Webinars and virtual events are a great way to position your business as an authority in your space. Nearly every marketer in a survey of 2,000 businesses in 2020 said webinars represented a critical part of their marketing plan.
Have you ever thought about putting on a webinar to support your marketing strategy, but got put off because it looked like a lot of work? Or maybe you just didn’t know where to start?
One way to create a webinar without all of the hard work is templates. Building webinar templates can help you quickly spin up new slide decks, landing pages, reminder and post-event emails, and checklists to help make sure you’ve got everything covered.
This guide will help you find the right webinar template to help make the process of creating and organizing your event easier and more efficient. You’ll be a virtual event pro in no time.
Why you need a webinar template
It’s rare to come across a webinar that didn’t include some form of slide deck, presentation, or visuals. But what do you do if you don’t feel confident creating one from scratch, or you’re short on time?
Webinar presentation templates can come to your rescue. Here are a few reasons why:
- Templates save time.
- They empower you to create more impressive, high-quality presentations than what you could make by yourself.
- A single template can be used for different webinars, allowing for a consistent style of communication.
For those reasons, you’ll find that your webinars then lead to better value for your attendees, increased engagement in the events, which can all lead to revenue growth.
However, not every template works for every type of webinar. Let’s take a look at a few use cases and match them up with a template.
Three webinar templates to get you started
Webinar template for fireside chats and panel discussions
When it comes to creating a webinar with the intention to create dialog, your best bet is to go with either a fireside chat or a panel discussion.
Fireside chats are an informal style of presentation, like a conversation you’d be having with a friend, but with more people. Panel discussions tend to be more formal and center around a topic under discussion by a select group of experts or keynote speakers in the field.
Whichever speaking style you choose, both will have similar slide decks. Vimeo has a design template perfect for either occasion:
Download interview deck template
Check out the template and follow the guidelines on the slides to help organize your event information. You can even add your own logos, infographics, and change the color palette to match your branding.
Webinar template for industry and benchmark reports
Another type of business webinar you might want to try is the industry or benchmark report style. This type of webinar is different from having a discussion since you’d be offering a one-way stream of information (with perhaps room for questions at the end).
If you’ve already created a benchmark report or produced a white paper on a given topic in your industry, hosting a webinar is a great way to repurpose that content and generate even more leads. Or you can offer the written report as a takeaway from your webinar to encourage people to stick around.
Classic PowerPoint presentations can help you get by, but if you want to impress your audience, try using a video instead. Vimeo has just the template you need to communicate industry information:
Download thought leadership deck template
Using this template can help you create a stunning and persuasive presentation, with the option to change the colors and match branding as before.
Virtual events template
If your webinar doesn’t fall into any of the above categories, you can still find a range of templates to suit the style of your virtual event.
You might also want to offer a virtual conference, which tends to run a little differently from panel discussions. Conferences can involve multiple themes and speakers and tend to require more structure as a result. Luckily, deck templates can help you in this area too.
Check out this one from the Vimeo library for inspiration:
Download the virtual events deck template
Of course, whatever the purpose of your webinar is, you’ll need a way to get people to sign up for it. That’s where landing pages come in.
Webinar landing page templates
A webinar landing page exists to both showcase features of the event, but also to communicate essential information about it. Any good landing page should include the following information:
- Event name or title
- Time and date
- A registration form
- Pricing (if applicable)
To avoid distraction and maximize signups, you should keep the options and forms simple. In the lead-up to the registration form, you can add a short description of your event and highlight key speakers.
Webinar email templates
Other areas you can templatize for your webinars is the confirmation and reminder emails. These are simple emails, but if you forget to set them up people can worry they’ve not registered properly or they won’t remember to attend.
A webinar confirmation email can look like this:
Hi [name],
You’ve successfully registered for [event name]!
We look forward to seeing you then, but just in case we’ll send you a reminder a day before the event.
[include links to create calendar events and a link to the event itself]
When it gets closer to the event, you can send a reminder with a fresh link to make sure you get as many attendees as possible. The reminder email can look like this:
Hi [name]
Just a reminder that [event name] is happening tomorrow at [time].
We’re looking forward to seeing you there!
Click the link below when you’re ready to join.
[insert event link]
The priority with confirmation and reminder emails is to make sure the correct event name, date, and time are given, alongside a link to the event itself.
However, you can also include a post-event follow-up email in your sequence. This email can include a link to the recording of the event so that people who couldn’t attend live can still watch and benefit from it. A simple follow-up email can look like this:
Hi [name]
We hope you found a lot of value in [event name]! If you didn’t manage to catch the event live, don’t worry! You can watch a replay using the link below.
[insert link to event recording]
While this version is simple, you could also include some key stats or takeaways from the event to encourage people to rewatch the event.
You can create this email sequence with most (if not all) email marketing providers. However, Vimeo has also made emailing easier by including automatic emails in the virtual events platform. That means you can build a registration form, send out email invites, create your slide deck, host your event, and review analytics all in one place.
Webinar outline
Even though working from templates can help provide design and functionality inspiration, you’ll still need to put in some effort to plan and outline your webinar.
The power of a great webinar presentation that excites your audience lies in your ability to plan ahead with an outline. The outline doesn’t need to be a perfect itinerary of the event, but rather an overview of what you want to accomplish and deliver. Here’s a quick webinar outline template to work with:
A helpful place to start is the key message or takeaway you want your audience to consider. From there, jot down your topic-related ideas, examples, and any stories or data you can draw authority from.
When you’ve put together a good list, put them through the three-step process Masooma described in the webinar presentations post:
- Filter: Whittle down all your information so you have no more than 3-5 key takeaways.
- Distill: Select the most impactful data and examples to back your points.
- Polish: Make sure everything in the outline aligns with your webinar’s goal and is relevant to your target audience.
This outlining process should work with most kinds of webinars — fireside chats, panel discussions, conferences, live training, etc.
Webinar checklist
Last but not least, once you think you’ve got everything planned out it’s worth double-checking you haven’t missed anything. There’s nothing worse than planning an awesome live webinar only to be let down by a mix-up in panel timings or no tech backup.
Vimeo created a comprehensive virtual events checklist that includes a ton of tips and tricks to help you run a smooth webinar. The guide is worth checking out for the finer details, but here are the main points you’ll want to check off your list beyond the basics:
- Make your event accessible
- Determine who is doing what and when
- Plan how you’ll move the audience from awareness to registration
- Schedule a dry-run/rehearsal
- Prepare for eventual technical problems or lack of engagement
- Start on time
- Engage with your audience live
- Make sure names and titles are available for those who miss speaker introductions
- Upload and share your event
- Create a highlights reel that you can use across multiple platforms and social media
Each of these points is important for individual reasons, but together they make for a compelling webinar that keeps giving value to your audience long after the event finishes.
Start building your next webinar today
Creating and hosting a webinar can be easier than you think with the right tools to help. Using templates at multiple stages of the process can give you a solid foundation to work from (not to mention the hours you can save).
It’s also good to remember that templates are just that: templates. You can start building your webinar from one, but with Vimeo’s templates and webinar tools you can customize everything from headers, layouts, colors, fonts, and more.
Hopefully, you’ll have come away from this with newfound confidence and inspiration for building your next webinar. But if you’re still unsure about how to put on a pro virtual event, you can contact the Vimeo team or check out other live event resources on the Vimeo blog.
Get started with webinars today
