Hosting webinars has proven to be one of the most lucrative sales strategies for small businesses and course creators. Because of the interactive components and personal touch that live webinars enable, businesses have found success even with their first webinars.
For example, some people have managed to generate $2,000+ of revenue after their first webinar.
In this article, you’re going to learn how to use webinars for marketing, creating brand awareness and establishing authority in your niche. You’ll learn how to use webinars to sell products and courses online. Finally, you’re going to get some actionable tips for choosing the best webinar software for your business needs.
Hosting Webinars for Marketing & Awareness
It can be debated that brand awareness is an unmeasurable marketing goal. However, creating brand recognition and authoritativeness in your niche can be a recipe for long-term success in your business.
Webinars (online seminars) are inherently educational and aim to teach something to the attendees. Hosting webinars would establish yourself as a teacher, creates authority and trust around yourself and your brand.
The first place to start with your webinar marketing campaign is by leveraging your email list. They’ve already trusted you enough to give you their email address. That means they want to hear from you. Of course, that requires you to have an email marketing strategy in place already.
Hosting Webinars for B2B Sales
Business-to-business products and courses are usually rather expensive. Behind the hefty price tag, there’s usually tons of value that has to be elaborated. Webinars and video marketing are perfect ways to demonstrate that value.
A webinar presentation features slideshows, screen-sharing and live Q&A’s. These features make webinars a perfect tool for showcasing the value of the product or course. The host can actually demonstrate the value in the form of a case study.
Another smart tactic is inviting a previous satisfied customer into your webinar and letting them give a live customer testimonial. When all of your attendees hear how their peer has gained significant business value out of your product or course, their doubts will disappear.
Hosting sales webinars is a step towards smarter and more effective sales teams. If the sales team can create more personal relationships and demonstrate value on live video to qualified prospects, it’s a recipe for success. These kinds of personal relationships create trust, which is essential for long-term partnerships, instead of getting a few bucks quickly. Delivering real value takes preparation.
Choosing the Right Webinar Software
When choosing a webinar software, there are multiple aspects you should consider. First of all, there should be an option to create a webinar registration page and measure the registration conversion rate. That’s the beginning of your webinar funnel.
The second step in your webinar funnel is getting your registrants to actually attend the webinar they signed up for. For that purpose, there are email reminders in place. Ideally, you’d want to get your webinar event into their calendars.
During the webinar event itself it’s important to keep your audience engaged. Luckily, webinar platforms have many interaction tools for that, for example:
- Greeting your webinar attendees in the chat and responding to them live
- Switching between slides and webcam to emphasize points and keep it interesting
- Launching polls and drawing conclusions from the results
- Launch video testimonials of your previous satisfied customers
- Launching a Q&A session at the end of the webinar to address any doubts
- Launch a pre-configured call-to-action to make your offer attractive
Another aspect to keep in mind is the webinar follow-up. Often your attendees need more time to consider your offer. That’s why it’s important to have a proper follow-up sequence in place.
Erkki Muuga is the creator of WebinarSoftware.org, a blog dedicated to help marketers, coaches and start-ups leverage webinars to grow their businesses. Having over 5 years of experience in building software either as a founder or a product manager enables him to give deep and thoughtful insight in his blog. After having travelled the world, Erkki currently lives in Estonia, the land of start-ups.
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/ErkkiMuuga
My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erkkimuuga/
Webinars stock photo by fizkes/Shutterstock
