Creating Your Best First Live Sales Webinar

We have the World Wide Web to thank for creating an avenue that connects everyone globally. This inevitably gave birth to new commercial strategies that are virtually accessible to anyone with a computer at home or in the office. Doing a webinar is one such way that's proven highly effective in boosting your online product visibility. Plus, it can also be a great way for you to gather data from prospective clients to know what they want, and if it's something you can improve on.

But let's face it: Many of us are also aware that setting up everything you need to pitch your products online to a live audience can be as daunting as doing the presentation itself. I understand the feeling, as it can be quite unnerving just thinking of what exactly we need to do this right.

There's an endless sea of software offering to work some magic into your existing presentation.

In this blog, I'll share with you an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to starting your very first sales webinar that's sure to give you great results.

What you need:

• A Windows or macOS computer with a good internet connection
• A webcam
• A headset with a mic input
• VideoCom Presenter
• Any video conferencing tool (i.e. Zoom, Google Meet, etc.)
• Your existing PowerPoint, Google Slides, or PDF presentation

Preparing Your Slides

So I have recently created a presentation using Google Slides, and it looks like this:

My slides aren't very text-heavy and for a good reason. It's always best to write down a sentence or two about an item in your topic, rather than drown audiences with long paragraphs. Doing the latter will surely bore your
viewers and you definitely don't want that to happen if you want to leave a good, lasting impression.

Also, I made sure to leave a space in some slides to serve as a placeholder for my webcam or screen capture. Well, my presentation has both! I will be showing a nice pre-recorded video too! Now I think my text slides are good, let's go to the next step.

The VideoCom Magic

Allow me to introduce the best software for those wanting to level up their presentation slides. All you have to do is to create a free account, then download and install VideoCom Presenter on your computer.

I ran the app, then I connected my Google Slide presentation by clicking the button in the center. I copy-pasted my Google Slides link and voila! it loaded everything quickly and easily.

From here, I wanted to make it so some slides would show my camera to make it look more interactive and professional. I went to slide number 3, then selected + Overlay Element > Camera > my webcam. Did some tweaking by resizing and moving the camera source to the lower-right portion of my slide and now it looks like this!

Pretty cool, right? Now moving on to the video file in Slide 4. But wait, there is no video on slide 4 is there? Well, we're going to make one! And yes, we're going to do it straight from VideoCom Presenter!

Remember when I said earlier that I'll be showing a pre-recorded video to my audience? For that, I'll need to add a video file as a new slide. Just go to + Add Slide > Video File to put the media to your presentation as a slide!

What's even cooler is that you can drag sources you've added as slides in Presenter when you feel like reordering them.

Hmmm... so what if you need to make sudden changes to the actual presentation file itself? Not to worry! What I did was I went back to my original Google Slides link, made some changes, then went back to VideoCom Presenter then clicked the Re-sync button. No need to reopen another instance of your presentation, this button fetches all the updates I made to the file.

While I was at it, I also added some keywords and scripts to the Presenter Notes to keep me from getting lost for words while speaking live.

I can add more sources like websites, images, or even screen capture to my presentation if I want to. And by now I'm pretty sure I've already shown you how it can be done.

Looks like I've managed to finally create a better version of my plain old presentation! And all thanks to VideoCom Presenter!

Decide on the Best Schedule and Video Conferencing App to Use

Always... and I mean ALWAYS remember to set a decent schedule for your webinar. We can't expect a good number of people to attend a webinar that was announced just a day ago or so. Just as you have a schedule to follow, you will have to assume that other people do the same. It would be best to set up your webinar roughly 1-3 weeks prior-- this gives people enough time to plan.

Next, you need to decide which Video Conferencing platform you plan to use. Google Meet, Zoom, and GoToMeeting are all very popular video conferencing apps that accept Virtual Cameras--this is very important because we're going to use VideoCom Presenter itself as THE camera for your webinar.

In my case, I'm going to use Zoom. What's great about this app is that I can Schedule a Meeting in advance. This will generate a Meeting ID which can be shared with people who will attend my webinar--very convenient!

Another important thing I need to consider is having an attendee registration. Fortunately for me, Zoom appears to have this feature built-in as a feature that goes alongside its scheduling system. Of course, you can always ask them to message you personally if you wish to manually register them. It's your choice!

I've gone ahead and tested VideoCom Presenter with Zoom and looks like it accepted the app as a virtual camera. Perfect!

Spread the Word on Social Media

So now that I have a scheduled meeting, how exactly do I let people know? I will use my existing social media accounts to post about my upcoming webinar! Nowadays, this has got to be the easiest thing to do in front of my computer.

But then, it would be wise to know your target audience before you go trigger-happy with announcing your webinar to everyone, everywhere. Remember to know your demographic, and see if they can be found on your chosen social media platform.

My product is a dog shampoo, and I'm pretty sure the majority of my Facebook friends are dog lovers too. Moreover, I'm also a member of several Facebook groups about dogs. So Yay! It appears I have found the perfect platform to announce my webinar! Easy, right?

I might receive messages and comments about my webinar, ergo I should always monitor my posts so I can respond to them as soon as I can. That in itself can already give a good impression about yourself which may drive more people to join your webinar!

Of course, boosting your post to reach specific audiences is a sure way to get noticed by people outside my personal social media network, provided I've set it so it targets the right people that will most likely be interested in my product.

Practice Makes Perfect

Not only am I giving those interested enough time to fix their schedules to join the webinar, but I'm also giving myself sufficient days to do a mock presentation using the tools we have at our disposal.

I'm familiarizing myself with the tools, like what to put in VideoCom Presenter's Presenter Notes (i.e. keywords and/or phrases). I tend to be nervous when speaking in front of people, but so far Presenter Notes helps me to regain my composure to avoid getting derailed in the middle of my speeches.

I will also rehearse my lines and how I smile on camera. It always pays to sound, look, and feel good during online presentations as this can also affect the mood of your audience.

Lastly, I'm also practicing the use of my tools as I would during an actual webinar session, this is very important so we don't mess up live, trying to guess hotkeys and buttons. The good thing about VideoCom Presenter is that it's unbelievably simple to operate--it will be so easy for you to get used to how it works.

Looks like that's it for the final preparations. The webinar is about to start!

It's Webinar Time!

I just started the Zoom meeting and greeted my audience with a smile.

All I have to do at this point is to speak with clarity and sincerity. Of course, I should not forget to smile and show my excitement. I feel that my practice sessions finally paid off. I can express myself with confidence and the viewers look convinced so far!

And here's where the VideoCom magic happens: I'm letting VideoCom Presenter handle all the technical aspects, whether the webinar is being broadcasted live or recorded for on-demand (asynchronous) viewing. All I have to do is use Presenter to switch from one slide to the next! I don't even need to manually add/remove my camera, slides, video files, etc. in Zoom or anywhere else because everything has been organized for me by Presenter. I basically just switch and go, allowing me to focus more on what matters the most--the audience.

They asked questions in the end and were very pleased about the new Product! Some of them even said they'll let their friends know too! Looks like I'm off to a great start and the webinar is a massive success!

This goes to show that really, having the right tools and knowledge can make or break your very first webinar.