Quick answer: you do not need a big budget to make a webinar look good. Get three basics right — careful camera positioning, a tidy background and clear sound — and a modest home setup can look thoroughly professional. Better still, lighter production opens the platform to more voices across your team.

At a glance

• A smaller budget means more voices, not lower ambitions

• Poor camera positioning, cluttered rooms and lousy sound are the usual culprits

• A few simple checks bring every speaker up to a professional minimum standard

Why a smaller budget is good news

Financial restraints mean not all your event content can be a big-budget affair — and that is good news, not bad. If we drop our production standards a little, we can involve a more diverse range of talent: colleagues with a wide range of experiences, who can be living anywhere. Junior staff can be given a chance to shine, and if we give them a platform, they often do.

What makes a webinar look bad?

Almost always the same three things: poor camera positioning, a cluttered room and lousy sound. When we all rushed to the safety of our homes in February 2020, some of those early sessions were truly awful — and those three culprits were usually to blame.

How do you reach a professional minimum standard?

Fix the basics that viewers notice first, before you go live:

• Check your camera positioning: make sure the framing looks deliberate, not accidental.

• Clear the clutter: a tidy background keeps attention on the speaker, not the room.

• Test your sound: poor audio is the fastest way to lose an audience, so check it every time.

We were about to prepare a guide of our own to help customers aim for exactly this minimum standard — then discovered that our friends at Trend Micro had already done it. Well done to Kevin Flynn on his video explaining how to run professional webinars; it is well worth seeking out.

Frequently asked questions about webinar production

Do you need a big budget to run a good webinar?