Best Webinar Platforms

The beauty of webinar software is its potential to reach big audiences. Webinar platforms are intended for communications between a single conductor and a large audience. Before choosing a webinar tool, ensure it can handle the scale of your conference or broadcast size. A conference with 100 viewers will require less bandwidth than a conference with 10,000 viewers, and administrators shouldn’t have to pay extra costs associated with a larger-scale audience. Webinars are also not meant for one-on-one meetings or small-scale team meetings. Consider the style of communication you’ll need, as well as the number of people you’re communicating with. Both of these factors will play a significant role in your webinar decision.

You may also want to communicate with the audience during the webinar via surveys, polls, or other kinds of questionnaires. If so, you’ll want to find a webinar platform that provides this functionality. Interaction during a webinar has been known to increase engagement and send viewers home with a concrete takeaway or plan of action. A well-done webinar used for marketing or sales will leave an audience with a complete understanding of a product, a company’s brand, and what sets it apart. Webinars for education give students the face-to-face learning environment that best facilitates understanding. Explore a tool’s options for audience response and engagement before making your decision.

While a speaker is being broadcast, they may also want to share a screen or display certain media content. If you’d like a particular feature to be included in your webinars, you’ll need a tool that can deliver it. Additionally, some webinar software will allow you to conference with other speakers. This feature is beneficial when a correspondent or panel member cannot be physically present. By allowing others to video conference in, webinars can include remote participants.

Some webinars are simple product walkthroughs, while others are broadcasts meant to entertain or inform a large audience. Administrators will likely want these large broadcasts recorded and maintained, either for later use or to distribute among a wider audience. Oftentimes, webinars are saved and uploaded to a website for simple access. If you want the content of your webinar to be accessible after the event, consider a webinar software with recording capabilities. Even for the smallest webinar, it could be helpful to review the content at a later date.

Webinars are also an excellent opportunity to establish an individual or a company as a thought leader in a space. Hosting webinars on a given topic allows a speaker to broadcast their own thoughts or research on a topic without the hassle of finding or hosting an event. Thought pieces delivered through webinars are often recorded by the speaker and posted afterwards so others can download it. This can further cement status as a thought leader, since a message can be heard long after the initial recording.

Key Benefits of Webinar Platforms

• Conduct ticketed webinars
• Communicate directly with your audience on a large scale
• Deliver personalized teaching sessions
• Break down barriers to attendance such as an attendee’s location
• Offer audience interaction tools to increase engagement
• Develop names of interested buyers and leads
• Real-time communication with a live audience, whether present or remote
• Toll-free calling for remote attendees
• Capacity to connect quickly
• Ability to leverage various viewpoints
• Lead generation

Webinar software puts you in the office spaces and living areas of people around the world. It helps you go live at a conference in Tokyo while you’re on the western coast of California. It helps you communicate with your entire team, or entire company, at once despite having offices in multiple locations.

Video communication has come a long way from the initial glitchy calls to faraway family. It’s now a necessary, daily-used piece of professional communication. But beyond standard web conferencing use cases, webinar software makes content led by one speaker or moderator available to audiences on a large scale.

Marketing — Webinar platforms can bring about awareness to a business, organization, or even idea. The whole point of webinar software is the dissemination of information. The content itself can range from life-changing valuable to casual yet thought-provoking. Businesses have used webinar tools to get their employees or spokespeople in front of large audiences to build initial interest in a product or service.

Education — Webinars are an invaluable teaching tool. Many people prefer to learn visually. Webinar platforms allow presenters to walk audiences through an explanation or a concept bit by bit. They can share presentations or videos within the webinar solution in order to give understanding to what they’re talking about. Visuals are engaging and leave viewers with concepts to remember or think about later.

Meetings — Although webinars are used to broadcast presentations to large audiences, they’re not always public. Webinar software can be used within a large organization to broadcast important meetings or company-wide announcements. They can also be stored and archived for later, providing valuable resources for employees to self-serve. Storage features are helpful in any webinar use case, as it helps the presentation be an ongoing resource for awareness, education, or internal communication.

Drive Demand — Perhaps one of the major business benefits to webinars is the opportunity to drive consumer interest. By presenting ideas or products in an impassioned, entertaining format, companies, nonprofits, and other financially dependent organizations can get face to face with potential buyers. This face time is vital, as consumers often feel more connected to a company whose ideas they understand or agree with. Webinars can help key speakers and consumers get on the same page and develop a mutual understanding that could potentially lead to a loyal customer relationship.

Engage Your Audience — Webinars get people amped, or relatively so. There’s something about knowing a presentation or conference lecture will be broadcast live that adds import to the subject matter. It makes audience members feel like they’re participating in something important, exciting, or newsworthy.

Because of this, webinar audiences are more likely to be engaged. Presenters can use this with other engagement-driving tactics, such as surveys and live audience communication. This is bound to pique viewer interest and provide more stand-out moments and vivid takeaways for audience members. Surveys and polls make viewers feel more involved and can help ideas sink in further.

Establish Credentials — Hosting a webinar on a topic one is well-versed in can help establish them as a thought leader in a given space. Webinars allow individuals or companies to attach their face or brand to a given topic or space, cementing their knowledge in a shareable video afterwards.

Webinars are an excellent tool to disseminate information while also interacting with an audience. This can be useful in any number of situations to a plethora of different people.

However, some professions have adopted webinars into their standard repertoire of technology tools. Webinar products have been developed that cater specifically to these use cases and as a result provide features outside of the norm. These professionals can include:

Marketing and Sales Representatives — For those in marketing or sales, webinars can serve as a convenient, personalizable tool to pitch your brand or product. With the features webinar software provides, reps can use webinars to modify their pitch and cater to the specific group they’re speaking to. This makes their presentation more engaging and more relevant to their audience, correlating to more lead generation and brand awareness.

Webinar platforms that cater to the needs of marketing and sales representatives will often feature branding options and integration with outside digital asset management software to pull branded assets.

Educators — Webinars have become a staple of the online learning environment. Educators using a learning management system (LMS) can post webinars in real time to simulate a physical classroom or post previously recorded webinars so students can learn on their own time.

Webinar platforms intended specifically for educational purposes are often built directly into an LMS, integrating with additional quiz and note-taking features within the platform. However, standalone educational webinar tools are available that can integrate with other outside LMS if necessary.