales is Dead. Here's the new generation of sales"
For young brands, choose a niche and catchy webinar title. Avoid generic titles like "The Future of [Your Software Category]."
Try also to be specific, such as "Get Scale: Personalized Outreach with Data Enrichment."
Let's take a look at a really good example I found recently:
.png)
Let's check the title and topic, which is the most important thing for you to focus right now.
"Warm Outreach: The Secret Behind a $150M Business"
Here's some more examples:
----
Bring consultant, agency, integration partners but don’t bring customers. Sure, you want to impress your audience with top customers you know and have so they talk about real examples and experienced using your product. However, I really don’t like the environment it creates during the webinar. Everyone behaves like there's a very hot girl in the room, and most of the guests and hosts stop being natural. All the focus and attention shift to that customer.
But in general, you are looking at brining experts.
A 20-year veterans in your field? Well, maybe, but I much prefer someone with personality who can talk naturally about the topics.
At the end of the day, it’s about entertainment and content.
Engaging the audience and encouraging participation is key:
Here's a good example.
It was Jared Fuller, Isaac Morehouse, Bob Moore and Simon Bouchez for the FINAL episode of the nearbound podcast.
Amazing panel! Here's the link if you want watch it.
You have Jared and Isaas both hosting and drive the conversations. Amazing work from Isaac checking comments during the live.
They all really make it entertaining to watch with natural conversations.
----
Aim for no more than 4 people in the webinar. Anything more can turn into chaos.
It should be a friendly, conversational room where participants smoothly interrupt and bounce ideas off each other, all while being gently monitored by the host to keep things on track.
More than 5 people? Good luck. You’ll end up with endless introductions and people talking one by one like robots, each answering a single question. If you prefer more participants, consider individual recordings instead; it’ll save everyone’s time if you see what I mean.
PS: Ask for a high-resolution photo of them as soon as possible. You will need it later; otherwise, you’ll end up with a shitty thumbnail using 250x250px images from LinkedIn or 10-year-old photos found on Google Images.
----
If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you likely have a close group of people you can DM on LinkedIn, Slack, or WhatsApp because you know them well.
But if you're a junior given this task…well, good luck. Honestly, it shouldn’t be your job to do that. Ask your C-level executives for sending invites. They have the experience and job titles to convince the best partners for the webinars.
Do I have a pitch template? No, I don’t. As mentioned before, it’s usually people I’m regularly in touch with or have known for a long time. I just DM them with a short message, WhatsApp style. Completely informal. However, sometimes I do try to get people I don’t know. But again, I stay informal and casual, and it works 100% of the time. It’s not about the pitch email; it’s about WHO is sending it.
If you cannot delegate it than give it go and do ityourself of course. DM hundreds of relevant people in LinkedIn, interview them to check if relevant and with energy.
People love the opportunities of being invited to a webinar and be exposed to your audience anyway.
If you need help finding good people, contact us.
----
It's important to keep in mind that 90% of Your Audience Want Free Content. People going to your webinar or watching it later are like these people going to conference and filling their bags with goodies! Most of your audience is here for the free content they can copy and use themselves to show their management or use it for their customer. 90% are not going to reach out and sign up for your services. They want free stuff—period. So, give them that. On your registration page, make sure to mention that you will provide free stuff if they register and that it will be shared after the event.
Here's what I like to offer:
And to hell with statements like "no recording available after the event." to try boosting your attendees during the event. This is real low marketing stunt.
----
Your thumbnail will be used in multiple places and seen in different formats, so you need to invest in making it really nice.
Not like these horrors:
So design-wise, keep it simple:
Don’t clutter the thumbnail with plenty of descriptions, logos, or other fluffy, useless things. This thumbnail will be seen in a microscopic way on LinkedIn social sharing images. It just needs to pop visually with the support of strong title. That’s it.
I won’t share the exact pixel size because it changes all the time. Instead, open a Figma file, create one frame as a base (1200x750), and then duplicate it. Adjust the design according to each format.
Here's one I did recently:
For more inspiration, visit:
Here's 2 good articles if you need some inspiration:
Don't go to Canva and just take a template. You probably 1M people sharing the same template.
Go to Figma and design it yourself. That will be put a bit of creative work in your day.
----
For the registration page, I really recommend Lu.ma.
Simple. Easy to use. So 2024.
But you have other big players too like:
----
It goes without saying that you need to create an event on all your social media accounts, linking back to the registration page. Think LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on and link back to your Event Registration page.
----
A typical marketer might tell you to promote it in your newsletter!
But honestly, I’m not a fan of product newsletters—even if I like the product. For example, HubSpot is great, but I unsubscribed from their outdated CRM tips long ago.
So, here’s what you should do:
Don’t just send them to your website’s event page! That’s not effective.
Direct them straight to the event sign-up page like the LinkedIn Event or Lu.ma registration page. Trust me, you will lose so many sign-ups otherwise.
----
Don’t ask too many questions during registration. Your goal is to get as many people as possible signed up. Avoid forms that feel like a qualification sales process; they’ll just deter potential registrants and result in fewer sign-ups.
You just need Full Name and work email and maybe country. And NO phone number!
