What’s involved in running a webinar?
18 Nov 22
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a complete breakdown of costs and services, enabling you to understand what your options are?
Well, we have left no stone unturned and delved into what drives the costs up and why some companies are more expensive than others when it comes to hosting webinars. So, let’s start….
What’s involved in running a webinar?
It’s frustrating but unfortunately, it’s true. There are many elements involved in running a webinar, and how much your team does versus how much your marketing agency does changes the cost.
The core elements will be included in most packages, regardless of the agency you use. These should include smooth set-up and hosting of the webinar, including speaker, audio and video management. The costs of this will depend on factors such as how long it takes to liaise with the speakers for their details, the hosting platform, the length of the webinar and the number of team members needed to support the live event.
Let’s look at an example. If you’ve pre-recorded presentations to stream during the webinar, your agency will likely need 3 people behind the scenes. The 1st manages the speakers and webinar software, and 2 others are needed to run computers in separate locations to stream the presentations in case of internet connection or technical failure.
On the other hand, if only 1 computer is used, with a single team member, the cost of hosting your webinar will be significantly lower. It depends on what is right for your webinar.
The other factor that will affect the cost is the charge-out rate of the people hosting the webinar. Using a freelancer non-specialist agency will cost less, however, costs may be more when using a specialist agency.
Cost range: £350 – £2,000
Variable factors:
Once you have your list of key opinion leader speakers, next you’ll need to ensure your webinar is promoted effectively.
There are many ways to do this, and each will impact the cost of your webinar.
Do you have an existing GDPR contact list that your agency can use to promote your webinar? If so, there will be no need to purchase a mailing list, which an agency can do for you if needed.
Other variable factors include the email software used by your agency and the time it takes them to clean your contact list, set up and design of the email template and copywriting if needed.
You also need to consider how many repeat emails you would like to be sent. Do you only want to send 1 email? Or would you prefer to send 2-3 to maximise open rate and sign-ups to your webinar? Most agencies will encourage you to go for the latter, however, if only 1 email is the cost of your webinar will be reduced but the effectiveness of promotion may be reduced. ,
Cost range: £750 – £1,200 (possibly more if a large email list needs to be purchased)
Variable factors:
Social media has a large reach when it comes to promoting a webinar, especially if you can capitalise on your team and speakers’ networks. The cost of social media promotion depends on the type and number of posts to be sent out and the level of graphic design input needed. For instance, if you choose to send out only still images to promote the webinar, the cost will be less than if you wanted videos or gifs created.
Speaker management will also affect webinar costs. You may ask your agency to set up posts with individual tracking links for each speaker and encourage them to post them. Speakers may need to be reminded to post or encouraged to more proactively generate registrations. All of this takes time.
Cost range: £100 – £750
Variable factors:
Type and number of posts
Number of platforms on which content needs to be posted
Advertising in Medical Device journals
Have you ever thought of using banner ads in clinical journals to promote your webinars? It can be especially useful if you have a series of webinars running throughout the year. Often journals sell monthly display ads which can be a great way to target a specific clinical audience.
The cost of setting up a journal advert series will vary from journal to journal and can be anywhere from £450 – £2500 per month (Journal cost). This will not include your agency’s fees which include the cost of sourcing the advertising space and designing the advert.
Cost range: Journal display ad space: £450 – £2,500 per month
Variable factors:
Cost of advertising space with different journals
Do you work closely with any medical societies whose members are the target audience of your webinar?
If so, collaborating with a society can be a great way to extend your reach and therefore increase attendance to your webinar.
The cost of agency support to do this will totally depend on their involvement. Do you want them to approach the society (this is not recommended, as the relationship should always be between you and the society), or just supply the HTML email code (which will include design, copy and building the code) so the email goes out beautifully to all their members?
In terms of the cost charged by the society, it may be free, but other times there is a fee. It totally depends on your relationship with the society, as well as their own policies.
Cost range: £200 – £3,450
Society communication: Free – £3,000 (can be higher, depending on size of society)
Agency cost:£200 – £450
Variable factors:
There are many reasons why you or your speakers may want to pre-record presentations.
It’s the best way to guarantee that all of the information is conveyed succinctly, as often things can be missed or rushed when the pressure of being live is present.
Your agency will be able to help with pre-recording by providing online filming capabilities (or live if needed) and editing. The cost of this will depend on the number of presentations to be filmed, the length of each presentation, and if any sections need to be re-filmed.
Costs will also depend on who is included in the filming session.
You may need a videographer and account manager online during filming, or just an account manager if your agency has the correct software to film in high resolution without the support of a video team.
Finally, your presentation will need to be edited before the webinar, to ensure it looks professional and is engaging. This will often be done by combining 3 video streams so it’s easy to view the speaker and the presentation at the same time.
These recordings can then also be used on social media after the live event. If you decide to film with only one feed, the cost will be lower.
Cost range: £500 – £1,200 (per presentation)
Variable factors:
Editing of webinar for website and social media
If you want to use the webinar afterwards on your website or social media, it is a great idea to edit the final webinar (if not pre-recorded) and create short clips for social media. You can often create 10 or more short videos from one webinar, which makes for really engaging content.
Editing the shorts involves removing the ‘ums’ and ‘arhs’ from the footage and also ensuring that the right screen is visible at the right time. For instance, if the speaker is referring to a slide, that slide needs to be showing. Equally, if the panellists are having a group discussion, it is better to have a gallery view of all the speakers.
Cost: £500-£1,200 per video depending on how much editing is required for each speaker.
Variable factors:
You have spent a lot of time and money on hosting a webinar to add value to your audience, as such you may also want to send a further email to your entire email list so they can watch the webinar if they didn’t have time to view live. This is also an excellent opportunity to push your audience to your YouTube page with other amazing content.
This should be quite straightforward if you sent an email campaign promoting your webinar. Your mailing list will already be uploaded to the software, so all that is needed is for the agency to design, write, build and schedule the email.
Cost: £550 – £750
Variable factors:
Another factor that will impact the cost of your webinar is the specialism of your agency. Normally, more expensive agencies are those that have specific industry or webinar experience (or both), however that doesn’t mean a smaller team wouldn’t still do an amazing job.
Your agency will plan for 2 rounds of changes for each piece of new work they create and will have allocated the teams time accordingly. In order to prevent exceeding this planned number, it is great to get all feedback from your internal team before providing updates to the agency. This will significantly save time on both sides and undoubtedly save you a lot of unnecessary budget spend.
Check out our article on managing agency pricing if you’d like to learn more.
At Podymos we specialise in Medical Device marketing, particularly downstream marketing.
We are likely to be more expensive than many companies who run webinars as we are specialists in the Medical Device sector and webinars are one of our specialities.
We manage every aspect of your webinar from start to finish and often all we need from you is your speaker list, webinar topic and mailing list (if you have one) and we can do the rest – we will of course need your approval along the way.
If you would like to request a quote for us to support your webinar, get in touch with us through our contact form.
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