Online webinars: Definition, advantages and tips

What is the definition of a webinar?

A webinar is an online seminar that allows companies to reach a larger, geographically dispersed audience in real time. Benefits include cost efficiency, improved engagement through interactive multimedia content, lead generation, knowledge sharing and better accessibility. Webinars offer a flexible and efficient way to achieve marketing, sales and educational objectives.

Livestreams and webinars can be uploaded to a video platform afterwards as on-demand video. Webinar software can help to automate manual processes.

L‍reading tip: What is a webcast? Use cases and advantages

What are the advantages of webinars?

Online webinars have experienced rapid growth in recent years. This is not only due to the logistical flexibility for viewers, but also to the free offerings of many providers. Online seminars offer creative and flexible solutions for preparing content in a customer-oriented way and disseminating it to an audience.

Free webinars are a great way to increase customer loyalty, customer generation and awareness of the company or product.

Interaction

Interaction is another advantage of this event format. Viewers can not only exchange information with each other. They can also communicate with the product presenters or moderators in the simplest possible way. Gamification loosens up the atmosphere and ensures more engagement.

Especially during the corona pandemic in home office, interaction with each other often suffered. However, if a webinar is organized, viewers have the opportunity to interact via various interaction tools.

Flexibility and up-to-dateness

Another advantage of webinars is their flexibility and topicality. The topics can be adapted to current changes and innovations with each presentation. A wide variety of topics also inspires the audience. Not only loyal customers are happy about varied presentations, new customers are also attracted.

Uncomplicated access and inclusion

The usually uncomplicated access also increases the company's reach. Webinars are the perfect tool for video content marketing. Increase the generation of new customers and the retention of existing customers in one.

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Exchange of knowledge

Webinars offer companies the opportunity to showcase their expertise and thought leadership in their respective industries, further strengthening their brand and reputation.

Cost efficiency

A webinar is typically less expensive than an in-person seminar or conference, making it a cost-effective way to inform and engage clients, customers and stakeholders.‍

Tips for successful webinars

Are you convinced by the concept and now want to organize a webinar yourself? We'll show you the most important things you need to bear in mind.

Find topic

The first step towards a successful webinar is finding a topic. Sit down with your team and think about which topics you can present well in around an hour. If it's a product presentation, think carefully about which features and functions can be explained well and simply. For a generic topic, you should work out which points would be of interest to the general public.

Set up a concept

Once you have decided on a topic, the second step is to draw up a concept for its feasibility and implementation. You need to work out how a specific topic can be structured and communicated depending on the audience. Questions to be answered could be

• What is to be achieved?
• Who is my audience?
• Who is the moderator?
• How do I involve the audience?
• What interactive options are there?
• In what time frame is content presented?
• What should be made available afterwards?

Search for a suitable event platform

Once the concept has been finalized, a suitable virtual event platform must be found. For an on-site webinar, a location must be found accordingly. You can read about event platforms further down in the blog article.

Invite participants

The fourth step is participant management. First, decide how you will promote and advertise the online event. Your own social media channels are ideal for this.

Secondly, you decide whether you want to invite participants via your own channels and internal processes or directly via the event platform. We will be happy to help you successfully implement the attendee management software.

Internet connection and technical setup

The preparation is complete. Shortly before and during the webinar, a stable internet connection should be ensured and the technical setup should work. Nothing is more disruptive for participants if the connection falters, the moderator's microphone or camera does not work or even the transmission breaks off. Proactive and preventative preparation will ensure that your webinar runs smoothly.

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Follow-up

After your successful webinar, you can make your participants even happier by making the most important information, documents or a recording of the webinar available afterwards.

This allows viewers to revisit information that is relevant to them. Customer loyalty, branding and reach are direct consequences of this. When publishing recorded livestreams, make sure that they are anonymized and comply with data protection aspects.

Do you need an event platform for your webinar?

Are you still looking for a suitable webinar platform? Are you looking for creative and functional webinar tools that support your product presentations, training events, company presentations, etc. in a varied way? Do you want your online meetings to be more interactive? Do you want your webinar software to be equipped with live chat, screen sharing, social media links and the ability for participants to ask questions?

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