You already know that webinars are a great way to market your business, talk to your audience, and even sell your upcoming product or service while you’re live with your viewers.
(And if you didn’t know that – well, now you know!)
So let’s say you just finished hosting a webinar of your own.
You followed these tips to draw in an audience. Your preparations paid off, the conversation flowed, and your attendees all had an amazing time. (Wow. You’re good.)
But don’t put those feet up just yet! To get the most from your work, you need to learn how to end a webinar the right way.
Making the most of your webinar means putting in some extra effort after your webcam switches off.
But where do you start?
6 Tips for how to end a webinar successfully
So once you’ve figured out where the ‘End Webinar’ button is on your software, it’s time to wave bye to your guests and click exit. Don’t forget to thank your guests before you leave the webinar!
There’s still work to be done once you’ve shut down your camera. To get the most from your webinar, follow the below tips and you’ll be a webinar marketing pro in no time.
1. Check your recording
Depending on the software you used to host your webinar, your video and chat might automatically save for you to their platform.
Give it a quick check to make sure it all recorded without a hitch, because it’ll come in really handy. (Ideally, you’ll have tested this before your webinar, but you never know.)
If possible, see what you can download and save it to your own desktop or cloud storage right away, just so you have it. That way, you can reuse parts of the video, audio, or even the chat records down the road – more on that in a second!
2. Email the replay
The majority of the people who signed up for your webinar won’t actually be on the webinar live.
This is a disappointing fact for many first-time webinar hosts, but it’s how the whole “worldwide audience thing” pans out. Different time zones, different schedules – plus, people are just plain busy!
All that said, make sure you send a link to the replay as soon as possible after the live event. Some webinar systems will give you that link in advance, which you can use to write and schedule your email before your webinar even happens. (It’ll help you fast-forward to that whole “putting your feet up” part of the evening later on.)
3. Host an afterparty
As a wise and famous webinar host once said, “Ain’t no party like an after party ‘cause the after party don’t stop.”
(We think.)
And even though your after party might actually have to stop eventually, it’s a great way to take advantage of the momentum you built on your webinar! Hop on a short, informal Facebook Live stream, or keep the conversation going using your webinar’s hashtag in a Twitter chat.
That's a wrap! Big shoutout to everyone who joined us for our #LessMore webinar today – loved having you there and hearing your questions!
— MeetEdgar ???? (@MeetEdgar) February 16, 2017
Use this time to answer additional questions, thank everyone who made it live, mention any bonuses or other offers you made during the webinar, and generally hype that replay we just mentioned!
4. Send a followup sequence
Got an offer that you think your audience will be interested in? Let ’em know!
The people who signed up for your webinar are an active and engaged audience interested in the things you do – that’s why they signed up in the first place! Give them a clear call to action and make it as easy as possible for them to take it!
Don’t feel bad about making them an offer as a thank-you for signing up. (Maybe a free trial, download, or miniature course.)
Prepare a short email sequence to send out to your attendees making an offer, and kick it off sometime after sending out your webinar replay. (Tip: write the emails in advance of the webinar, just to get them out of the way.)
5. Share the replay on social media
If somebody didn’t know about your webinar until it was too late to register, they’ve probably got a lot of FOMO.
(As in, fear of missing out.)
Now’s the time to use social media to share the replay and capture their interest, so you can send that follow up sequence we just talked about!
Give people who might not have signed up in time a chance to watch, and boom – no more FOMO.
Pro tip: use Edgar to share promotions on repeat, so people in your audience don’t miss them. You can even set them to expire at the same time as whatever special promotion you’re offering!
6. Reuse your webinar content on your blog (and elsewhere)
You worked hard to create all that content, and you have a recording available – don’t let it go to waste! You could turn your slides into a Slideshare, edit down clips of the webinar to use as daily Facebook videos, or transcribe bits and pieces to turn into blog posts.
And as you go…
Don’t forget to Plan your next webinar!
Practice makes perfect, and that’s true for webinars, too. Even if this was your first one and it felt a bit #awkward, go ahead and schedule your next webinar knowing you’ll be even more polished and ready-to-rock next time!
(Just make sure you think of a topic first. Kind of important.)
Take the time now to think through the questions that your viewers asked you. Could any of those topics become another webinar down the line? Jot down some notes about your next potential webinar, then block off time in your calendar so you have a little motivation to make it happen!
How do YOU wrap up your webinars? Are you a seasoned pro with tons of tips to share?
Are you just getting started and finding this article helpful?
Share your takeaways in the comments below!
2 Comments
Thanks, Edgar, for all the tips and great blogs, I read them with great enthusiasm, but sadly, that does not translate into action on my part. I would love to host a webinar and write great blogs etc, but suffer from a crippling fear that no one will listen, or I’ll look silly if they do – or worse still, boring!
You’re definitely not alone! That’s a really common anxiety about doing this sort of thing. One of the best things you can remember is that nobody goes from having never done this stuff to suddenly being a total master – it ALWAYS takes time. Every single person who you think is doing a great job was in your position once, and they didn’t get to where they are now all at once! There’s something really liberating about that, because it means you don’t have to face the pressure of always nailing it right out of the gate. You don’t HAVE to go from 0-100. You can try things, learn what works, make mistakes, ditch the stuff you don’t like, figure out the formula that works for YOU – it’s all a learning process, and you have all the freedom in the world to take your time figuring out your own groove!