Conducting paid webinars is quite different from free webinars. There are numerous challenges in hosting paid webinars. One of them, and perhaps the most significant, is choosing the best platform.
Your webinar platform should be fully-equipped to handle the unique and demanding nature of paid webinars. Essentially, it should have the right features and the right design to assist you and your audience alike.
The platform for your paid webinars should have:
Safe payment processing
The most necessary and the most crucial paid webinar platform feature is safe payment processing. Since you will be collecting payment from attendees, you need a secure method to do so. Not only will this make it smooth on your end, but your audience themselves will also benefit from it.
Seamless chat features
Having a chat or messaging feature within the webinar platform is powerful. It gives your audience a chance to connect and interact with you throughout the session, and you have the chance to engage with them further.
Effective breakout rooms
Your paid webinars should be more engaging and fulfilling for the audience. In this case, breakout rooms or sub-conferences are definitely a must-have. This can effectively increase engagement and interaction and help your audience to better absorb your webinar discussion.
Automated certificates
Certificates are a great way to leverage your audience. It will help encourage people to attend, and then motivate attendees to finish the session until the end. Your webinar platform should have automated certificates which will mean hassle-free dissemination of the attendees’ certificates.
Pop-up CTAs
Pop-up CTAs (call-to-actions) throughout the session can be quite effective, especially in a webinar where you’re trying to generate sales and not just leads. These CTAs can encourage your participants to purchase your product or service all the while participating in your webinar.
Record & replay
If you want to maximize your paid event, your webinar platform should have a record and replay feature for the on-demand viewing. You can give people who paid for their registration free access to the webinar replay. Or you could offer it to people who missed your webinar for a certain price.
Video paywall
Along with that record & replay feature, a video paywall is also beneficial. A video paywall is a convenient way to charge the audience for access to your video content. In this case, the content is your webinar session.
Closed captioning
Whether you’re required to be Section 508 compliant or you want to be as inclusive as possible, closed captioning is a great feature to have for your paid webinars. This means real-time streaming text of your spoken dialogue will be displayed on the screen. This can benefit non-hearing and hard-of-hearing participate in your webinar.
Mobile device support
It’s imperative that you make sure your webinar platform is mobile-friendly. 96% of Americans own a mobile phone as of early 2019, so chances are most of your attendees will be accessing your paid webinar via a mobile device. You need to make sure that you can cater to them and still deliver an excellent webinar session.
Post-webinar reports
One of the most important things to do after a webinar is to analyze the data and results. You won’t be able to do that without post-webinar reports. Post-webinar reports should be provided by the webinar platform after the webinar. These will provide you all the data you need to improve the next webinar and better understand your audience.