Writing a Great Webinar Script: 8 Essential Tips

To host a successful, high-quality webinar involves certain important factors. Content creators know how important planning is to strengthen a brand and educate the market.

And it’s no different with live seminars and presentations. A webinar is a tool that can be quite useful for your content marketing and sales strategy. And to achieve your expected results, you need a good webinar script.

Writing a script is one of the best practices you can adopt to keep your audience engaged throughout your entire presentation. But do you know the secret to developing a script that can hold people’s attention?

If you want to learn how to create an amazing webinar script and all the benefits it can provide, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve listed a few tips to help you organize and plan all the details of your webinar. Shall we get started?

Why host a webinar?

Did you know that webinars are cited by 73% of B2B businesses as the best option for engaging an audience? Incredible, isn’t it?

When you create a webinar, your business is bound to benefit. Among this tool’s key benefits are:

• More traffic: Online seminars help you attract more visitors to your company’s website or blog, in addition to gaining new followers on social media. And with more visitors, you brand gains in reach.
• Engaged audience: One of the greatest advantages of webinars is the possibility for the audience to interact in real time through the chat. With more engaged viewers, it becomes easier to suggest actions, such as download materials or close a purchase.
• Your brand gains authority: With a webinar, your company strengthens the idea that you fully master the subject addressed. And delivering high-value content increases your authority on the network.
• More leads and sales: With a broad, relevant and interesting topic, it becomes easy to attract the attention of a great number of people. Thus, your lead base increases and so do sales. After all, users feel more secure about closing a purchase after a demonstration of the product or service.
• After-sales service support: Virtual seminars also help build customer loyalty for those who are already customers of the brand. You can answer your audience’s questions and present advanced product features.

Why is it important to write a webinar script?

You already know the importance of hosting a webinar, right? Now it’s time to understand the importance of a good webinar script.

A script helps maintain the organization and quality of the presentation.

Regardless of the type of content being presented, preparing a script means calmly planning the topic to be addressed ahead of time to deliver a relevant message that can provide value to viewers.

After all, relying only on improvisation and spontaneity can make your content prone to errors. And any slip-up in a live broadcast can negatively impact your business results.

Therefore, creating a webinar script isn’t just a good idea, it’s a necessity.

Developing a presentation script, defining the topics of the webinar and the order in which they’lll be covered, prevents you from forgetting something while you’re speaking. Moreover, it serves to direct your production, ensuring that everyone involved is aligned and knows what the final presentation should look like.

This makes it possible to better organize the presentation’s length, allowing your video to be more dynamic and better organized, even if it’s live.

You’ll be better prepared during the event and able to deliver high-quality content.

What are the best webinar script formats? 

Before you start practicing, you need to choose which script format you’ll use to plan your webinar.

There are several different video script formats. Some are longer and more technical, while others are simple.

Although there’s no ideal template for planning a webinar, we’ve listed three types of scripts that are the most recommended for live broadcasts:

Direct text

This type of script is objective. In other words, there’s no interference or interruptions. The script is written in a simplified form, without going into too much detail about the webinar’s guidelines.

You can think of direct text like an essay: the lines and steps are written directly, even if they are dialogues.

Remember that it isn’t necessary to follow everything exactly. In fact, a direct text script is used to guide the participants, avoid forgetting something, interruptions, and confusion. It’s also ideal for presenters who will record alone and already know how they want the video to be presented.

Videos that don’t involve a lot of complex editing can also benefit from the direct text format. Complex editing refers to things like tutorials and video lessons, and also the amount of cutting that’s required.

Two-column script

A two-column script is simple, but it contains more information than direct text. The scriptwriter is able to develop the entire process of presenting a video.

In this sense, the script is divided into two simple columns: audio and video. Each column has a description of what will be presented.

This is a great template for webinars because you can imagine what the entire video structure will look like. You can also see where certain factors need to be established and detailed, as a way of getting around possible technical glitches in the live video.

A two-column script can offer certain benefits: the person who produces the video doesn’t necessarily have to be the same person who writes the script, because all of the planned information has already been described.

Another benefit is the ease of visualizing the end result since you can write down all the specifics of audio and video. 

