Why Your Webinar Strategy Needs Live, Pre-Recorded, and On-Demand Content

September 15, 2022

Topic tags

Lisa Marinelli

Creative


If you’re putting together a webinar strategy for your business, you might want to know that there are three different types of webinar formats you can create: live, pre-recorded, and on-demand.

Wondering which format you should go with? The answer is all of them! Let’s talk about the benefits of each type of webinar and how you can incorporate all these formats into your marketing strategy.

Alert
Wistia Live is here! With Wistia Live, creating webinars and live events is a whole lot easier. You can create an event landing page, collect registrants, and host an engaging presentation that your audience will love. Learn more about how you can set up your webinar, go live, and redistribute your content all in one place.

Why should I consider using all three types of webinar formats?

If you only use one format, you won’t be able to maximize the benefits of creating webinars for your business. If you want a great webinar marketing strategy, you need a mix of all three types of formats. Why? Well, it makes sense when you think about the life cycle of a webinar.

When you host a webinar, you can either present everything live or include pre-recorded elements. After the webinar ends, the recording becomes an on-demand webinar. Each stage in your webinar’s life cycle can deliver a lot of value to your business. For example, an on-demand webinar can become evergreen content that nets you leads for years to come.

“Each stage in your webinar’s life cycle can deliver a lot of value to your business.”

A webinar can be both live and pre-recorded and then turned into an on-demand webinar. So these formats are not all necessarily separate, but they’re important to consider as different elements in a webinar’s life cycle.

So how can each webinar format benefit your business and help you reach your marketing goals? Read on to find out!

Live webinars are best for audience engagement

If you want to engage with your target audience, live webinars are the way to go. It’s because they allow you to:

Interact directly with your audience

Many webinar platforms have features that can help marketers make the most of their engagement efforts with tools like chat functionality, question and answer (Q&A) sections, polls, surveys, and more.

For example, during your live webinar, someone on your team could help encourage your attendees to ask questions during Q&A sessions. You could also use the chat functionality to provide helpful links to your audience.

Make mistakes that can humanize your brand

During a live webinar, there’s bound to be chatter, bloopers, technical issues, or other speed bumps you’ll have to overcome. That can be a good thing, because these mistakes give a certain level of authenticity to your presentation.

Live webinars leave room for your audience’s forgiveness. If you have to work through any technical difficulties or if you stumble over your words more than once, your audience will understand. They might even find your brand to be more human — and lovable!

Pre-recorded webinars give you control over the quality of your presentation

Do you want to engage your audience and still provide a high-quality presentation? Incorporate some pre-recorded elements into your live webinar! With a pre-recorded webinar, you can:

Up your production value

One of the best ways to increase the quality of your webinar is to include some pre-recorded elements such as countdowns, intros, product demos, interviews, and more. These elements can impress your audience and help keep them engaged throughout your webinar. Plus, you’ll have some time to breathe and chat with your audience when the pre-recorded content takes the stage.

Put your best foot forward

Pre-recorded webinars give you the opportunity to record what you want to say in advance. You can make sure your pre-recorded content is edited and polished to your liking before presenting it to your audience.

If you’re new to hosting a webinar, you might find this approach less daunting than going entirely live. This will ensure you’re presenting the highest quality content possible with as little room for hiccups as possible.

On-demand webinars are great for reach and repurposing

It’s always best practice to record your live webinars. It’s so you can turn these recordings into on-demand content — and reap the benefits long after the live events are over. Some webinar software will automatically record your events.

When you record your webinars and offer them on demand, you can:

Grow your audience

When you host your webinars live, your audience is limited to the folks who can attend the event at the scheduled time. Making your webinars available on demand is a great way to reach a much broader audience, including people who missed your event and those who will come across the recordings in the future. You’ll also give your webinar attendees a way to share the content with their team.

Generate more leads

Did you know that you could gate your on-demand webinar recordings with lead generation tools like Wistia’s Turnstile email collector? If you do that and offer a library of on-demand webinars on your site, those bad boys can turn into evergreen lead-generation machines.

Need an example of what this could look like? Check out our on-demand webinar library!

Repurpose the content for other marketing campaigns

Lastly, you can edit the recordings and use them in other marketing campaigns for your business. Here are just a few ways you can repurpose a webinar recording:

  • Email the recording to attendees to watch again
  • Email the recording to folks who couldn’t attend your webinar live
  • Post clips from the recording on social media
  • Embed the recording in blog posts, landing pages, or educational pages

Learn why Wistia is the best way to host and measure the success of your on-demand webinars. Plus, Wistia’s editing feature can help you create the most snackable clips for social!

What should my webinar marketing strategy be?

Now that you know more about each type of webinar, here’s a brief overview of how you can put all the pieces together for a successful webinar marketing strategy.

Increase engagement with live webinars

As we mentioned, live webinar events are incredible for increasing engagement with your audience. Promoting your webinar can also make your live webinar feel exclusive as you drum up interest among folks.

Use pre-recorded elements to control production value

When you use pre-recorded elements, you can boost the production value of your webinar and impress your attendees. This format can also help you bring in more webinar presenters to keep people engaged throughout the event.

Repurpose your on-demand webinar recordings

After your webinar is over, get more value and SEO benefits out of your content by offering your webinar recording on demand. Put your recording on your website for folks to watch at their own leisure. Doing this, as well as repurposing the recording in other ways, will help you get the most value out of your webinar and help increase your reach for years to come.

Turn your webinar recordings into marketing machines

Feeling more confident about building a webinar marketing strategy? We sure hope so!

Webinars are one of the best types of videos you can create for your business. That’s why it’s important to record your webinars and offer them on demand! Those recordings will continue to bring value to your marketing strategy.

September 15, 2022

Topic tags

Lisa Marinelli

Creative

Mailing list sign-up form

Sign up for Wistia’s best & freshest content.

More of a social being? We’re also on Instagram and Twitter.