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Applications open for gatherings with limited participants, the City of Cape Town's Events Permit Office is ready to receive and process permits.The Events Permit Office will only accept and process applications for events not exceeding 250 participants.

Current Disaster Management Act regulations, gazetted on Monday, only allow for gatherings with a maximum of 100 participants for indoor facilities and 250 attendees for outdoor gatherings.

‘The Events Office has been preparing over the last two and a half months to ensure staff are ready to resume the permitting process and provide support to event organisers. It is also important to note that despite the easing of regulations, the safety of all patrons, officials and participants remains our priority. Therefore, in order for event permits to be approved, event organisers have to comply with all hygiene, health and safety protocol requirements,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, Alderman JP Smith. The City has developed Protocols for Hosting Safe Events during Covid-19, which guide event organisers on the procedures to follow in order to secure a permit. These are available on the City’s website.

The protocols are in line with the Disaster Management Act and National directives.

The City’s enforcement services will emphasise the sanitising of hands, social distancing and that masks be worn at all times during these events.

Annually, the permit office usually approves more than 1,000 events.

These events annually contribute more than R3bn to the local economy and provide more than 30 000 permanent and temporary jobs to the value chain.

‘We welcome the decision to allow gatherings because this is an important industry which thousands of families rely on for their livelihoods. It is also a major catalyst for economic growth across a wide range of sectors including tourism, hospitality, transportation, security, etc. It is important now, more than ever, for all those in the events value chain to collectively work towards a recovery strategy and the City will continue its role as an economic enabler,’ added Alderman Smith.

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It’s time to rethink your strategy and tools to meet the heightened expectations attendees have for virtual engagement. 

Today we discuss, What is a webinar?

Webinars are the original virtual event. Held online, utilized as a demand generation tool for marketers, they stood alone online. Not anymore. A lead generation tool with a wide reach, webinar programs have come leaps and bounds as the explosion of virtual events has created a need for technological advancement, increased levels of interactivity, and heightened production value.

This ultimate guide to webinars will help you break down webinar basics as well as offer tips to improve your current webinar programs.

What is a Webinar?

A webinar is an online event lasting 30-60 minutes held primarily to generate leads and educate or train attendees. They have long been used as an effective way to expand a brand’s reach, establish a company as a thought leader in the industry, and engage with prospects and customers through an accessible platform.

Our current remote work-life has increased attendance at webinars exponentially, but even before, webinars were a great tool that didn’t ask for much from attendees (other than a little of their time and a simple form fill).

In the past, webinars were a flat and passive experience for attendees. There was little branding, low interactivity, and production value was practically nonexistent. It was an episodic, online broadcast. And while they worked well, as technology has improved, so have expectations.

Now, webinars can range from a single speaker to a panel, product demo to open forum. There are many ways to create content, and with the rise in virtual event software, more ways than ever to engage with attendees. After all, engagement is key.

Types of Webinars

A webinar serves many purposes. With a short window to engage attendees, webinars must have a clear intention. Below are a few reasons to hold webinars. 

• How-to content that breaks down simple concepts
• Education on trends in the industry
• Introduction to a product
• Cement yourself as a thought leader
• Internal training for employees and leadership
• Professional development for those in the industry
• Lead generation tool to generate interest in a product
• Provide access to leaders in the industry
• Allow customers and prospects to ask questions on a topic

Webinars are often lower effort than live, virtual, or hybrid events, but the benefits they provide long-term can be just as impressive.

As you build your webinars, do it thoughtfully and strategically, make quality content, and track your success.

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Last time we covered what is a webinar and today we share on how to best plan for this.

Though webinars are everywhere, not all are good. It takes careful planning to create a successful webinar. From content to engagement, webinars must be created with the attendee in mind. And they must utilize great virtual event tech.

Figure Out the Purpose of Your Webinar

It’s a simple question, but one that can easily get overlooked. What is the purpose of your webinar? The answer to this question guides everything else – content creation, the tech needed, how you interact – and follow up with - with attendees. An important thing to remember is that all events have two purposes. The first is about what you want the attendee to get out of the experience. The second, what you want to get out of the experience. Webinars are multifaceted – webinars boosts your profits and engage attendees.

Set Goals for Your Webinar

Once you have your purpose, you can set goals for your webinar. Whether this is your first or hundredth webinar, you need a benchmark on which to track success. The best goals are based on the past. If you regularly get 100 registrations, make the goal of increasing that number by 20%. If you often get many registrations, but low attendance, set a goal for attendance. Because webinars use technology at every stage, there is no end to what you can track and improve upon.

