Webinars are simply online seminars. There are different types of webinars out there though.
- Live Webinar: These kinds of webinars are hosted live at a certain time & date and audiences expect to show up during this time. Live webinars give you more opportunities to interact and engage with your prospects via chat, polls, quizzes, or even with video chat.
- Recorded Webinar: These kinds of webinars are already recorded and can be watched at any time or the time & date you set previously. Recorded webinars give you a chance to host the same content multiple times.
Last few months, thanks to the crazy lockdown around the world, many people were introduced to this long-time existing term because many individuals and organizations took advantage of the situation where people consumed so much online video content.
I said long-existing because we, marketers, have been using webinars as gated content as part of our sales funnel.
Why is webinar important?
- It is a great way to educate your prospects & clients. Educating potential customers is a crucial part of your marketing efforts because it is an opportunity to create a need for your product or service.
- It is a great way to generate valuable leads. Thanks to your sign-up page, you will be able to gather your potential customers’ contact information to use later for reaching your end goal which is to sell your product or service. The most popular usage of those contact information will be email marketing and remarketing.
- It is a great way to show a sample of your product or service. Especially if your product is online software or you are selling online courses, webinars will help you to let your prospects taste your product. Once they will benefit from this session, they will be willing to buy your product.
- It is a great way to close the deal during the webinar. Whatever your goal is with a webinar, it is your chance to make that happen during the session giving a time scarcity where the audience will feel the urge to complete the action. The most common usage of it to offer a limited time discount for a product you are selling.
- It is a great way to show your expertise and position yourself as an opinion leader. Depending on your product & service category, you can help your thought leadership building efforts with webinars. Hosting a webinar with participants in front of the camera will help the audience to position you as an opinion leader.
How can you host an efficient one?
Webinars are nowadays so easy to host thanks to the great webinar platforms out there. Yet, to benefit from a webinar at the best, there are different elements you should be prepared for and apply.
What are those main elements then?
- UX friendly and conversion-optimized registration page to increase the sign-up rate.
Many webinar platforms offer sign-up pages on their domain or forms to embed on your website. You can alternatively connect your marketing automation or email marketing tool with the webinar tool for the sign-ups but not all webinar tools allow you to do it.
- Email sequence for the announcement, pre-webinar and post-webinar period to increase the number of sign-ups, show-up rate, and conversion rate.
If you already have an email list, it will be your treasure to have free sign-ups so you shouldn’t really miss this chance to use it. Ideally, 3-4 emails sent periodically would increase the number of sign-ups gained from your email list.
Once people sign-up for your webinar you need a set of emails to increase the show-up rate which is crucial for reaching your end goal with the webinars. Depending on the time you have until your webinar, 5-6 emails periodically would work.
When the webinar ends, now it is time to convert. To do that you will also need a few emails to sell your product or service. 3-4 follow-up emails with a strong call to action would work for your goal.
Later, I will write a blog post just for email sequences for the webinars.
- Well designed webinars to show your product’s actual value.
You should always remember that webinars are where you introduce your product features and show people why they should buy from you but not from competitors. That’s why designing your webinar beforehand is crucial.
Start with creating an outline for your webinar. Once you find out how you want to structure your webinar, you can start gathering your content. When your content is ready, now it is time to create your presentation if your webinar content is suitable.
Ideally, you can follow this framework for any webinar:
- Introduction of yourself and organization
- Purpose of your webinar
- What audience should expect from your webinar
- Actual content regarding the topic
- Sales pitch
- Continue the actual content
- A reminder of sales pitch
- Q&A
- A reminder of sales pitch
- Closing
Tip: In order to keep your audience in the webinar until the sales pitch, it is best to offer something valuable at the end of the webinar and announce it while you start the webinar so that they have something to wait.
- The nice sales pitch to use during the #webinar to close sales right away.
It’s now your moment to close a few deals even during the webinar or right after the webinar.
You should prepare a nice sales pitch with a time-limited one time offer so that your audience will feel the time scarcity.
Tip: Try not to be too pushy because you have their contact information to convert later anyway. However, time scarcity is a proven persuasion tactic so that you shouldn’t miss this opportunity during your webinar.
- Safe and efficient webinar platform to prevent technical crashes and to meet your marketing needs.
Sometimes, due to the high number of attendees and webinar tool’s insufficient technical features, you can experience poor video streaming or even crashes which would waste all your efforts because once everyone is out of your webinar room, many people will not come back.
Another important aspect of a webinar tool is its features for marketing purposes. What does the dashboard look like? Is it easy to broadcast your presentation? Can you create offers before the webinar and publish it during the webinar? There are many marketing features that would help you with your campaign but not all the webinar tools are offering all. That’s why you can have a look at G2’s webinar comparison page to see all of them and the community’s opinion.
The bottom line, webinars are a great way to attract, engage, and convert.