Designing an interactive webinar helps drive audience engagement. But contrary to popular belief, webinar interaction goes beyond a webinar’s title or even its topic.
Interactive webinars are about resonating with your audience in meaningful ways, delivering high-value insight, and connecting with them on a personal level. For some, webinars are just a step in a marketing or sales funnel; for others, they’re a critical point of face-to-face contact with a community.
In this article, we’ll explore how to create an interactive webinar that captivates your audience, drives engagement before, during, and after the event, and utilizes effective interactive elements. Learn why making your webinars interactive is essential and how to implement strategies that enhance audience participation and overall success. Let’s begin!
Skip ahead:
- 12 tips on how to make a webinar interactive
- Start with your audience (not your webinar)
- Ask your audience questions
- Lead with interactive webinar content
- Create engaging titles
- Begin with icebreakers
- Leverage storytelling
- Incorporate interactive elements into webinar design
- Staff moderators for webinar engagement
- Designing engaging visuals and presentations
- Find your golden hour
- Challenge your audience
- Begin with the right webinar platform
- Final Thoughts
12 tips on how to make a webinar interactive
Understanding your audience is the foundation of a successful interactive webinar.
Sure, this article focuses on how to make a webinar interactive, but a truly interactive experience begins long before you brainstorm a webinar title or an outline. An interactive webinar starts with a deep understanding of your audience, what they want and need (even if they don’t know what they need just yet).
Who’s your audience?
Info you have on your target audience should include the following:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Marital and family status
- Personal interest
- Personal or professional pain points
Your webinar’s audience and your business’s target audience may vary slightly. In many cases, your webinar audience will be a subset of your overall audience. But, for smaller companies or those with one primary product, these two audiences may be the same.
Webinars are often just one step in the larger buyer journey. In other words, they’re a part of your marketing and sales funnel, typically closer to the purchasing decision. This means each sales funnel may warrant its own webinar with its own unique audience and strategy.
That’s why it’s critical to know how your general audience may differ slightly from the broader group, deviating from the general age, income, pain points, and other factors of your larger audience. You can’t create an engaging or interactive webinar if you misunderstand what your audience needs or wants, which brings us to the next question.
What does your audience want or need?
Anticipating your customers’ needs involves understanding them so thoroughly that you can identify gaps in existing solutions and offer refined or entirely new products to fill voids they may not even realize exist. By deeply analyzing market trends and competitor shortfalls, you can proactively address these needs and set your offerings apart.
For example, Netflix saw a growing need for on-demand content and filled that void by transitioning from a DVD rental service to an online streaming platform, revolutionizing how people consume media and addressing an audience need no one else knew existed.
Don’t know what your audience wants or needs? Then ask.
Webinar engagement begins long before users sign into Zoom, and it begins by asking your audience the right questions.
Ask questions before, during, and after your webinar, including when researching your target audience for your webinar.
Pre-webinar surveys allow you to get a pulse on what your audience wants from you or the challenges they’re experiencing. Live polls can help you gauge how your audience responds to content in real time. Post-webinar feedback will help you improve for future sessions and keep the conversation going on social channels, via email, or in community spaces.
Here are some examples of questions you can ask throughout your relationship with your audience:
Pre-Webinar:
- What questions do you have about our product or service?
- What challenges are you currently facing in ______? (Ex: fitness coaching, parenting, or marketing)
During the webinar:
- How familiar are you with ______? (Insert the topic of your webinar.)
- Which of the following strategies have you tried before?
- Can you think of any potential obstacles in applying these techniques to your work?
Post-Webinar:
- How familiar are you with ______ now? (Insert the topic of your webinar. This is an excellent follow-up if you asked this question earlier.)
- Would you like to suggest any topics for our next webinar?
- What resources can we provide to better support you in ______? (Insert action, goal, or other initiative. Ex: driving web traffic, improving customer onboarding, launching your podcast.)
Continuing engagement:
- How have you implemented strategies from our webinar on ______?
- What challenges have you encountered since our webinar on ______?
Once you’ve identified what your audience wants or needs from you, it’s time to begin thinking more deeply about the content of your webinar. As you review your list of topics, we recommend focusing on the naturally engaging topics first. These are topics that lend themselves to interactivity.
For example, AI is a hot topic in most industries right now. A webinar discussing AI in ______ (industry) will likely generate natural questions throughout the webinar.
Want another example? In our very own Trends in Action series, Maddie Spear led a webinar on leveraging micro-learning, a trend that really took off in late 2018 and early 2019. Naturally, our audience of online course creators was interested in how this trend could help them build their digital brand.
Fostering interaction doesn’t end with your topic, though; you can also create webinar interactivity by leveraging various webinar formats. These include interviews, ask-me-anythings (AMAs), panel discussions, and case studies.