Think about your attendee touch points. Set goals for email marketing campaigns, social media, time on the webinar event website, form fills, attendance, view time, and, of course, survey results after the event. Data is powerful. It shouldn’t be feared, rather analyzed and learned from, and used to set new goals.

Build Engaging Webinar Content

Your content is everything. This step will take the longest, but if done right, your content will be worth it. Not only do webinars engage in the moment, but they can be used after the fact on-demand, or be repurposed into eBooks, info-graphics, and blog posts.

Find the Right Topic, Pick Your Webinar Content Format, Choose the Right Date, Choose a Relevant Title

Find the Perfect Speaker, Speakers, or a Moderator

The webinar speaker is a major draw of a webinar. Whether you choose to have one speaker, multiple speakers, or include a moderator, the decision should be made with thoughtful consideration. You’ll want to choose an expert on the topic. From there, a well-known speaker can draw in more registrants. Use your speaker as a tool to create the best webinar possible. Without an engaging speaker, you won’t see as many registrations or high attendee engagement during a session.

Marketing Your Webinar

Marketing your webinar is the next step. Without promotion, you won’t have registrants and without registrants, you won’t have attendees. Success depends on marketing. There are a few must-have elements of webinar marketing. First, an event website where attendees can register. Second, an email marketing campaign. Third, additional promotion like social media and paid ads.

With a great team that combines the expertise of planning and marketing, your event program can be a huge driver for sales and impact the organization as a whole. As you build your webinars, do it thoughtfully and strategically, make quality content, and track your success.

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From expanding your reach and visibility to driving the bottom line, this post covers five reasons why brands invest in social media advertising to reach their goals and scale their business—and why you might want to, too. They include:

1. Reach new customers
2. Low entry cost
3. Gain audience insights
4. Wide range of formats
5. Accomplish more of your goals

1. Reach new customers

Whether you’re considering running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tiktok, or Snapchat, social media advertising allows you to reach out to and connect with new people who may benefit from your product or services. People may not know about your brand or that your products or services even exist and by seeing your prospecting ad, they may realize that it could benefit their life in some manner or that they simply want what you are selling.

2. Low entry cost

Compared to traditional advertising, the cost is significantly lower and if you only have a small budget, you can still enter the auction and find success. Of course, the more you have to spend for ads, the quicker you can learn what is working and what is not, optimize performance, test more variables, and reach more of your goals, such as website traffic, signups, and sales. On the opposite end of cost, LinkedIn tends to be more costly, however, if your business can fulfill the needs of its business community through ads and if your audience size and budget are on the larger end, you can see great success there for the investment. As you can see LinkedIn can be a great way for B2B business to generate leads.

3. Gain audience insights

With more targeting options available to us as advertisers, the more audience testing we can do, and then utilize social platform built-in tools to understand audience breakdowns and how they relate to performance. For example, Facebook breakdown reporting can share details about age ranges, genders, country, region, devices they use, and more. Pairing these breakdowns with your various audiences and the respective performance metrics can help you better understand which segments of audiences resonate with your ads and you can apply these learnings to update your ad set targeting and use that to optimize your campaigns.

4. Wide range of formats

While each social platform has its own ad specs, placements, and formats, there are some common denominators across platforms. The beauty of social media ads is that there is creative freedom and endless tactics and options to showcase your brand in the light you want. From static images to ephemeral and long-form video content, from horizontal and vertical rectangular formats to square, utilize every bit of the ad placement space to increase your ad real estate space on a screen so the user focuses on you and it limits outside distractions from other ads and content. One format we have seen quickly take off organically and then with paid ads across platforms is the Stories format, which can now be found organically and in most instances as an ad placement, too, is on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and as of recently, Twitter and LinkedIn.

5. Accomplish more of your goals

Lastly, whether you are looking for ways to expand your reach and visibility, to drive engagement around your brand, increase website traffic or app use, optimize for users to add to cart, acquire more leads, and drive sales, you can accomplish these and more through social media advertising. Depending on where in the funnel your target audience is, you can select the appropriate campaign type as it relates to your goal at that stage and assist your users through the funnel and towards conversion.

Whether you are looking to expand into social for the first time or are looking to expand into new channels, consider the above benefits of social media advertising and test to see how and if it works for your goals and for your brand.

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