Different businesses use webinars for different purposes. A company may schedule a public webinar to showcase it's products or services and to collect sales leads. You may also conduct a free webinar for employees or a fee-based one for customers. Or, you can offer general business education webinars to establish your thought-leadership on a particular topic.

Whatever the reason for your webinar, there are several best practices you can do to increase the number of attendees, boost engagement, and make the event more successful.

Below, we round up some of the most important webinar best practices you can apply to improve the planning, administration, delivery, and usefulness of your webinars.

Goal setting

• Set clear, measurable goals

You need to have clear and explicit goals for the webinar. Why are you hosting it in the first place? Are you looking to educate your audience? And if so, why do you want to educate them? How will your organization benefit if the webinar is successful?

Avoid ambiguous, vague goals and embrace more detailed ones.

For example, instead of just saying: We want to educate our customers on a new product, elaborate the statement to read: Our goal is to reduce the number of support calls we receive by helping customers better understand the new product version.

When you have clear goals, your chances of success instantly increase.

Building attendance

Once somebody learns about your webinar, you will drive them to complete a registration form. Making this process too complicated could easily drive away potential attendees, leading to a high abandonment rate.

Our next webinar best practices help you to do avoid this;

• Reduce input fields

Every additional input field on your registration form is a barrier to completion. So, keep the number of fields to a minimum.

If you won’t be sending a fax, for example, don’t ask for a fax number. In fact, see if you can get away with just asking for a name and address.

• Send a confirmation email upon registration

In the confirmation email, restate your value proposition and include attendance instructions, an electronic calendar appointment, and a short message letting the recipient know that you’ll send a reminder before the event.

This setting of expectations helps to build anticipation while reducing frustration.

• Send email reminders 24 hours and then 2-3 hours before the event

While sending just one reminder is okay, sending two works even better. Don’t send more than two however. The recipient might start to feel that they’re being harassed. Briefly highlight you value proposition once more to remind the prospects why they should be attending.

Preparing for the webinar

• Plan for event timings

Most sales webinars last a maximum of 60 minutes.

Start with a short introduction, two minutes after the hour to account for late arrivals. It is also best practice to either have two speakers or deliver your speech in two sessions, each lasting 20 minutes. In between the sessions, take your first attendance poll and just after the second session, take the second poll. At the end of that, set aside 13 minutes for Q&A, and spend the final few minutes wrapping up.

• Rehearse

There is no substitute to rehearsal.

During the rehearsal, each speaker should deliver the speech in full and out loud as if they were doing the actual presentation. It will help you to find the right words, work on your timing, and become comfortable with transition.

• Set up your environment

This involves setting up the technology, identifying a quiet room for the webinar, and eliminating items that could distract the audience.

If you are using video as well as slides, the background, in particular, should be free of visual distractions such as wall hangings and open doors.

• Maximize audio quality

Two great options here are a headset or a telephone handset. Cellphones and speakerphones should never be used to deliver a webinar. Cellphones are prone to audio dropouts, inconsistent volume levels, and loss of battery power. Speakerphones, on the other hand, have a tendency of picking extraneous noises.

• Have a backup plan

You need an emergency plan for essentially everything. From computers to the telephone to print slides, and network hubs, you never know when technology will fail.

Having a backup plan ensures that no matter what, the presentation can always proceed as planned.

Acing the presentation

• Keep your energy levels up

Finish sentences as strongly as you begin them and watch out for dropping energy levels at the end of a list of items.

High energy presentations keep the audience fully engaged.

• Immerse yourself into the presentation

Be enthusiastic and consider varying your voice pitch and delivery speed to refocus the audience’s attention. Also, address individuals and interact with your audience.

Finally, use expert references to validate your points.