Five-column script

If you wish to create a five-column webinar script, you need to understand the following: this script is more complete and common in audiovisual content strategies. It also provides greater detail and assertiveness.

The five columns are for the following: 

• Scene numbering; 
• Voiceover or spoken text;
• Indication of speech source;
• Lettering;
• The description of each scene.

These are the five essential parts of a video, regardless of format. When you use a five-column script, you’ll have detailed guidelines, and it’ll be harder to go off script and get lost during the recording. 

Step-by-step instructions on how to create a webinar script

Now that you know that you can’t start your webinar without a script, it’s time to learn how to create a script that won’t let you down in front of your audience. 

Write down our tips!

1. Determine your webinar’s goals

Before writing a webinar script, it’s important to know what your brand hopes to achieve with the content. Outlining the online seminar’s goals helps you structure all of the next steps.

A brand can achieve many goals with a webinar, as for example:

• Strengthen the relationship between the brand and your target audience, building customer loyalty
• Assist in your customer’s success during the after-sales service
• Attract new people and generate more contacts for the sales team
• Educate the company’s leads, speeding up the purchase journey.

Writing your ideas down on paper will help you understand how a webinar can help you. They will serve as a guide when the time comes to write the script.

2. Pick your webinar’s topic

After you set a goal, it’s time to pick a topic for the webinar. Delimiting your broadcast’s subject might help you draft a more efficient webinar script.

One good way of picking a subject is to keep an eye on your audience’s main questions. Analyze the most popular posts on your blog and social media and find out if they can become the topic for a live class.

Another tip is to check which keywords are responsible for bringing more visitors to your website. The terms your audience searches the most serve as a clue to find out what their main questions are.

And although you already have a certain authority in the subject that will be addressed, make sure you stay up to date. Study your topic and search for other opinions.

Use Google, YouTube, blogs and references in other languages. This will help you have new ideas and to create innovative approaches to the topic.

3. Look for similar webinar references

You have probably watched a few webinars at some point, and you have your favorites.

Review those you like the most and observe how the speakers made their presentation – how they started, how they presented the key points and how they ended their videos.

There’s nothing better than looking for inspiration in what already works, right? This way, you’ll have a better idea of how to write your webinar’s script and structure it in the best way.

An online seminar is usually divided into three main parts:

• Introduction, which may contain some of your personal trajectory
• Initial presentation of the event’s main content
• Audience Q&A

Don’t forget that at the end of your presentation, you should add a CTA (call to action). Invite your audience to perform an action, such as download extra content, go to your company’s website or purchase a product.

Think about the best way to organize the subjects and fit them into the “steps” we’ve described above. This way, you avoid getting confused when you write your webinar script.

4. Identify your webinar’s audience

Not knowing the characteristics and interests of the audience is one of the biggest mistakes of those who organize a webinar.

The audience needs to relate to the message that you’re trying to convey. And to do so, it is essential that you speak their language.

There are several ways of finding out more about your webinar’s target audience.

One of them is defining your business’ personas. A persona is a semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer. It gathers information as data.

Another option, if you have profiles on social media, is to analyze your followers’ information. The largest social networks provide detailed information about the audience, such as age, gender, location, habits and interests.

Once you have information about your audience, you are ready to communicate more efficiently. You’ll have an idea of who these people are and what content they usually consume.

Create a friendly conversation and make sure that your webinar isn’t too informal or, just the opposite, too technical. Content is very important here, therefore, focus on producing a quality event.

5. Determine the duration of your webinar

Another important tip for creating an efficient webinar script is defining the presentation’s duration.

Like all other content formats, online seminars need to be objective and pleasant. Therefore, don’t beat around the bush or make your event too long.

Time is precious and if your seminar takes longer than necessary, it will be hard to hold your audience’s attention.

Set a duration for each part of your webinar and adjust your text so it will fit into this time.

Overall, webinars usually last between 45 and 60 minutes, divided as follows:

• Introduction – 5 to 10 minutes
• Presentation of the content – 20 to 30 minutes
• Audience questions – 10 minutes
• Call to action (CTA) – 5 minutes

By planning ahead of time, you can fully master your schedule and not run the risk of delivering dull content. Not to mention, that it’ll be much more convenient, right?

