By Geoff Zimpfer, Founder, WebinarMarketingPro.com
Here's what you'll learn in this article:
1. How to plan for, stage and execute a webinar.
Caution! Webinars are like any other tool. When used improperly, they can cause harm and wreak havoc in your business. Used effectively – as you’ll soon discover – Webinars can transform your business and put you on the fast track to success.
Let’s take a look at how you can start using Webinars in your business and seven things you can do to help you avoid the usual pitfalls and risks when starting out with Webinars.
1. Clearly Define Your Goals
It sounds obvious, but you really need to think about the goal of your Webinar(s), so that you can measure your results. What is your goal?
• To acquire leads and bring in new sales?
• To educate existing customers on a new product/service?
• To obtain research or feedback on an existing offer?
If you are looking to acquire leads, there are lots of potential ways to grow your leads. If you’re reaching out beyond just your internal list, the name of the game is promotion. You can promote your Webinar using Press Releases, Banner Ads, Joint Ventures, eMail Marketing to rented lists, Article Submissions, eZine Advertising, Pay-per-Click and more. If you are launching a new product or seeking feedback from your existing customers, then conducting an informational Webinar and Survey could be the an efficient method to fine-tune your new project and get real-world feedback from those who matter most – your customers.
2. Choose Your Provider
Do a Google search on Webinars or Web Conferencing and you’ll get back around 1,600,000 websites. The truth is there are literally hundreds of companies that offer some kind of product or service for hosting Webinars. Choosing the right vendor for your specific requirements is a critical part of your success. It can often mean the difference between a winning Webinar vs. a Webinar that burns your brand, your customers and a hole in your wallet.
For small businesses you want a vendor who has a solid track record who offers the following:
1) Reliability and Scalability – Ability to handle large groups
2) Ease of Use for you and your attendees – You don’t need to be a ‘techie’ to make it work
3) Affordability – Reasonable price for the services offered
The Big Three you want to consider are: WebEx, GoTo Meeting and Microsoft LiveMeeting. There are other companies but these three make my short list because they score high on the three criteria listed above. Do your research and select the vendor best suited for your specific needs.
What About Free? Yes, there are some Webinar providers that are free and they may be quite appropriate for your smaller, more collaborative web meetings with an audience who already knows you quite well. We’re talking Webinars here and that means reaching a larger audience, creating a professional image and delivering your message with minimal concerns regarding performance and reliability. Your Webinars are too critical to risk on a bare-bones service with little track record or limited history of results. Don’t step over dollars to pick up pennies.
3. Have a Compelling Title and Offer
To increase your response and maximize your attendance, you must have compelling, targeted, benefit-driven topic that will capture the attention of your target audience. Find out any current hot-button issues in your industry and use those in your headline or content description. What problem or issue does your product or services help your audience overcome and how will attending your Webinar help them discover a solution to their problem?
You test headlines when you run ads. In the same sense, testing email subject lines is critical to gauging response for Webinars. If you have a known speaker or subject matter expert, whose name is recognized among your target audience, you MUST include their name in the subject line or you are missing out on leveraging their brand or celebrity power. Test different copy and offers within your email invitation. When possible, personalize your email copy (Dear John) and write your copy as if you’re talking directly to that person one-on-one vs. a large group.
4. Make it Easy to Register
Your landing or registration page should require no more than one click to get to it. You don't want make your audience go from the e-mail to a landing page that describes the Webinar and then have to go to another page to get to the registration form. Even worse, putting your registration page on your home page and hoping they find your link to register.
Best practice is to have a single landing. On the left, put the benefit focused copy and bullet points about the Webinar. On the right, display a short registration form asking for only the information that is absolutely required. Also, if you want to create some buzz and excitement around the event, you may want to consider offering a short teaser video clip once they register, preliminary handouts or limiting the number of ‘seats’ available and displaying how many seats are gone in real time.
Research shows that business prospects prefer more detailed copy on Webinar landing pages allowing you to go into a little more depth about the Webinar on your landing page. Adding a speaker's bio, photo or short video clip creates credibility and a personal connection -- just make sure your registration form is up top in the right column with a big "Register Now" button above it.
5. Maximize Your Attendance
Average attendance rates to registrations is about 40% to 60% for Webinars. Begin planning your webinar about six weeks out to ensure you have enough time to build out your marketing funnel and process for inviting attendees. About two to three weeks prior to your Webinar, send out your invites. One week prior, send a reminder and send out a final reminder the day before and possibly the day of if your event occurs later in the day.
You may want to offer an incentive the first 50 with a free giveaway to accelerate the early sign-ups. After your Webinar, send out a thank you to those who attended with any pertinent information. For those who registered and didn’t attend, send a “sorry we missed you” email with links to the recording, and related offer.
6. WOW! Factor Presentations
Too many starting out with Webinars repeat the same mistakes often made during in-person presentations; death by Power Point, boring presenter, little or no audience interaction and lack of compelling offer or call to action at the conclusion.
Webinars offer you the ability to integrate multiple forms of visual media beyond Power Point such as video, (when appropriate) polling, Q&A, instant feedback tools and more. You can share your desktop, take your audience by the hand and browse your website for live demos, case studies and more. Anyone can put up a slide deck and read bullet points. If that’s all you do, you’ll lose them in New York minute because they can read the bullet points themselves.
Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Have you ever tuned out a boring presenter? It’s amplified even more during a Webinar because people are sitting at their desks and staring at a slide show, listening either via their computer or conference line. At least in person you can make eye contact, and get up-close to keep their attention. In a Webinar you have just two tools to keep your audiences attention. Your voice and your presentation. Don’t let them fall asleep! You keep your audience engaged by making your presentation relevant, interactive and lively. How do you capture and keep the attention of your audience in a virtual environment like a Webinar?
7. Always Follow-Up
After your Webinar, your prospects are in the perfect frame of mind to learn more and be receptive to another offer from you. Be sure to add links to either the main offer or other related offers and up-sells in your e-mail. I've seen studies that show nearly 40 percent of thank-you recipients who visited a special post-Webinar thank-you page took advantage of another offer. Of course, integrating phone follow-up for higher conversion is smart if appropriate for your situation.
Most companies fail to recycle or leverage their Webinar content for ongoing marketing and PR benefits. You put a lot of time and money into developing and delivering your Webinars, so be sure to get the most out of them.
Here are some additional tips:
Archive all your recorded Webinars and post them on your website. Consider a single URL that lists all your Webinars and provides a short summary of each event. To encourage site visits and repeat traffic, consider branding the page as an educational library and also include your white papers, eNewsletter archives, and other content that is of interest to your target audience.
Submit your Webinar library URL to major search engines to boost your search engine rankings. Promote your URL in all your marketing and sales collateral including any advertisements both online an offline. Promote the URL at the bottom of your email signature to continue building your opt-in list. At the conclusion of your Webinars, consider a post-event press release summarizing the event and providing some of the most interesting Q&A topics.
Geoff Zimpfer, “The Webinar Marketing Pro” has been helping authors, speakers and small business owners put “butts in the seats” through live seminars, tele-classes, Webinars and more for over 18 years. His experience as a National Marketing Director and promoter for authors and speakers including Anthony Robbins and others give him unique insights and a successful track record of creating seminars, Webinars and events of all kinds that attract new clients, build relationships and increase sales. Get your Free eBook and Newsletter at www.WebinarMarketingPro.com
Webinar Tips: How to Make Your Webinar Work
