A successful webinar takes more than choosing a topic and sending out invites. It requires strategy, clear communication, and a strong understanding of what keeps virtual audiences engaged from start to finish.

That’s why Leadfeeder’s webinar with Gilles Bertaux offers valuable insight. As co-founder and CEO of Livestorm, Bertaux and his team have streamed more than half a million minutes of webinars and hosted over 50 hours of webinar content in 2018 alone—bringing extensive hands-on experience in what makes webinars effective.

For B2B businesses, that level of expertise matters. Learning from teams that have spent hundreds of hours testing formats, refining delivery, and scaling virtual events can help turn webinars from a risky marketing effort into a reliable channel for engagement and lead generation.

Note: Wondering how you could use webinar registration to reach more prospects? Sign up and try Leadfeeder free for 14 days to uncover companies and turn them into high-quality leads.

1. Host webinars on Tuesday afternoons

When should you host your webinar? According to Gilles, Tuesday afternoons are the best days to host a webinar. It makes sense — on Mondays, everyone is getting settled in for the week, making sure they know who they need to contact and what meetings they can't miss. 

By Friday, everyone is checking out — they might even take a long weekend. 

The second-best times are Thursdays at noon and late afternoon, depending on your audience. According to BloggingX, the best time to run a webinar is 11 a.m. 

It's pretty logical, again, because in the morning people aren't that focused, at noon people tend to leave for lunch, and then you have that afternoon slump. 

But also keep in mind that your audience might be different. Pay attention to what times tend to get the most actual attendees.

2. Use standing or on-demand webinars for technical information 

When you think of webinars, most folks think of having to be there, actually hosting the webinar. 

It's a lot of work to create, host, and follow up with webinars, which also limits your ability to scale webinars. 

Having ongoing webinars, even if they're on-demand, allows you to cover the more technical topics you talk about over and over again. 

So, for Leadfeeder, is that where I put my tracking tag? How do I set up my Google Analytics connection? That stuff is basic in the setup, but essential to get right.

Creating a standing webinar time for those topics — or even a recorded webinar — allows you to reach thousands of people all at once. 

MongoDB, for example, is a NoSQL database program, so it's pretty technical stuff, but they host webinars as open offices. 

It's pretty cool. Every Monday or Tuesday at 5 PM, they have an essentially open mic. 

They are waiting in the room, people join up, and then just do a live Q&A. There is no specific content prepared ahead; they do an improvised demo on the fly. It's an interesting way to scale support. 

3. Focus on sound quality 

You might think video is the most important part of webinars, but actually, Gilles says audio is more important. 

If you go to YouTube and have a poor connection, you might not notice the video quality, but you cannot watch a video with crappy sound — super annoying. 

While hosting, make sure that you wear headphones to reduce echo as much as possible. Close all those apps — Skype, GChat, Slack. Turn off Google Chrome or Dropbox synchronization. Those programs eat up a lot of bandwidth. 

When you are done screen sharing, turn it off. This is super important, as it eats a lot of CPU. Make sure your computer can dedicate all its bandwidth to delivering high-quality sound, and sacrifice video quality if you need to. 

4. Create a schedule ahead of time 

We already covered a lot of different ways you can use webinars — to drive leads, educate, and even provide customer service.

That might mean you have two or even three webinars in a week. Gilles recommends that you don't squeeze too many webinars in one week. 

For example, they host weekly 101 webinars, but then on Thursdays or Wednesdays, they host a more advanced webinar.  

But it's all planned out in advance, so they aren't flying by the seat of their pants. They know at least two or three weeks in advance what that week's webinars will be. 

The benefits of this are twofold — it gives your audience more time to sign up and gives you more time to promote the webinar. 

Speaking of promoting your webinar… 

5. Promote your webinar

Don't stick to a single promotion path. An email blast is a good place to start, but you'll also want to use social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or wherever your audience is active. 

After your first email blast, do a follow-up a few days before. This will often give you a huge bump in registrations because people don't necessarily know two weeks in advance whether they can join.  

As you get new clients, add them on LinkedIn and other platforms so you can let them know about upcoming webinars. But don't just blast your webinar everywhere. 

Livestorm.io successfully promoted its webinars by focusing on smaller communities. Rather than dragging in their entire Twitter feed, they focused on groups where folks talked about growth hacking, SaaS, or inbound marketing. 

In those groups, their message really resonated. They'd get involved with the community and, from time to time, drop a, "Hey! You know what? We are hosting this webinar," and people started to register. 

Blasting on Twitter sometimes doesn't get as many results as you would expect; instead, narrow it down to smaller communities like Slack groups, Facebook groups, and even LinkedIn groups to get traction. 

Why are webinars such a powerful B2B marketing tool?

Why should you even bother with webinars? For starters, they work. In 2017, 66% of marketers said webinars were among the most effective B2B marketing tactics. 

And they work for every aspect of B2B marketing, including lead generation, sales, conversion, and even customer success. 

But the main key, Gilles says, is that webinars are scalable. You can only host so many 1-on-1 sales calls or meetings. But with a webinar, you can teach a specific topic to hundreds, if not thousands, of people at once. 

Webinars can be used for a ton of different topics and conversations, including: 

• Demo webinars (sales) 

• Training webinars (customer service, lead generation) 

• Content marketing 

• Inner communication (HR, etc.) 

Webinars also help build personal connections. For example, you can say, "Hey, James, thank you for joining." You can do a Q&A session at the end and answer direct questions. 

Being able to scale training while maintaining that personal touch is one of the main reasons why webinars are so effective. 

So how do you make sure all that work doesn't go to waste? Here are a few of the top tips Gilles shared with us. 

Final Thoughts on Building B2B Webinars that Work 

Webinars are a versatile tool for sales, marketing, and lead generation. They are particularly useful for professional audiences seeking to learn about industry trends and solutions. The tips above are just the first step to building a successful B2B webinar — make sure to track statistics so you know what strategies resonate with your audience. 

Want more info about creating a successful B2B webinar? Watch the whole webinar here, including a Q&A session with the audience. 

Note: Wondering how you could use webinar registration to reach more prospects? Sign up and try Leadfeeder free for 14 days to uncover high-quality leads.