And I am recommending using Lu.ma
Make sure to send out:
----
I’m a big fan of Riverside.fm. It’s fresh, simple, and reliable. Check it out: Riverside.fm
But here are some alternatives if needed:
If you’ve done webinars before and want a top-tier, all-in-one solution, consider:
See examples here: Splash That Examples
Avoid using excessive design elements layered on top. If you're not a designer, it's likely to end up looking unattractive. The primary focus should be on the people speaking and their presentation materials, so keep the design as simple as possible. Ensure that guests have their full name and company name displayed, as it can be frustrating for viewers to guess who is speaking.
----
Avoid having people introduce themselves during the webinar; it's a waste of time! In a 45-minute webinar, introductions can consume at least 20 minutes of valuable content and discussion time. Instead, provide a clear agenda to keep the webinar focused. This also makes it easier to trim and edit content efficiently later on. For guidance on structuring your agenda, consider watching some Webflow Academy videos.
----
It’s crucial to communicate some basic rules with your guests right before the webinar.
Setting these expectations upfront helps ensure a smoother and more professional webinar.
----
Technically, a webinar is to be Live. So if you decide to go Live Live through social live tool, I recommend using YouTube Live instead of LinkedIn Live unless you have a highly engaged audience that will actively comment. In most B2B scenarios, this level of engagement is unlikely, unlike the fan base of a celebrity or Twitch streamer.
I’ve noticed better engagement during events on YouTube, even in B2B settings. Personally, I can't watch webinars during the day because I'm too distracted by Slack messages, LinkedIn DMs, clearing my inbox, strategizing, or client calls. However, at night, after putting my kid to bed or when I’m searching for something to watch on streaming services, I prefer tuning into a live webinar on an interesting topic.
However, LinkedIn Live events have their own advantages: they are easily shareable within your network, and you can book, sign up, and access the recording directly afterward. I believe LinkedIn Live has significant growth potential. One of the best LinkedIn Live events I’ve seen was hosted by Anthony Pierri; it was amazing!
The importance of live engagement might be overstated. Most of your audience will watch the webinar on their own schedule. The real value lies in how and when they can watch or listen to it later. More on that in the “Post-Event Distribution” section.
Anyway, Once you’re set up with Riverside, sync your live stream to a LinkedIn Live Event to broadcast it directly.
----
This is crucial. You need to share some "secret sauce" during your webinar, whether it’s slides, Airtable, Google Sheets, PDFs, or other resources. People will want to access these materials later, and they might screenshot and share them, increasing your visibility. Make sure to include your logo prominently on these materials, not just in the bottom corner. This ensures everyone knows the content is from you or your partners.
Take inspiration from the famous marketing behaviour from Rory Sutherland. You'll want to screenshot everything because the examples he shows are invaluable.
-----
This is the fun yet time-consuming part.
Don’t rush the post-event process. Take your time to do it properly—it’s worth it!
Edit the Content: Chop it, trim it, polish the sound. This will be your base file. Add nice subtitles, smooth animations, or photo examples on top.
You can handle this without advanced skills using tools like:
Try also making some smooth animation using Capsule.
----
Post the complete episode on YouTube then create Short Form Content (SFC).
Chop the full episode into smaller videos. It's kind of an art doing this. But it's going to make your audience so happy!
My favourite tools are:
.gif)
Post these shorter clips on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Make sure to link these short clips to the main long YouTube video—this is crucial.
For LinkedIn, I wouldn’t recommend posting the full episode. Instead, share bite-sized clips over 2-3 weeks. These clips should tease the content and entice people who didn’t register to watch the full episode. This approach is more likely to convince them to join your next webinar.
----
This is where things get really interesting for marketers, as it teaches a lot about segmentation and how it's handled in your company.
You now have several lists:
Map all these people neatly in Airtable and create tailored email follow-ups for each category. It’s not a quick task, but taking the time to do it properly will yield the best results.
This process will also help you create a detailed event mapping in your CRM if you haven’t done so before.
----
Don’t send them a Google Drive link or something they have to download or access through a gated page. Upload it directly to YouTube so they can watch, like, and comment immediately. If you have time and a lot to share post-event, than try giving your guests a chance to relive the experience or catch up on what they missed with a comprehensive post-event page. Include:
Another beautiful example from Figma, check Figma Config here.
.gif)
----
Send a simple follow-up email right after the event. You’ll be surprised how impactful this small gesture can be.
----
I’m not personally a fan of feedback surveys, but if you choose to send one, it can be useful. Ask guests for feedback on what worked, what didn’t, and their favorite parts. This information can help you improve future events. Instead I like to ask Why did you join? This is more of an open question that will be enough to jugde if it's prospect material or not.
----
In most businesses, the sales team will often request a list of potential prospects from the webinar for outreach. But, here’s the thing—don’t do it. Sorry, sales team!
I can’t stand being bombarded by salespeople right after a webinar. It feels like cold outreach and can seriously damage your brand reputation. You’ve just hosted a great webinar, and now it feels like you’re turning into a street vendor.
What Should You Do Instead?
It’s your responsibility to nurture these leads and guide them towards a demo call if they’re genuinely interested. Here’s how I approach it:
This approach keeps the conversation warm and ensures that prospects feel valued, rather than being treated like cold leads.
----
Hope this helps! Feel free to ping me if you need any assistance.
PS: This article is not written by ChatGPT. It took me few days and my iphone notes to put all my thought. But I obviously asked ChatGPT to make corrections.
If you want more tips, join our Slack community.
.svg)