Hosting great webinars with international Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) takes planning and collaboration with your global colleagues to ensure the event is successful. In-vitro diagnostics (IVD), medical technology and pharmaceutical companies should consider webinars as part of their marketing strategy, as this tactic fits in well at the awareness and consideration stages of the Buyer’s Journey.
Read our simple guide to executing an engaging webinar for your healthcare topic of interest.
We advise no less than two months between project kick-off and the webinar going live. There are several planning steps that need to take place, and healthcare KOLs are famously busy so their schedules will likely be hard to align. There could also be internal reviews required by the medical technology, IVD or pharmaceutical company which may involve global colleagues, meaning timelines could be pushed out unexpectedly.
Take a look at our checklist to find out the steps that need to happen before your webinar
Where webinars are hosted will change depending on the content you are sharing. It is important to make clear whether the webinar’s intent is educational or promotional as this will impact who can watch it and where it can be watched.
If the content is intended to raise awareness of a certain disease state or class of therapy and can be viewed by the public, using a social media channel to live stream the webinar will widen the audience beyond who you are able to reach through your CRM and social media followers. Partnering with a health consumer organisation and using their channels to promote and stream the webinar will also allow easier access to speakers and create greater engagement.
If the content is intended for healthcare professional viewing only, we recommend making registration webinars compulsory to protect the public from information that is not targeted at them. The invitations to the webinars can be sent out in newsletters, EDMs, and promoted via paid advertising in appropriate online locations.
To identify the best international KOLs to speak in your webinar, coordinate with your colleagues based in different countries to kick off the conversation with these experts and gauge their interest early on.
Speak to health consumer organisations about whether their CEO would like to voice their perspective on the topic in the webinar as well. Involving prominent speakers such as these can positively impact webinar attendance.
For a two-hour webinar, we recommend no more than six speakers to avoid overwhelming the audience and losing engagement. Remember, not every speaker has to make a presentation, some of them can simply be involved in the discussion and Q&A session.
Thanks to Zoom’s interpretation feature, involving KOLs who do not speak English has never been easier. The Zoom interpretation feature is available to panellists and the audience. It allows for seamless interaction between experts from different countries, and participation from people who speak different languages. The feature breaks down the barriers that medical technology, IVD and pharmaceutical companies face when choosing panellists for webinars, as they can expand beyond those that speak English.
Read our article about hosting virtual advisory boards with an international panel of KOLs
Having a clear objective for the webinar will make choosing the presentations and discussion topics easier. Without an overall goal, the audience could leave feeling like they do not know why they attended. Schedule an appropriate amount of time at the end of the webinar for discussion, Q&A. If hosting a Q&A at the end of the webinar, arming a member of the audience with questions they can submit if no one else has any questions ensures the key points you would like reinforced are getting more airtime.
If the panel features KOLs from different countries, involve your colleagues who know them best in virtual planning meetings to determine what topics would be best suited to these speakers.
If you are interested in hosting your own webinar with international speakers, get in touch here
