User-Hosted Webinars

Day 1 - This is exciting. Day 7 - I'm fine. Day 14 - What is sleep? Day 21 - I'm hallucinating more than ChatGPT. In the last 23 days, I've hosted 21 live webinars for up to 400 attendees per session. My audience were mid-senior corporate professionals seeking career advice. Each session was 3 hours in duration. My back almost gave up around Day 14. My voice followed shortly after. But here's the thing — I learned more in those 3 weeks than in the previous 3 years of hosting webinars. So here are 13 things that actually work. I hope it helps you. 1. Don't undersell yourself - charge more. Higher ticket price = better audience. They show up. They engage. They don't message you at 11pm asking for a recording they'll never watch. 2. Ditch Zoom's webinar format. Use the Meeting format instead. Mute everyone, unmute one by one during Q&A. Turn cameras on. The energy shifts completely. 3. Run a live Q&A for 30 minutes at the end. This did more for my sales than any pitch I've ever made. People buy from people they trust. 4. Start on time. Every time. Waiting for latecomers punishes people who respected you enough to show up. Don't do it. 5. Get a standing desk. I resisted this for years. I was wrong. For sessions longer than 2 hours, it's not a luxury. It's basic survival. 6. Upgrade your setup. Good webcam. Prosumer mic. Overhead monitor light. That's it. You don't need a studio. You just need to not look like you're calling from a moving autorickshaw. 7. Kill the virtual background. Unless you have a proper green screen, your floating head in front of a sunset in Goa is fooling absolutely nobody. 8. Engage every 10 minutes. Poll. Question. Mini exercise. Anything. Social media has destroyed our attention spans and your audience is three seconds away from checking Instagram. 9. One headline. One image. Per slide. If they're reading your slides, they're not listening to you. You cannot win both battles. Stop trying. 10. Watch "Death by PowerPoint" on YouTube. Free. Brilliant. Will make you delete half your deck immediately. 11. Don't tell people you're recording. The moment they know there's a recording, 40% mentally sign off and plan to "watch it later." They won't. Keep the urgency alive. 12. End with one clear next step. Not "thanks everyone, take care, bye-bye." Tell them exactly what to do next. Buy. Book. Apply. A confused audience does nothing. I have the revenue data to prove it. 13. Bonus point: Get a good team to support you. You cannot host large scale webinars yourself - and you shouldn't try to. You'll need at least two assistants to manage the ops. PS. Indian webinar audiences are genuinely terrific. Respectful and polite, but their BS meter is high and they expect full value for money - rightfully so. Got questions about live webinars? Let me know in the comments.

last week, i asked what incentives actually get people to attend webinars live (instead of just watching the replay later). 150+ linkedin comments later, here's what works (according to marketers who run webinars): 𝟭/ 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿: 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗤&𝗔 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 this showed up in almost every comment. but here's the key - it can't be generic Q&A. Seth Merrill from SixFifty runs 20+ webinars/year with 400-1000 attendees. their secret? they answer 50+ typed questions per session with three legal experts. "the type of advice people would normally have to pay a consulting fee for"... delivered live. Kerry Wheeler at Lattice did a roundtable discussion between attendees and their HR leadership after a webinar. became their highest attended and best converting webinar of the year. access to senior execs during the live session is a genuine draw. 𝟮/ 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 Mark Huber from UserEvidence offers bonus resources only for folks who show up live. Lindsay Adams 👽 at SixFifty offers HRCI and SHRM recertification codes only for live attendees. professional development credits are a tangible incentive. 𝟯/ 𝘂𝗻𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘀 (𝘆𝗲𝘀, 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆) Sydni Williams-Shaw tested this at a previous SaaS company and saw attendance jump from 35% to 55%. two reasons: (1) customers were more willing to join as speakers when it wasn't recorded, (2) they focused on engagement as the success metric since they were building community. Jordan Arnold doesn't offer recordings at all - 77% average attendance rate (double what he got when offering recordings). shoutout to Jay Schwedelson who apparently pioneered this. 𝟰/ 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝘂𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 Blake Cohlan added trivia + prizes to webinars and it was a big hit. Alexa Smythe from UserGems 💎 is running "12 Days of Intent" with prizes - you have to attend live to win. Madeleine Work and Tara Robertson send post-webinar gifts to people who participated. physical gifting as a thank you for showing up. 𝟱/ 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆-𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 Amrita Mathur (who's run 50+ virtual conferences) nailed this: "what works is not being transactional and thinking about it as part of community building. there's both immediate and long-term pay off here." her tactics: prizes & perks for attending, surprise guests, access to tools/books/frameworks, speakers/panelists that are normally hard to get to, good vibes. "make the experience so good, they want to come back just to have fun (and some of them eventually bought, and so did their friends)." === what i'm taking away: the webinars that drive live attendance aren't trying to trick people into showing up. they're creating something that only works live - whether that's access to experts, peer discussions, time-sensitive content, or building towards longer-term community.