Sprout Social recently hosted a webinar on building data-powered social strategies following the panel model. Adding to the interactivity, the webinar featured a celebrity guest host, Erin Throlopolis. Erin, also known as Corporate Erin, creates satirical content highlighting the dysfunction of corporate environments. Erin significantly boosted the webinar viewership and chat engagement.
Know what you’re going to talk about in your webinar? Then, you can finally create an engaging title.
Notice how this wasn’t the first step? All too often, people get swept up in the “fun” parts of creating a webinar. However, similar to the backward-by-design approach to teaching, creating an interactive webinar means you have to focus on the meat of the webinar before moving on to the metaphorical dessert.
When creating an engaging webinar title, you should consider three things:
- SEO: Whether you’re marketing your webinar on your website or Instagram and YouTube, you should optimize your landing pages, webinar descriptions, and title for the search engines your content will live on. This will help it get discovered in the weeks and months leading up to the event.
- Clarity: Your title should indicate what you’ll discuss. Bonus points if it also leaves your audience with a clear understanding of key outcomes.
- Intrigue: If you’re hoping to create an interactive webinar, you need to show (not tell) how interesting it will be. This means creating a title that generates intrigue in your audience and a curiosity to discover more.
Finally, as you brainstorm and refine your title, consider running A/B tests. This is where the only variable you change is your title. The rest of the content remains the same, whether that’s a description, imagery, graphic design, or some other element. This will allow you to test two titles, one called “A” and the other “B,” against each other. The one with the most engagement (likes, clicks, signups, you decide) is the one you move forward with for the best results.
“We’re going to give everyone a few more minutes to join.” We all know the corporate digital jargon. It’s boring.
So, instead of starting your webinar by having people waiting, have them interact with you and other participants immediately.
Some interactive and engaging ideas include beginning with trivia, introductory quizzes, or sharing fun facts about the speakers. You can also ask attendees about their expectations or previous experiences with similar topics. The goal is to engage your punctual audience members so they don’t feel like their time is unappreciated while balancing the feelings of those who may be running behind (possibly at no fault of their own).
Whether you choose to engage participants with an interview, panel discussion, or other form of engagement, one thing remains true: people are driven by stories, and we have been since the beginning of time. Lean into it.
Here are three ways you can:
Follow a narrative structure
In the Trends in Action series we referenced earlier, Kyle Scott, President of SERHANT Ventures, leads a webinar titled “How to multiply your revenue through a value ladder strategy.” In his webinar, he begins by sharing some groundbreaking figures (in 2019, SERHANT Ventures was driving over 100K in revenue each day on the Thinkific platform).
Scott leads participants past this initial point of intrigue (and awe) with narration, guiding viewers along the SERHANT journey, detailing what the business did to achieve this level of success and how you can implement a similar strategy.
While it’s hard not to be intrigued at that level of success, Scott deepens the level of engagement by taking people along a personal narration of actual events. This method of storytelling is much more powerful than if he were to simply present the strategy.
Share personal stories
Imposter syndrome can creep in following a story like Scott’s. But just because your own story might not feel as “grand” doesn’t mean it’s any less inspiring.
Personal stories allow you, your webinar cohost, or panelists to share bits of information that tie you to the topic of your webinar and make the content relevant for your audience.
Unlike a narrative structure or case study (up next), personal stories can be short anecdotes that span the length of a slide. They can also last several slides or act as bookends, creating interest at the beginning of your webinar and closing the loop at the end.
Share case studies
Case studies, sometimes called customer success stories, are, well, stories. These stories typically fall on the more business (less personal) side of the storytelling spectrum but are stories nonetheless.
A case study focuses on one client or customer who’s seen success with your product or service. It will dive into the details, covering the customer’s pain points and problems, what led them to you, how your solution helped, and the results they saw.
Typically, case studies highlight facts and figures from your customer’s story. For example, this customer success story on George Pitts discusses his journey from struggling financially to becoming a seven-figure businessperson.
While this type of story can be both interesting and interactive, it likely speaks to your target audience more directly than a personal anecdote or narrative will. Keep this method in your pocket for when you’re building a webinar for a super-specific audience who’s already traveled pretty far down your sales funnel.
Incorporating interactive elements we’ve already discussed, like surveys and quizzes, can help keep your audience engaged. Other methods like Q&As, games, and breakout sessions can work too. Engaging content helps maintain audience interest and makes your webinar more dynamic and memorable.
So, if you’re wondering how to make a webinar interactive, here are some ways you can build these into your session for increased engagement:
- Integrating polls and surveys: Polls and surveys help you gather feedback or information during your event. While you can gather information for use after the webinar ends, don’t forget that you can also use this information to help you pivot in real time, catering to audience needs and interests in the moment.
- Schedule time for webinar interactivity: Scheduled dedicated time for audience engagement in your webinar. Additionally, use your event time wisely by preparing for expected or frequently asked questions ahead of time so you can spend more time on questions you weren’t expecting.
