How to Run More Engaging Webinars: 5 Expert Tips

Most webinars check every box — useful topic, knowledgeable speaker, slide deck full of insights — and still manage to feel flat. The problem is usually the audience experience.

Audiences need a clear reason to show up, a good reason to stay, and a useful next step when it’s over. Get those three things right, and you’ve got a webinar worth watching.

To help unpack what that looks like, we brought in Jay Acunzo, a professional speaker and storytelling advisor, for our Host Better Webinars series. Here’s what he had to say:

1. Choose the right kind of webinar

Not every webinar should follow the same format. Some webinars are meant to teach a practical skill. Others are meant to introduce a new idea, challenge how people think, or help buyers solve a problem.

When every webinar gets treated like the same 45-minute slide presentation, the experience can start to feel generic. In the first episode of the series, Jay walks through different types of talks and why the format should match the goal.

Before you build the deck, get clear on what your webinar is trying to accomplish.

• Should your audience leave with a framework they can use right away?
• A new perspective?
• A better understanding of what to do next?

That choice should shape the format, examples, pacing, level of interaction, and call to action (CTA). The more specific the purpose, the easier it is to create a webinar that feels worth showing up for.

Jay’s rule of thumb is to finish this sentence before you plan anything else:

“By the end of this webinar, the audience should think, feel, or do____differently.”

Jay Acunzo
Professional speaker & Storytelling Advisor

2. Give your webinar a clear narrative

A strong webinar moves the audience from one moment of understanding to the next. Instead of sharing every smart thing you know and hoping people connect the dots, Jay recommends building a clear progression:

• What problem you’re solving
• Why the usual approach falls short
• What better looks like
• How the audience can put it into practice

That kind of flow makes the webinar easier to follow and gives your speaker a stronger path to deliver.

3. Craft a strong opener

The first few minutes of a webinar do a lot of heavy lifting. Your audience is deciding whether to stay focused, multitask, or quietly drift back to their inbox. A strong opener helps them feel like they’re in the right place.

In Jay’s “Start Strong, End Strong” session, he digs into how openers can earn attention right away. Instead of leading with housekeeping, long introductions, or a generic agenda, use the opener to create immediate relevance.

1. Name the problem your audience is dealing with.
2. Show them you understand why it matters.
3. Then give them a clear promise for what they’ll learn or be able to do by the end.

The opener doesn’t need to be flashy, but it does need to make the audience care.
For example, instead of opening with:
“Today we’re going to talk about webinar engagement best practices.”

Try something closer to:
“Most webinars do everything technically right and still feel weirdly easy to ignore. Today, we’re going to fix that.”

4. Keep the audience engaged in the middle

The middle is where many webinars start to lose momentum. The opening had energy, the ending has a destination, but the stretch in between can easily become one long block of explanation. As Jay puts it:

“You actually don’t have a captive audience. You need to captivate.”

Jay Acunzo
Professional speaker & Storytelling Advisor

That’s where purposeful interaction can help. In the third episode, Jay used chat, live polling, and Q&A to make the session feel more responsive without derailing the flow.

Before diving into the material, he used a Wistia poll to ask attendees what felt hardest about engagement and drop-off, then pulled the results on screen to make audience input part of the conversation in real time.

5. End with a memorable close and clear CTA

A strong ending does more than summarize what you covered. It helps the audience understand what mattered most, why it matters now, and what to do next. In the final episode, Jay put it simply:

“Frame your CTA from their perspective, not yours.”

Jay Acunzo
Professional speaker & Storytelling Advisor

The best next step should match where your audience is in their journey, whether they’re ready to keep learning, apply what they heard, or talk with your team.

That’s why Jay recommends thinking beyond a one-size-fits-all follow-up. Some people need more education and time. Others are ready to apply what they learned, ask questions, or take a more active next step.

Wistia’s webinar analytics and integrations can help you spot those signals, so your follow-up feels less like a generic sales push and more like a useful continuation of the event.

Better webinars start with a better audience experience

At the end of the series, Jay pointed out that each session built on the one before it: choosing the right kind of talk, starting and ending strong, captivating the audience throughout, and turning trust into results. That arc worked because it followed what the audience needed next.

Your webinar should do the same. Start with the audience experience, then build the structure and format around it. When everything works together, your webinar feels less like a one-time presentation and more like the start of a useful relationship.

Watch the full Host Better Webinars series series for more of Jay’s advice on planning stronger talks and turning registrants into revenue. And when you’re ready to put those ideas into practice, Wistia can help you host branded, engaging webinars from registration to replay.