In the age of remote work and digital marketing, Zoom webinars have become a powerful tool to engage your audience, build trust, share insights, and scale your brand’s message. Whether you’re planning a product launch, a panel discussion on a hot industry topic, or a thought leadership session, setting up webinars can be a tool to grow your brand with the polish of a live event. The challenge? Getting started can feel overwhelming.
This blog post simplifies the process, going through each step and sharing best practices, helping you go from sign-up to “go live” with confidence. Plus, you’ll also get practical advice to improve audience engagement and ensure your webinar runs smoothly.
Before diving into the webinar setup process, such as integrating with HubSpot, it’s important to understand what Zoom Webinars are and how they can differ from other virtual event tools. This context for HYPERLINK "https://www.properexpression.com/growth-marketing-blog/b2b-webinar-essentials"B2B webinar marketers helps you choose the right features and format for your audience and goals.
for B2B webinar marketers helps you choose the right features and format for your audience and goals.
A Zoom Webinar is designed for large-scale virtual events where attendees mostly observe rather than interact directly with the speakers. This makes it ideal for structured presentations, panels, and training sessions as well. The key difference between a Zoom Meeting and a Zoom Webinar is how the audience participates. In meetings, everyone can be seen and heard (like a virtual conference room). In webinars, hosts and panelists are front and center, while attendees view the event and participate through tools like Q&A, polls, and chat.
Use cases for webinars include:
If you are in the early planning stage of a webinar event, this blog post can be helpful.
You’ll need a Zoom Webinar license to host an event. These licenses are separate from Zoom Meetings and start at 500 attendees, with options to scale up as needed. For choosing the right license, think about what your attendance goals are for your webinar event, and how you can reach beyond the max number for each license cap.
A Zoom Webinar license gives you access to essential features like:
Compare your options on the official Zoom support page.
Preparation is key to a smooth webinar setup. Gathering everything you need ahead of time saves you from scrambling during the process and ensures all the right details are in place for your attendees and speakers.
Create a checklist of the following items before logging into Zoom:
The more you can prepare in advance, the quicker and easier the setup process will be.
When you have your details on hand, then it will be time to walk through the setup process in Zoom. These steps will guide you from logging in to a fully scheduled and branded webinar.
Start by signing in to your Zoom account. From the dashboard, click “Webinars” in the left-hand navigation menu.
Note: If you don’t see this option, double-check that your account includes a webinar license.
Click the “Schedule a Webinar” button. This opens a form to enter all your webinar details.
Add the basics here:
Here’s where you control the interactive and branding elements:
Enter the email addresses of your speakers under the “Invite Panelists” section. Zoom will automatically send them an invite with a unique join link.
Don’t forget to visit the “Emails” tab where you can:
Beyond just setting up the event, there are several strategies that help elevate your webinar from “good enough” to “wow, that was smooth.” These tips will help improve branding, engagement, and overall experience.
Your Zoom webinar is an extension of your brand. Customizing visual elements helps attendees recognize your professionalism and makes your event stand out.
These small touches make a big difference in first impressions.
Keep your audience involved with interactive elements:
You’ve scheduled everything and have done extensive webinar event promotion via emails, paid ads, and social media—now it’s game day. This section covers the last-minute actions to ensure your webinar goes off without a hitch.
Complete these items 24 to 30 minutes before start time:
It’s a good idea to open the webinar in practice mode early so everyone can get settled before going live.
If you’re using Zoom’s built-in reminders, make sure they’re enabled. Otherwise, consider sending a personalized message an hour before the start time with the following:
This reduces drop-offs and confusion, especially for larger audiences.
The webinar’s over, but your work isn’t. What you do after the event in your follow-up outreach determines how much long-term value you get from your efforts. This final section covers the post-event checklist—from accessing your recording to executing a follow-up strategy.
Navigate to your Zoom dashboard and select “Recordings.” From there, you can:
Make sure the video is trimmed or edited if needed before sharing.
Zoom offers detailed reports for every webinar, including:
These post-mortem insights help you fine-tune your strategy for future webinars.
Follow-up is where many webinars fall short. Make yours count by:
For a deeper dive, read our blog on HubSpot and Zoom webinar follow-up strategies.
After the webinar event, the follow-up components, such as email campaigns, aren’t the only aspects for your team’s attention. You can also choose to leverage clips from the event’s recording to promote your organization on social media. You can utilize rich content from the event to create blog posts for your website to drive more traffic through SEO.
If you had customers attend, you could even use quotes from the event to share testimonials across your website and in Sales presentations to prospective customers. If you ran polls during the event, you could create blog posts breaking down those poll answers and the implications of those responses.
The theme and subjects covered during your webinar event will likely dictate the types of repurposed content you can create following the webinar. Planning for these potential uses ahead of the event itself will save time and headaches later.
Hosting a Zoom webinar doesn’t have to be stressful. With the right preparation, thoughtful setup, and strong follow-up, you can create a seamless experience that informs, engages, and converts your audience. All of these activities flow into creating a stronger, more recognizable brand for your business.
Book a consultation with ProperExpression to get expert help on webinar strategy, promotion, and tech execution.