Module 4: Tech & Setup
Platforms, slides, registration pages, and the reminder sequence that actually gets opens. The unglamorous half of webinars — and the reason most webinars die with twelve people in the room.
Picking a platform
You need three things from a webinar platform: reliable streaming, a chat the audience can actually use, and registration that captures emails into your list. Everything else — polls, breakout rooms, virtual backgrounds — is decoration. The popular options all clear the bar: Zoom Webinar for simplicity and reliability, YouTube Live for reach and zero cost, or dedicated webinar tools if you want built-in registration pages and automated reminders. Pick the one you're least likely to fight with on the day.
The real decision isn't the platform — it's live versus simulated-live, and that belongs to Module 5. For your first webinars, go live. Live is forgiving in the ways that matter (the audience forgives stumbles when they know you're really there) and it gives you the chat data that makes every future webinar better. Boring and reliable beats fancy and fragile. Your first webinar should be the one where nothing breaks, not the one with the most features.
Whatever you pick, do a full dry run 48 hours before: same computer, same internet, same slides, a friend in the audience. Test screen sharing, test your microphone, test the chat. Every webinar disaster story starts with "we assumed it would work." Assume nothing; rehearse everything once.
Build brief
Which platform will you run your first webinar on, and why? What's your backup plan if your internet drops mid-webinar?
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Slides that support you
One idea per slide. That's the whole rule, and it fixes nearly every bad deck. A slide with one bold statement, one screenshot, or one diagram — and you do the explaining out loud. The moment a slide has four bullet points and two paragraphs, the viewer reads ahead of you, finishes early, and checks their phone while you're still on bullet two. If you're reading your slides, your slides have too many words.
Build the deck from your arc outline, not the other way around. Each beat gets its slides: the hook gets 2–3 (problem, promise, credibility), the teach gets the bulk (one idea per slide, visuals over text), the transition gets 1 (the turn), and the pitch gets the Stack Slide sequence (one component per slide, then price). A 60-minute webinar needs roughly 40–50 slides — which sounds like a lot until you realize most of them hold a single sentence or image.
Design matters less than you think and more than zero. Clean, high-contrast, readable on a phone — because a third of your audience is on one. Dark text on light backgrounds, 30pt minimum type, no stock-photo collages. You don't need a designer; you need restraint. The slides are the backdrop. You're the show.
Build brief
How many slides will your deck have, and what's the single most important visual in it — the one screenshot, diagram, or number that does the heaviest lifting?
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Registration and reminders
Your registration page has one job: convert a curious visitor into a registrant. That means a headline that repeats the webinar's promise, three bullets on what they'll learn, the date and time (with timezone), and a form asking for name and email — nothing more. Every extra field costs you registrants. Nobody ever thought "I was going to register, but they didn't ask for my company size, so I left" — but plenty of people leave when the form feels like paperwork.
The reminder sequence is four touches: 24 hours before (the promise, restated — "tomorrow you'll learn X"), 1 hour before (logistics — "here's your link, it starts at the top of the hour"), 15 minutes before (short, urgent — "we're starting in 15"), and live now (the link again, nothing else). Each one is two or three sentences. Each one has the join link. The 15-minute reminder alone is worth a quarter of your attendance — it's the one that catches people who meant to come and forgot.
Send every reminder by email, and the 15-minute one by text too if you collected phone numbers. People don't skip your webinar because they don't care. They skip it because life happened and nothing reminded them. The sequence is the difference between twelve people and forty.
Attendance
Reminders are half the attendance strategy
Build brief
Draft your 15-minute reminder — two or three sentences max, with the join link. Make it sound like a human, not a system.
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Jordan's webinar gets 200 registrants but only 18 show up live. His content is strong — the problem is attendance. What's the highest-leverage fix?
Your turn: Write your registration page copy: headline, three learning bullets, date/time with timezone. Then draft all four reminders (24h, 1h, 15min, live-now) with the join link placeholder.
Saved.
Your next 24 hours
Pick your platform and write your registration page headline plus three bullets. Set up the four reminders in your email tool — even as drafts, they're now real.
Steal this template
REMINDER SEQUENCE
24h: Subject "Tomorrow: [promise]" — restate what they'll learn + date/time.
1h: Subject "Starting in 1 hour" — join link + "starts at the top of the hour."
15min: Subject "Starting in 15" — join link, two sentences max.
LIVE: Subject "We're live now" — join link only.
Module 4 cheat sheet
- Platform needs: reliable streaming, usable chat, email capture. Boring and reliable wins.
- Full dry run 48 hours before — same computer, same internet, a friend watching.
- One idea per slide. If you're reading slides aloud, they have too many words.
- 40–50 slides for 60 minutes; 30pt minimum type; readable on a phone.
- Registration page: promise headline, 3 learning bullets, date/time, name + email only.
- Reminder sequence: 24h, 1h, 15min, live-now — each with the join link. Target 30–40% show-up.