This week, I have shared some tips & best practices about organizing webinars with maximum impact when you have little time. I thought this to be particularly useful to marketers in the current context where events & meetings are cancelled across the globe. Here are: (1) the full recording and (2) the slides.

Here’s the video 👇👇

Here are the slides & here are some notes, a very short, condensed transcript if you like 👇👇

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After introducing Didomi and our solutions, I started the webinar by reminding the audience that the B2B buying process is already a long, complex, unpredictable journey, even in non-Covid “normal times,” as this Gartner article notes:

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In a way, the coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions that come with it (no events, no tradeshows & business meetings) simplify a marketer’s playbook, because you will have to rely on direct sales and digital only… But regardless of the situation, webinars were already a widely used B2B sales and marketing tool, one that is seen as particularly efficient to generate leads:

• 73% of B2B marketers (including myself!) say that webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads,
• 76% of B2B buyers (including myself!) have used webinars in the past 12 months to make a purchase decision,
• 61% of marketers (including myself!) use  webinars as a tactic for their content marketing strategy (source: InsideSales.com).

Of course, lead generation is not the only use case for companies, but I chose to focus on it as the process has been optimized to generate sales opportunities.

Among the many solutions that exist today to organize video conferences, I have outlined the criteria that I advise marketing professionals to take into account when choosing a webinar platform. The below criteria have led me to use Livestorm:

Once you choose your platform, you get minimum viable equipment for good sound & video, you have your tech stack in place (in my webinar I mention Zapier, Salesforce & Asana) you can start planning & running & webinars to generate leads!

Now, of course, you will have to get your own process in place… but to help you do that, I’ve shared my 6-step process (including a total of 39 tasks). Above are the 6 steps, below are the same with the sub-tasks that each step encapsulates:

1 – PLAN: Organize the key tasks, dates and responsibilities to make the webinar a success.

• PLAN – Fill in the details in the description so it’s clear what the webinar is about & who is involved
• PLAN – Set the hour & due date as the best estimate of when webinar will be held
• PLAN – Fill-in as many tasks (Asana) including assignees & due dates
• PLAN – Create Salesforce campaign for the webinar
• PLAN – Create Livestorm page & entire set-up for the webinar
• PLAN – Create a Promo plan for the webinar
• PLAN – Create/update cost-trackers (spreadsheets).

2 – PROMOTE: Push the webinar to the right audiences to get maximum impact. 10 days is absolute minimum!

• PROMOTE – Create visuals & assets for promotion
• PROMOTE – 4 weeks before webinar date
  • Promote on social media, organic
  • Launch paid promotion on social media
  • Include in client newsletter (if relevant)
  • Share internally (if relevant)
  • Include in email signature (if relevant)
  • Anything else ? Don’t hesitate to add!!!
• PROMOTE – 3 weeks before webinar date (idem)
• PROMOTE – 2 weeks before webinar date (idem)
• PROMOTE – 1 week before webinar date (idem)
• PROMOTE – Webinar week (idem).

3 – PREPARE: Create the content with/for the speakers. Do this once the promotion is underway, not after.

• PREPARE – First draft of the webinar slides
• PREPARE – Review the webinar slides
• PREPARE – Create designed slides, via agency or internal designer
• PREPARE – Finalize & proof-check webinar slides, ready to go
• PREPARE – Write some preliminary tweets for #livetweet during webinar broadcast
• PREPARE – Make a test-run for the webinar
• PREPARE – Make sure to have the right set-up for presentation
• PREPARE – Update Zapier to link them to the right campaign in SFDC
• PREPARE – Send the speaker a snapshot of registrants, so that she/he can have an idea of the audience.

4 – PRESENT: 🎙️ Smash it! 🎙️

• PRESENT – Welcome everyone on the chat, invite to refresh if slides don’t “move” after beginning (it happens)
• PRESENT – Livetweet what you had prepared
• PRESENT – Be reactive on social media & chat / questions on Livestorm
• PRESENT – Capture a couple of key phrases for post-webinar promotion (video snippets)
• PRESENT – Create end poll to gather feedback.

5 – POST-PRODUCE: A couple of important checks & follow-up tasks to execute post-webinar.

• POST-PRODUCE – Once the webinar finished, delete the Zapier corresponding to your webinar
• POST-PRODUCE – Once the webinar finished, delete all promotion material (email signatures etc.)
• POST-PRODUCE – Check (& correct) video recording of the webinar
• POST-PRODUCE – Create snack content format video to promote webinar replay
• POST-PRODUCE – Gather all costs and fill-in Salesforce Campaign with “actual cost” of the webinar
• POST-PRODUCE – Make sure BDR (and/or presenter) has access to the leads, has a call-back plan
• POST-PRODUCE – Prepare webinar results for monthly Marketing & Sales Ops and/or Marketing Weekly.

6 – PROMOTE AGAIN: Very important to maximize impact and extend the webinar’s shelf life.

• PROMOTE AGAIN – Put the video recording on YouTube
• PROMOTE AGAIN – Make a blog post about the webinar
• PROMOTE AGAIN – Share the webinar on social media
• PROMOTE AGAIN – Share the webinar in lead & customer newsletters
• PROMOTE AGAIN – Bundle webinars on your website’s “Resources” section to draw attention of prospects to the other available content too.

By using this 6-step execution, and as many of the 39 tasks that they encompass, I think every marketer is able to properly execute webinars to generate leads efficiently. You will still have to come up with ideas, find a good angle to generate interest, create good content and promote it well… but if you follow the above process you’ll max-out your webinars’ lead generation potential!

Please don’t hesitate to share and/or ask questions, I’d be happy to answer.

Thanks for reading.