Live webinars are a powerful tool to connect with a wider remote audience, engage them, and interact online to educate and influence them. It's essential for all businesses to find ways to interact online with a larger audience in this digital era of communication.

Whether it's internal employee engagement, virtual conferences, town hall sessions, elearning, customer or partner training, product launches, or building better relationships with stakeholders, live webinars will be a perfect fit for achieving your goals.

What is a live webinar?

A live webinar is a virtual session where you can showcase or share your expertise, answer questions, and interact with attendees via polls and messages to engage your audience in the moment. It provides a platform to educate, influence, and interact with a remote audience. The convenience of attending from anywhere with an internet connection makes live webinars an accessible and flexible tool for virtual learning and communication.

Organizers can engage the participants with presentations, polls, make presenters, allow to talk, and broadcast messages. Attendees can interact with the webinar organizer using non-verbal feedback, raise hand, and questions. Overall, live webinars act as a valuable virtual tool for all businesses, educators or trainers, and organizations to connect with their audience and share their knowledge with a larger audience. There are vast use cases that will give you ideas on how to host live webinars.

The key benefits of a live webinar for businesses

Live webinars are the best platform to achieve marketing and large audience engagement goals for your business. Every stage of your business can make use of live webinars to grow to the next stage—startups, SMBs and large enterprises can enjoy many benefits of live webinars. Some of these benefits are listed below.

Lead generation 

One of the best ways to generate new leads for your business is hosting live webinars. Registrants of your live webinar can be pushed to your CRM as new leads, which the sales team can engage in the future based on their interest levels or engagement during the live webinar.

Increased reach

Companies can improve the reach of their branding event by allowing people from all over the world to join in real time  Enhanced brand visibility, lead generation, and driving conversions can all be achieved by leveraging live webinars.

Brand awareness 

Live webinars are a great platform to increase your brand recognition. Organizations can reach a broader remote audience to showcase their expertise, products, and services. Live webinars help build trust and credibility with the target audience, leading to brand recognition and customer loyalty.

Audience engagement 

Actively engaging the audience through the presentation is one of the keys to a successful live webinar. Encouraging the attendees to interact via chat, Q&As, and polls are the best ways to engage them and keep the session lively. This will help you create a dynamic and impactful experience for the audience. This is crucial for creating and maintaining interest in the topic you're presenting and the best way to ensure the effectiveness of your message.

How do you choose the right live webinar platform?

Choosing the best platform is purely based on your requirements. When choosing the right platform for your live webinar, consider important factors like ease of use, attendee engagement features, webinar customization options, webinar analytics, and the options to automate audience engagement during the live webinar, before, and after the event.

And finally, pricing is one other factor that comes when you purchase a live webinar tool. You can refer to the best webinar platforms available and choose the one that best suits your needs. Ultimately, the best live webinar platform allows you to engage and interact with your audience with a seamless delivery of your presentation.

How do live webinars work?

1. Schedule the live webinar with the proper webinar topic and description.
2. Invite co-organizers to present or engage the audience along with you.
3. Promote the webinar to generate more leads through registrations.
4. Customize the emails to engage the audience automatically apart from the webinar.
5. Start the live webinar at the scheduled time for the attendees to join in.
6. Boost audience interactions using attendee engagement features.
7. Record the webinar and share the recording link to the audience after the event.
8. After the webinar, use analytics to track attendance and attendee engagement.

How do you promote a live webinar?

You can generate a bigger audience for your webinar by promoting it well in advance on the platform of your choice. Keep track of registrations using source tracking to identify which platform works better for you.

1. Promote your live webinar on various social platforms.
2. Use email marketing to promote your live webinar by sending mailers.
3. Embed the webinar registration on your website to convert website visitors into leads.
4. Invite leads or contacts from CRM to register for your live webinar.

How do attendees join a live webinar, and how can you keep them engaged?

Here's how your audience will join the live webinar and make the most of it and be interactive during the event.

1. Register for the live webinar and add it to your calendar.
2. Join the webinar at the scheduled time.
3. Join from the browser without downloading any app on your computer.
4. You can also join from mobile devices using the webinar app.
5. Interact with the organizers and co-organizers using non-verbal feedback.
6. Improve your attentiveness using Q&A, live polls, and raise hand options.

How do you measure the results of a live webinar?

The success of your live webinar can be measured using various stats like registrations from different regions, registration source tracking, attendance rates, attendee engagement level, performance reports, and more. These metrics will help you assess your live webinar performance and whether the primary goal of the webinar has been achieved. Based on the results of these webinar analytics, you can plan your upcoming live webinars for better performances.

Frequently asked questions 

1. What is a live webinar? 
   A live webinar is a web-based seminar that engages a larger audience that joins remotely. Webinar presenters host live webinars to deliver effective presentations, lectures, demonstrations, keynotes, and engage the audience in real time.
2. What is the difference between a live webinar and a recorded webinar? 
   A live webinar is a virtual event where attendees join the webinar and interact with the presenter at the time of the event. A recorded webinar is pre-recorded by the organizer and made available for on-demand viewing for the attendees at any time.
3. How many attendees can join a live webinar using Zoho Webinar? 
   You can organize webinars with up to 5,000 attendees using Zoho Webinar. You can choose your preferred plan and attendees tier ranging from 25 to 5,000.
4. What are the benefits of a live webinar? 
   Live webinars help you connect with a wider audience across the globe, deliver a presentation, engage, and influence them. Businesses of all sizes can reap the benefits of live webinars.
5. How do I register for a live webinar? 
   Attendees can register for a live webinar using the registration link shared by the webinar organizer or using the registration form embedded on their website. Attendees aren't required to download any other apps on their computer to join the webinar.

Want to try a live webinar for yourself? Go ahead and take a webinar trial.