How to organise a webinar: the step-by-step plan from offer to client

What does organising a webinar actually involve?

Organising a webinar means arranging everything around an online presentation or training: deciding the goal and the offer, choosing the format and the tool, getting sign-ups, making sure people come, giving the webinar and following up with attendees afterwards.

The hour itself is the smallest part. Whoever wants to organise a webinar that brings in clients spends most of their time before and after that hour.

A webinar can leak in two places. We call it the room, you can also say funnel.

This step-by-step plan fixes both. It follows our Sold-Out Recipe: first the Dough (your offer), then the Rise (filling the room), then the Oven (making sure people come) and then the Counter (selling and following up).

How to organise a webinar in 8 steps

1. Start with your offer

This is where almost everyone goes wrong. You want to make a webinar, so you start with the topic, then a title, then the slides. And the last five minutes you fill with “anyone who wants to know more can get in touch”.

Turn it around. First decide what someone can buy afterwards: a programme, a training course, an intake, a call. Who it’s for, what it delivers and why now. If you can’t say that in two sentences, your webinar isn’t ready to build yet.

How you then structure the webinar around that offer is in Webinar that sells: knowledge, inspiration and offer.

2. Choose your format

There are three flavours:

• Live: the most contact and the most energy. Questions in the chat, and you can make your offer live. People do have to be there at that moment.
• Hybrid: part in a venue, part online. More reach, but also more tech and two audiences to address.
• Recorded (on demand or “evergreen”): viewers choose when. Handy to keep running, but you miss the urgency and the contact of live.

Choose your tool based on what you want to do with it. Do you need to sell during the webinar, with a button or a link on screen? Do you want the sign-ups in your own email system? Do you need a recording? Start with those questions, not with the feature list.

3. Pick a date and time

Give yourself enough time to fill the room. A webinar you announce five days ahead mainly brings in your existing followers.

Pick the moment for your buyer, not for your own diary. An HR manager watches differently from a self-employed coach. Not sure? Look at when your previous events were best attended. Your own numbers say more than any average.

4. Build your sign-up page

A good sign-up page has five things:

1. A promise in one sentence: what will someone know or be able to do afterwards?
2. Who it’s for, and who it’s not for.
3. What they’ll take away: three concrete points.
4. Who you are, and why you’re entitled to say something about this.
5. A form that only asks what you need. Want to follow up by WhatsApp or phone? Then ask for it here.

Put the date and time clearly at the top, and send a confirmation with a calendar invite straight after sign-up.

5. Get sign-ups

This is the Rise: filling the room. A few channels work for most experts:

• Your own email list. The people who already know you. Often your best source.
• LinkedIn. Content on the subject in the weeks before, and personal invitations to the people you really want in the room.
• Outreach. Inviting people who fit your audience, even if they don’t follow you yet.
• Ads. To fill faster or wider, with the same sharp promise.

The biggest difference is in the title. A title that appeals to everyone gives lots of sign-ups and few buyers. A title that appeals precisely to your buyer may give fewer sign-ups, but the right ones.

6. Make sure people come

A sign-up is not yet a viewer. Signing up costs one click, showing up costs an evening. In between, the interest cools.

That’s the Oven: warming up. A confirmation with the date in the calendar, a few messages that already give something valuable, and reminders by email and WhatsApp just before the start. How to build that is in How to reduce no-shows for your webinar.

7. Give the webinar

A webinar that sells has three ingredients, in the right ratio:

Build a bridge from what you showed to what you’re offering, so the offer feels like the logical sequel. And don’t save it for the last minute: mention it earlier and come back to it at the end.

8. Follow up and measure

The webinar is over, the last viewer logs off. With most organisers, nothing happens for a week after that, apart from an email with the recording.

Follow up within a day. Call or message whoever showed interest, send everyone the recording with the same offer attached, and give those who didn’t come a second chance. Interest is fresh. Respond days later and you’re starting from scratch.

Then measure four numbers per webinar: sign-ups, viewers, calls and revenue. That shows you where you leak. Lots of sign-ups and few viewers? Then it’s in the oven. Lots of viewers and no calls? Then it’s in your offer or your follow-up.

The five most expensive mistakes when organising a webinar

Want to know where your webinar leaks right now? Take the free leak test: thirteen questions, three minutes. Want to build it together, we do that in the Sold-Out Session: your offer and your event structure in one half-day. Or let us run the whole recipe every month as your event marketing agency.

A full room is the start. Not the finish.

RK

Rubin Koot · Hoofdbakker

Rubin is the founder of Online Marketing Bakery in Roermond. You take the stage, we fill the room. And we make sure it buys.

[email protected] · More about the bakers

Further reading: Webinar that sells: knowledge, inspiration and offer · How to reduce no-shows for your webinar · Event marketing agency · Take the free leak test · The Sold-Out Session · Marketing for training providers · Marketing for consultants

How we work: first the offer, then the room. Want to get going with a brief like this? We do that in the Sold-Out Session: your offer and your event structure in one half-day.