6. Perform tests

If you don’t have camera skills, are shy or afraid that your webinar won’t turn out as good, practice; practice a lot!

Turn on your computer’s webcam or the camera of your cell phone and talk as if you were presenting your seminar. You can even talk in front of the mirror!

Just don’t read from the script, okay?

During the live video, your speech should sound as natural as possible. And this is why the subject must be known by heart.

Use everything written in the webinar script as your guide. Make a list of all the bullet points that will be addressed.

This technique will help you remember all the subjects while you are talking to your audience.

Rehearsing your lines is also important in order to find mistakes, check if your webinar’s structure is pleasant and make the necessary adjustments.

7. Writing your webinar’s script

With all the above information at hand, it’s time to write everything down.

That’s right, don’t be afraid of getting a good old pencil and paper and writing it all down, based on the time you calculated above:

• What your greeting will be like
• How you will introduce the content you’ll be presenting to your audience
• How the introduction will be in the topic itself
• The triggers you will use, at the right moments of the webinar, in order to interact with the audience
• The messages that you definitely cannot forget to convey
• How you will conclude the webinar, as well as the CTAs

8. Review the webinar script

Almost all set? Well, it’s time to review everything that you have structured. In order to achieve all your goals, your content needs to be clear and objective.

Read your script again and make sure that your ideas are well structured and easy to understand. Remember that your knowledge needs to be accessible to the widest audience possible.

And don’t be afraid of asking for opinions from friends and coworkers. Use this feedback to improve your work further.

And if you need to edit the material once again, don’t get discouraged! After all, a webinar needs to be incredible and offer value to your viewers.

Bonus tip: Define a format for your webinar

When creating a webinar script, another important detail is defining the seminar’s format.

Choosing the best way of presenting your content beforehand can help you structure your script more efficiently.

Below, we’ve listed a few of the main formats used in webinars.

Interview Webinar

This is one of the most used models, and it’s easy to understand why.

You can invite an expert in your field to talk about a particular subject, answering the audience’s questions.

This format encourages the exchange of experiences and the engagement of the audience, which will be more interested in sending questions and messages.

When drafting a webinar script in this format, don’t forget to structure the topics that will be addressed during the interview. This way, you and your guest don’t risk getting lost.

Webinar to promote products

Another option when creating a webinar is using the space to promote products and services, regardless of whether they are new releases.

It’s the perfect chance to present their features, demonstrate how they work and answer consumers’ questions.

If anyone is still wondering if acquiring the brand’s solutions is worth it, they won’t hesitate in closing the deal.

When you create the script for your webinar, keep in mind the characteristics of the product or service you wish to explore. Structure it to address everything involving the product.

And don’t forget to leave time to answer the questions of those watching your webinar.

Q&A Webinar

This type of webinar is ideal for increasing audience engagement and brand authority.

A few days before the event, ask participants to send in questions about a specific topic. They will be answered live during the broadcast.

To facilitate the drafting of the webinar script, select the most relevant questions and organize them according to the topics.

Panel Discussion Webinar

Conducting a discussion panel allows the company to show other points of view. This type of content attracts the audience’s attention and helps educate them.

Overall, seminars in this format include the presence of a moderator to guide the participants’ interactions.

When writing this type of webinar script, there’s no need to write each person’s lines. A discussion panel works better when all guests have more space and freedom.

Just try to define the topics that will be addressed and stipulate the time each participant will have. It’s also a good idea to set aside a few minutes of the broadcast for the audience’s participation by sending in questions.

Ensure good results with a webinar script

Do you now understand the importance of planning so you can deliver quality content to your audience? Writing a webinar script is, first and foremost, determining what’s going to be said. 

Having a script while presenting will help organize what will be said and done, as well as keep you on topic and prevent mistakes. A good script ensures quality since it was prepared calmly beforehand to deliver relevant messages to the audience.

With the script in hand, it’s time to start live streaming  your webinar and keep your audience engaged while your content is delivered. Would you like to know Hotmart’s top tips on webinar engagement? Check out the article we’ve prepared on the subject to read all our tips!

This post was originally written in February 2020 and has since been updated to contain more complete and accurate information.