- Gamify your content: Gamifying your interactions can take basic polls and quizzes to the next level. Create teams, distribute awards to the best answers, highest scores, or something else. The goal is to garner audience investment and make the experience fun.
- Encourage audience participation: Prompt your audience to share their thoughts and experiences related to the topic. Use interactive whiteboards or live chats to facilitate real-time discussions.
As you think about adding interactivity to your webinar, don’t forget to plan with intention. Audience engagement shouldn’t be an afterthought, and slapping a 10-minute Q&A at the end of your webinar will make it feel like exactly that.
Aim to engage your audience meaningfully every 5-15 minutes.
One often overlooked component in fostering webinar interaction is the moderator.
A moderator is the person running the show behind Zoom’s digital curtain. They’re responsible for most of the logistics during your webinar. Things like letting participants in, answering their chat questions, or navigating technical difficulties often fall to the moderator.
Best practice is to staff one moderator per 50 participants. That’s a pretty small number of participants, which is why so many businesses overlook this and fail to engage their audience properly.
Your moderators will help you ask questions, answer participant questions, display polls, and so much more, leading to an interactive experience for your participants. Moderators can also facilitate breakout sessions, ensuring smooth transitions and keeping discussions on track. Without moderators, hosts (you included) wouldn’t have time to juggle both being “on stage” and managing audience engagement.
As part of a marketing and sales funnel, webinars are a branded experience. That means the webinar should follow brand standards. This includes graphic design (imagery, logo, typography, etc.), voice, tone, and style.
But following brand standards doesn’t mean your webinar has to be boring. You can create a visually dynamic experience within your business’ standards. Not design savvy? No problem. Trusted platforms like Fiverr can give you quick access to thousands of professionals, from graphic design, copy and content writing, to webinar slide deck design.
Leverage engaging visuals like animations, videos, and infographics to break up text and maintain interest. Incorporate your brand’s color scheme and logo consistently to reinforce brand recognition. Don’t be afraid to tap into some of these digital resources to help you craft an engaging and interactive webinar.
Just like with social media, finding the perfect timing can significantly impact the success of your webinar.
Consider time zones, daily routines, and the working environments of your webinar audience.
A webinar aimed at working professionals looking to start a side hustle may perform best on a weekend or weeknight when the target audience isn’t working traditional office hours. Targeting stay-at-home moms with little children? Consider wake-up times, nap times, or preschool schedules when scheduling your event.
And if all else fails, don’t forget about synchronous vs. asynchronous options. Adults are familiar with the two meeting styles in a post-pandemic world and often recognize when asynchronous meetings make the most sense.
Ultimately, finding your golden webinar hour will help drive the most attendance, which will then help drive interactivity and engagement. But you may need to offer various accessible options, whether that means different signup times or live vs. pre-recorded options.
Looking back on tip #2 (asking your audience questions), we mentioned “continuing engagement.” One excellent way to accomplish this is by implementing a challenge at the end of your webinar.
Webinar challenges could look like the following:
- Goal setting: Encourage attendees to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals. For example, ask attendees to commit to making 30 well-researched cold calls in the next 30 days.
- Peer review: Ask participants to connect with other attendees and meet up digitally at least once to workshop a specific project. For example, Diamond Lee could ask her students to meet within 10 days to workshop a sales funnel.
- Success stories and progress updates: Set up a dedicated space for your attendees to bring updates and success stories. Ask them to share their own stories here by a specific date.
- Reminder notifications: Some initiatives can’t be shared on public forums, so leverage email marketing as a private means to connect with your audience and help them progress toward your challenge.
By implementing these challenges, you can keep your audience engaged long after the recording button on your camera has stopped flashing. As an added reward, public sharing of these challenges will garner even more public reach, social impressions, and brand awareness.
Hosting your event on the right (or wrong) platform can make or break your interactive webinar. Choose a platform that supports all of the features you need, is intuitive, and integrates seamlessly with tools in your current tech stack.
While your webinar creation process begins with planning long before you need to input a date, time, or title into a platform, the actual webinar event requires a platform or video conferencing solution. By the time you start defining your webinar’s titles, outlines, and slides, you should have already considered, “How would you design a webinar that would be interactive?”
Will you incorporate interactive polls, quizzes, or Q&As? How many attendees are you expecting, and how many moderators will you need? Will you require breakout rooms or mid-webinar pop-up forms?
Having the answers to these questions will help you weed out webinar platforms that aren’t the right fit, saving you time and technical troubles on the day of your event.
Final Thoughts
There you have it: 12 tips on how to design an interactive webinar.
Looking for the right platform to host your webinars? Try hosting a webinar with Thinkific using Coaching & Webinars or Multimedia lessons. Multimedia lessons allow you to create interactive webinars and engage students asynchronously, while live events let you see attendees face-to-face in real-time. With multiple forms of customer support, integration with major tools like Zoom, ConvertKit, and MailChimp, and the ability to scale your digital business as it grows, Thinkific is the perfect platform for webinar interactivity and more.
