6 Webinar Trends Every Company Should Consider

Webinars have been an important marketing and engagement tool for years. During the pandemic, the use of virtual events skyrocketed. Between February and March of 2020 alone, the number of B2B brands in the United States using live webinars increased by 36 percent. Whether your company is new to hosting virtual events or not, you should familiarize yourself with the latest webinar trends. This space is more active than ever – take a look at what other brands are doing to help inspire your company’s webinar strategy.

1. Live Interaction Features Keep Attendees Engaged

Gone are the days of watching a virtual presenter share their screen and calling it a day. Interactive webinars are on-trend. Live polls, chat, and other real-time attendee engagement tools transform the traditional one-sided webinar into a dynamic conversation that pulls the audience into the experience.

2. Less Is More When It Comes to Webinar Duration

With marketing webinars, consider keeping your event relatively short. According to research from 2020, the preferred duration for a webinar is 30 to 40 minutes. If you plan a longer event, you may turn away some potential prospects.

You don’t need to create a jam-packed virtual event to convert leads, but rather, focus on the most relevant, actionable information you can. If you can’t fit a full presentation into 40 or 50 minutes, consider breaking up your webinar content into two or more different virtual events.

3. Thought Leaders and Micro-Influencers Boost the Appeal of Virtual Events

Using this webinar trend can help to attract more people to your event. Draw upon the trust, reach, and unique insights offered by thought leaders and micro-influencers in your industry by inviting them to prevent at your virtual event.

With the right webinar platform, you can count on high-quality HD video broadcasting and still support up to a dozen presenters at once. This allows you to go from a single presenter to a panel of experts and provide even more value to attendees at the same time.

4. Global Webinars Expand What’s Possible

After a year of virtual meetings and digital connections, people worldwide are comfortable using webconferencing technology. This makes it easier to branch out to an international audience.

To reduce friction for your non-local attendees, make sure your platform offers international dial-in numbers. This way, if they want to participate by phone, they don’t have to worry about the cost of an international phone call.

5. Custom Experiences Raise the Bar on Virtual Events in 2021

Create a more personalized experience for webinar attendees with customized invitations and reminder emails. Other perks, such as being able to use your own logo and branding for the webinar background, can enhance the experience further while making your brand more memorable.

6. More Internal Webinars Empower HR

With the rise of remote work during COVID and the current shift to hybrid work models, HR teams are relying more on technology to train employees. In 2020, the attendance rate for training webinars was 65 percent. Internal webinars can be an excellent way to onboard employees and gain real-time feedback from them at the same time.

Essential Webinar Features for Keeping Your Attendees Engaged

Whether your company is focusing on virtual events for marketing or training and onboarding purposes, you’ll need a fully-featured solution to host effective webinars. The right tools give you the capabilities to reach more people and grow your business. Here are some of the features you should look for in a webinar platform:

• Live polls engage participants while giving you real-time insights into what everyone is thinking.
• A Q&A feature makes it easy to field questions from your audience. You can sort, edit, and respond quickly. This makes it easy to keep the flow of the conversation without losing anyone’s attention.
• HD video broadcasting ensures a professional experience, even with hundreds of attendees and multiple presenters.
• Cloud recording allows you to record the entire event, including screen share slides, videos, and more, which you can then send to your attendees by email or repurpose as other content for marketing purposes.
• Built-in reporting reveals who attended, for how long, and feedback from interactive tools such as your surveys and quizzes.
• A presenter green screen gives you and your other presenters the chance to practice and organize the event before going live. This is a key tool for delivering professional virtual events that leave a positive impression on attendees.

Getting Started with Webinars in 2021

Webinars are a useful tool because they have the potential to be deeply engaging while enabling your brand to connect with a large number of people at once. Unlike blog posts, videos, and other types of marketing content that your company might create, publish, and leave for customers to digest, webinars offer a virtual hands-on experience. They can feel intimate, even when hundreds of people are tuned in together online. This is because they allow for face-to-face interaction at scale.

And, with advanced webinar tools, you can create a truly immersive, high-value experience that will deliver the wow factor you need to stand out in a competitive marketplace.

Intermedia AnyMeeting is a powerful webinar and video conferencing solution designed to help businesses thrive in the digital space. You’ll have all the features you need to create engaging webinars that convert and more. Learn more about how Intermedia AnyMeeting can enable your company to grow.

Kirsten Barta

Kirsten Barta is Sr Marketing Communications Manager at Intermedia