How to Host a Webinar for your Accounting Firm | Tips and Tricks!

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Webinars and virtual events have been used as a marketing and lead generation tool for a long time, but during the pandemic these events became the norm. Now that we are in the clear and are able to have in-person events again, webinars and virtual events are still a common use of marketing resources and there is a reason for this!

In this blog, I'll dive into why you should consider hosting webinars as part of your marketing strategy and I'll even share a few tips, tricks, and tools for you to get started with hosting your firm's very own webinars.

Webinars and virtual events are can be an incredibly beneficial marketing tool as they allow your firm to connect more directly with qualified leads and also provides an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.

Benefits of Webinars

Before we dive into how to host your webinar let's quickly discuss the benefits of hosting a webinar.

The biggest benefit to hosting a webinar versus simply publishing a video, is it gives you the opportunity to capture arguably the most valuable marketing asset known to man, emails.

By having your guests register for your webinar and requiring them to share their email, at minimum, you now have direct access to their inbox, and because they signed up for your webinar, they are considered a warm lead because they have expressed interest in what you have to say and the information that you'll be sharing within your webinar.

You can then send strategic followup emails to your attendees, whether they be clients or completely new potential clients, to offer additional services, invite them to have a discovery call, and so on!

Another benefit to hosting a webinar is that it gives you the opportunity to share your knowledge and position you and your firm as a thought leader.

Sharing information for "free" helps you build trust with potential clients and demonstrates that you truly know your stuff! If a potential client is on the fence about whether or not to hire you as their accountant, and you invite them to a free webinar, then share value with them, their going to be much more comfortable taking the next step and moving forward.

Webinars as a Content Pillar

Something else that you can do after you've hosted your webinar, from a content perspective, is break it down into micro content.

We've talked about doing that in many of our older Heart-icles, and this is could be another pillar. It gives you the opportunity to host an entire webinar - you can do an interview, you could do a presentation, you could do a panel - there's so many different ways to produce content for a webinar.

One thing that you can do is take that webinar, and break it down into shorter clips, into quotes, and potentially even images that you can then share on your social media accounts.

That gives you the opportunity to get a little bit more mileage out of that one piece of content.

Planning Your Webinar

Planning your webinar is the next thing we want to discuss. You have an idea you want to talk about, a concept that provides value, now what?

You've got your idea, you've got your plan, now you need to start thinking about how you're going to capture registrations. Are you going to do that through a form on your website? Are you going to use a webinar tool (I'll talk about some in the next section)?

Then you're going to start thinking what day of the week and what time of day works for your target audience. We typically choose to do it over the lunch hour, with a start time of 11:45 am. This allows people the opportunity to take an earlier lunch, but then still have a little bit of time to relax before heading back to work. Keep in mind, every audience is different and you may need to test it a little bit and see what date and time works for you.

The other thing you need to think about is speakers. Who's going to be talking? Who's going to be sharing the value? It doesn't always have to be you, you can bring in experts to talk about specific topics that you may not be an expert on, this provides additional value to your clients.

Let's just pull back the lens a little bit here, if you have an accounting firm whose clientele is primarily business owners, you don't always have to share tax related information with them, especially within these webinars. What you can do is bring in a performance coach, someone like a mental coach or a business coach. You could bring in a marketing specialist to come and talk about marketing, anything that has to do with being a business owner, not only just running a business. Or, how you balance your personal and professional life - all of those topics can be really interesting, beneficial and valuable to your clients and potential clients.

So, think about speakers, think about topics, and think about your target audience again. What would they find value in?

The nextstep you need to figure out is your registration page. Are you gathering registrations through your website? Or through a form and then having that link to YouTube, as an example of where you're going to host the webinar.

You need to figure out how you're capturing that information and then sending out the invite for the actual live stream - or the actual webinar. Then, if you feel like you're confident enough and ready to take the plunge into advertising, you can advertise for your webinar as well. Think about it, if you want to attract more new eyeballs to your webinar or your business, this is a great way to do it.

It's all about value. You're not really selling anything at this point in the marketing funnel, all you want to do is add value. You can target people similar to the clients that you already have on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc, if you want to get to the point where you're offering something that is of value to new eyeballs, to people that aren't clients yet, so that could be that next step.

You have got your plan, you know who's speaking, what your topic is, you've got registrations down, now you need to figure out how you're actually going to broadcast your webinar.

Webinar Tools

Once you have decided on the content and speakers for your webinar, it’s time to choose a platform that can help bring your virtual event to life. There are many different digital solutions available, so you'll want to select the one that best suits your needs.

Here are some of the most popular webinar platforms in 2023:

LiveStreaming on YouTube: A completely free solution, you can set up a YouTube channel, and schedule a Live Stream event. You can then send out a registration link using a form on your website to gather those emails, and then send the live stream link through the confirmation email. It can take a little bit more effort than some of the other platforms I'm going to speak to, but it's completely free, and on a popular and reliable platform as well.

Zoom Webinars: Everyone is familiar with Zoom after the days of quarantine and work from home mandates! This platform is ideal for larger webinars, as it allows up to 100 interactive participants and 10,000 viewers for live streaming. Zoom Webinars also offers a range of features such as Q&A, private chat rooms and recordings. There is a monthly subscription for this solution, but it could make sense as an add on if you already subscribe to Zoom for your business.

WebinarJam, GoToWebinar, and other specific webinar tools: WebinarJam and GoToWebinar are designed for engagement and conversion and to specifically host webinars, offering features such as automated email reminders and lead capture built in. With the word "webinar" in the name, these tools are specifically made for hosting webinars and can be a good option for a completely out of the box solution to get you started hosting webinars.

Selecting the right webinar platform for your virtual event will help to ensure your webinars run smoothly from start to finish and provide a great experience for your attendees.

Hosting a Successful Webinar

Hosting a webinar can be tricky, but there are several things you can do to make it as successful and engaging as possible.

The first step is to ensure that you engage your audience during the webinar. This could involve a Q&A session, polls, and simply interacting in the chat. Doing this will keep people interested in the topic and engaged in the conversation.

The second step is to give yourself some time prior to hosting the webinar. Plan at least 4 weeks out from the desired date when deciding on topics, guests, etc. Then work backwards from that point — send out invites 3 weeks in advance, set up any necessary forms/software 2 weeks out, and prepare slides 1 week prior to launch. This will help ensure that all of your bases are covered when hosting your webinar.

Wrap Up

Make sure that you have everything prepared, but give yourself time. Don't feel like you need to go out right away, set up a webinar for three days from now, and think it's going to be a roaring success.

You need to give yourself some time. Get your invites out in a timely manner, find the best time for you and your clients, and get yourself properly prepared.

I hope this blog helps you create and host a successful first!

If you’re ready to get started or have more questions, book your FREE discovery meeting with us today, here, We can’t wait to chat with you about your new business venture!

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this blog helpful!

I'll see you next time!

About the Author

Bryton Udy is the Founder and CMO of atHeart Creative, and host of the Accountant Marketing Mentor YouTube Channel. Dedicated to helping accountants simplify their marketing and communications so they can grow their accounting, bookkeeping, and financial planning businesses, he is passionate about harnessing creative marketing to support the independent accountant.