As part of my role as leading the users' education for SEO at Wix, I created monthly webinar series including a cross-team process to support it. Each month we held another webinar on various SEO topics featuring industry leaders for Wix users and non-users.
At the end of 2022, we had in total 9 webinars that reached almost 15 million users and, around 55K attendees from over 70 countries, with a 4.0 satisfaction rate (out of 5) and great feedback.
The webinars helped us to achieve two goals:
Improve Wix's SEO perception by positioning Wix as a brand that dedicates resources to SEO education
Educate our users (and non-users) about SEO, and help them to do better SEO
In order to create monthly webinars there is a need to set up a process with co-workers from different teams, track and monitor the KPIs, analyze the results, get insights, and implement them to improve results for the next month.
The process of managing webinars in 8 steps
Step 1- The process of managing webinars starts with picking a relevant and interesting topic along with a well-known speaker that will help us to attract the user's attention and make them want to join the webinar.
Step 2-Create a brief summarizing all the information we have to help us to define the right target audience, messaging, goals and KPIs, assets, promotional channels, and content and design guidelines. The brief is also defining the deadline for each step.
Step 3- Work with a content writer on the content and adjust it to the different assets, while working with a designer on designing the visual assets putting emphasis on the relevant elements and their hierarchy to deliver our messaging.
Step 4- After we have the content and design we can build the landing page and other technical assets with a technical designer. At this stage, more teams are involved; the email marketing team for the email blast, the acquisition team for building the ads, the analyst for setting the tracking on KPIs, and the social team for planning the social posts on the different Wix communities. All different teams help in executing the promotion plan, inbound and outbound, and need to be synced on the same messaging, target audience and know the deadlines.
Step 5- This is the part the promotions start and we go live with all assets according to the schedule, usually between a week to 10 days before the webinar. In parallel with running the promotions, we do a dry run with the speakers, it helps us to make sure the messaging is delivered and clear, the level of the webinar fits the target audience and we meet the time frame we have for the webinar.
Step 6- The webinar day arrived! A few minutes before the webinar starts, we set up the webinar for a smooth session. During the webinar, it is important to track the Q and A section and make sure all questions are answered. At the end of the webinar, we have an automatic survey that helps us to get some feedback from the attendees.
Step 7- Close the loop with an email to all webinar RSVPs with the recording and more relevant resources on the topic. It is an opportunity to add a link to the SEO Learning Hub to let them explore more webinars and other resources. It is also an opportunity to let those who missed the webinar see the recording.
Step 8- When the webinar is over it is important to analyze all the data and check the KPIs and how they performed compared to the benchmark. Based on the data we can get insights into what assets performed well and which don't and why. At the end of each webinar, I created a list of takeaways and actions to implement for the next one.
What helped me to create an effective and successful process?
Yearly webinar plan- At the beginning of the year, I created a yearly plan with all topics and speakers. This helped us to book a head of well-known speakers along with interesting and trendy topics. It is also important to leave room for changes from time to time and adjust the plan if needed.
Designed template- People usually attending to a webinar because it's an interesting topic or has a well-known speaker. Therefore the design of the different assets has to include the webinar's name and speaker in a primary place in the hierarchy. This insight led me to create a designed template for webinars containing those elements. Creating a template helped me to reduce the time spent on a design from 5 days to 1 day only and make this task into a technical task that we can easily update from webinar to webinar. Moreover, this template creates a coherent design that looks professional.
Save time by working in parallel on content and design- Since I created a designed template that is not dependent on the webinar's content I can work on both of them in parallel. All I need for the design is the webinar's name, speakers' names, speakers' images, and the time and date of the webinar. This allows me to work more efficiently and save time on one hand, and make sure we have the best content or design without any dependencies on the other hand.
Automation- When you have a defined process and you know in advance you need to create certain assets over and over again this is an opportunity to create an automation for this asset. On webinars, I used to send several emails to the audience, some of which can be more generic like a reminder email before the webinar. In this case, I create an email automation to be sent 1 day or 1 hour before the webinar and only change the name and time of the webinar. This way there is no chance to miss sending this on time and I can invest more time in other tasks.
A/B testing- A/B testing is a user-experience research methodology, you can create several variations (at least two) for the same asset and change only one element. Then you can run a few options for the same asset and check which one of them works best. For example, I conducted A/B testing for the email blast to figure out what subject line will be more engaging and motivate users to open the email (higher open rate). I tested a few options for a subject line while all other elements are the same. I also ran a test for the banner design to check how it impacts the CTR. There are many types of tests you can run to improve performance and they will help you to achieve better results over time.
Keeping the URL after the webinar ends- Before the webinar, we usually have a landing page where users can register for the event. We use this URL for the promotions and start to drive traffic to this page, once we do it Google and other search engines recognize this page as a relevant and popular page for this topic and it starts to rank. After the webinar is over we close registration and there is no need for this landing page anymore, at least not in the current format of an upcoming event. The thing is if you change its URL or delete this page you will lose all the organic traffic and rankings you have earned until that moment. The smarter way will be to keep the same URL and update the content on the page. It can be the webinar's recording along with some insights from it, or transcription. This way the search engine will still recognize this page as relevant, and you will still provide value for the users.
Ask your attendees what you want to know- There are platforms that allow you to add a short survey immediately after the webinar ends. It gives you the chance to ask them what you want to know, you can ask them to rate this webinar, mention what topics they would like to learn next time and etc. Asking those questions immediately after increases the number of responses and their reliability since it is fresh in their minds. If you will keep doing it after each webinar you could create eventually a benchmark that will help you in the future to determine whether a webinar is above or below the benchmark.
Data analysis- At the end of each webinar it is important to summarize it. Check what performed well and what doesn't while looking at the KPIs and benchmarks. How the webinar was, does it provide the value the attendees expected, what was the feedback, and what is the sentiment on social? All those questions will provide you with a sense of how it went, and what you need to improve or preserve to ensure it will be even better next time.
In retrospect, doing monthly webinars was a good decision, as it helped us to reach our goals of strengthening Wix in the SEO domain, building our expertise, and educating our users. It also brought added value and helped us to reach a larger audience, collect data on an engaged audience with high intent to SEO, served as a platform for product promotion, and gave us another opportunity for content repurposing. Webinars are a cost-effective way to reach many
people simultaneously and achieve a variety of goals, from training and knowledge-sharing to product launches.