Daniele,

It would be helpful if you could give us some more details so you could receive a more tailored answer.

First of all the tool I've felt the most comfortable using has been GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar. I've not had the opportunity (yet) to handle large scale webinar (more then a dozen people at once), but for one of my clients what we are doing is setting up a weekly time for a sales demo. This is then publicized on the website and people are able to signup. Through the signup process GoToWebinar sends them a reminder and information to log in. We just log into the conference half an hour early and wait for everyone to show up. We call into the conference number and everyone else has the option of calling in as well or listening with headphones/speakers. They can ask questions by typing them in and then we answer during openings throughout the presentation.

In cases where we are further along in the sales process we will also schedule webinars with a specific client. Usually these are done with the GoToMeeting version and we just email them an invite code when we schedule the meeting with them. We typically call the client on our office phone and don't even bother with the conference calling features. This works great too when you are talking with one other end point, but they may be in a conference room with numerous people.

posted July 25, 2009

He does webinar's with his martial arts school. Just ask him.

posted July 25, 2009

try being less teckie; call it what it mainly is;
a seminar on the net.

set it up as a seminar and you have your
answer.

posted July 25, 2009

I agree with K Kemper... you're marketing a seminar first.

Start with the basic marketing question, "Who do I need to reach, and what kind of offer to I need to present to them to get them to take action" How you will invite them will flow from there. Email is the most popular, but I've seen other tactics work well, too. Answer this first question and 'how to invite' gets answered.

As far as technology is concerned, consider how your presenters will interact with the audience. All conferencing technologies allow you to present PowerPoint, and they differentiate on many other features such as registration, communication/feedback tools, etc.

Finally, prepare by treating this as a project - that's what it is. Setup, promotion, speaker preparation, etc., all become milestones, and you will see the dependencies emerge as you plan accordingly.

All the best!

Roger Courville
TheVirtualPresenter.com
WebSeminarToolkit.com
+1.503.329.1662

posted July 28, 2009

Danielle,

I agree with most of the comments here. Having been in the webinar business since the mid-1990s, here are what I consider the the keys to consider:

1. As Roger said, how will you invite attendees is important and just as important is: what information do you want them to provide when they register. Realize that you must keep it short but besides their name, company, title and contact info, I always advise that you ask them a few additional questions such as: their experience level with your product or similar products; ask them for their top 3 goals/outcomes they want from attending the webinar - this will help you develop the content to meet participant's needs; and finally ask them when they plan to implement a solution such as yours.

2. Once you've developed the content you need to consider what type of data do you want to gather from participants once they are on the webinar. In my experience webinars that use more interactions (polls, surveys, tests/quizes, etc.) are the ones that best meet particpiant's and host's goals. 1st, start off the webinar with an interaction such as a poll asking participants where they are from. This helps build a sense of community and lets other participants know there are others out there with similar interests. 2nd, use and interaction every time yuou change topics and/or speakers. This provides a good transition and enables you to summarize about the previous topic/speaker. Finally, make sure you end the event with a survey to gather feedback on their level of interest and also on topics they'd like to participate in the future. Pu the survey up while the final Q&A is going on.

3. You also need to consider how the event will show as a replay (on-demand). On average most webinars will receive 5x the number of participants on the replay vs. the live event. Thus, consider how the interactions and data will be captured, etc.

4. More recently webinars are starting to be offered strictly in an on-demand fashion only. This enables you make sure the message is exactly how you want it prior to launching the webinar. Again, even with an on-demand only webinar make sure you are getting the data from the interactions and that particpants can still submit questions which would be forwarded to someone's email for follow-up later.

5. Now once it is over, make sure you track the results and leads to see which ones become sales and what your overall ROI is.

Oh yea, one more very important item - practice. Before the live event or even the taping for an on-demand event - practice, practice, practice. Do at least one full dress rehearsal. No matter how good the speaker says they are at webinars, transitions need to be practiced as do the general interactions between speakers and the host.

Have fun and good luck.

Ken Balog
ken.balog@gmail.com

posted July 28, 2009

In addition to driving registrations you need to have a plan so that there is not a huge gap between number registered and the number that actually attend. Reminder emails and / or phone calls. One of our clients even has us do reminder phone calls a hour before the event.

Don't forget the value of post event follow up. A personalized email to both the attendees and the "no-shows" providing the link to the webinar archive, additional information about the webinars topic and another chance to ask questions, contact your company, complete the survey (if you have one as Ken suggests). Also, If you end the event with a survey designed to gage product/service interest follow-up with those by phone.

Ken's advice with the webinar archive is a good one... "that participants can still submit questions which would be forwarded to someone's email for follow-up later.

posted July 29, 2009

For the technical portion, I recommend using an outside company. They have all the equipment and can work with the speaker and moderator (and you can be behind the scenes on the call) and will do a practice session with you and the speaker/moderator. They are the experts in making sure the technical portion works smoothly. Because having the equipment not work at showtime is the one thing you DON'T want to deal with!

I found this article from a Google search. They recommend gotowebinar.com.

Links:

• http://www.bestforwebinars.com/choosing-a-webinar-vendor.htm
• http://www.gotowebinar.com

posted July 30, 2009

Daniele,

The key is knowing your target market and leveraging partners for promotion and marketing. If you have a great program, but nobody knows about it, than your program was not succeed.

Develop a marketing and promotional plan with people in points of influence to your target market.

Mark Mikelat
Founder SpeakerLounge.com
At SpeakerLounge we connect speakers to the planners who need their messages

Links:

• http://www.SpeakerLounge.com

posted July 31, 2009