People register, but never show up to your webinar. Here’s why (and how to fix it) Most webinars have a live attendance problem. Registrants sign up eagerly. Then life gets busy. Emails are missed, reminders ignored, and your attendance rate suffers. After hosting hundreds of webinars, here’s what I found genuinely works: 1/ Timing is everything Schedule webinars midweek (Tuesday to Thursday) if your audience works standard hours. Avoid Mondays and Friday afternoons; they’re notoriously poor for attendance. Then, automate your reminders: - 1 email one day before - 1 email four hours before - 1 email 10 minutes before Emails help, but SMS reminders drive attendance even higher. Set them up if you can. It’s worth it. 2/ Offer something exclusive Your audience needs a reason to attend live instead of watching the replay. Provide downloadable templates, checklists, or guides only for live attendees. Make these bonuses clearly time-sensitive. People will rearrange their schedules if they see real value in showing up live. Oh, and never mention there will be a recording available. 3/ Promote smarter 🟠 Tease your webinar with short clips of past sessions. Share quick insights or exciting moments that build curiosity. Share behind the scenes of you preparing for the webinar. 4/ Be specific about live benefits Tell your audience exactly what they’ll miss if they don’t join live: - “Live Q&A with industry experts” - “Real-time feedback on your challenges” - “Networking with peers” Repeat these points in every reminder. Repetition helps because people skim emails, and they don’t read them carefully. 5/ Showcase your expertise Your credibility sells the webinar. Briefly mention achievements relevant to the topic: - “This helped me grow revenue by 230% last year.” - “Sarah has trained 300 sales leaders in 2024 alone.” Real results build trust. 6/ Optimize for mobile Choose a webinar platform with strong mobile support. Don't forget to clearly instruct attendees to download the required apps ahead of time. Use these tips to get more attendees showing up live. They’ve worked consistently for my webinars. Reshare ♻ to help others do better webinars. PS: I share daily webinars, marketing and AI tips at Jakub Michalski

I’ve been looking back at the webinars I’ve helped clients run this year, and here are the lessons from the setup and marketing. 1. The topic and title do most of the work. Clear, plain titles outperform everything else. If someone cannot repeat it in one sentence, they won’t register. 2. The internal phrasing you use inside your company does not translate. And if the webinar reads like an obvious sales pitch, they won’t even click. 3. There is a point where the effort outweighs the value when it comes to supporting materials like slides/presentations. If you need weeks just to prepare the slides, the channel becomes too heavy to run consistently. 4. Warm and cold audiences need different paths. Warm contacts convert quickly with simple, direct copy. Cold contacts move slowly and need weeks of lead time. If you want them, start LinkedIn outreach more than a month ahead. 5. Your existing network is often the strongest segment. They outperform new lists when you treat them as their own group and write to them directly. 6. LinkedIn and email have different jobs in webinar promotion. Using only one channel cuts registrations in half. 7. Hosting platforms still make this harder than it should be. Riverside has the best recordings but a confusing experience for speakers and the audience. Zoom is smoother for everyone live, but the recordings don't look great. Separate audio and video tracks should be the bare minimum. My main advantage is working with founders and teams who already have something meaningful to share. Everything else starts to fall into place after that. Including the time I spend editing the recordings ☕

Since March 2022, I've hosted 106 HeyOrca webinars. 💻 It can be challenging to keep your community engaged and motivated to attend a webinar, so here are a few things I've learned. 👉 30 - 45 minutes is long enough! Anything longer than that, your audience will start to drop off. Keep it short and sweet! 👉 Thursday afternoons have been the best time to host a webinar for us. 👉 Involve your community in topic selection! They're the ones attending, so go straight to them to see what they want to learn more about. After every webinar, a survey goes out where the community can provide future topic ideas. 👉 Keep the webinars super casual. No one wants to attend a lecture! Involve the community by asking them questions to answer in the chat (including some fun off-topic ones), shout out insightful and funny comments, welcome people in by name, and answer their questions. 👉 Having special guests makes everything more fun! They bring in a new audience and perspective. Platform your community! 👉 Including a fun little giveaway always makes people happy. 👉 Make sure every topic has a resource to go with it whether that be an aligning blog post, template, or guide. The community should be able to take something away from the session. Shout out to everyone who has attended a HeyOrca webinar! What are your favourite webinar tips and tricks? #Webinars #SocialMediaMarketing #Community