Many industries utilize hosting webinars as one of the effective ways for better promotion of services and products. Webinars are great because of the visual format that they provide. Since people more and more get used to visual content and respond to it much better compared to the written ones, webinars have everything to draw and retain the attention of potential clients. 

Online webinars can collect much more positive responses from consumers since they don’t use aggressive sales strategy and seem less “pushy”. The other benefit is connecting consumers together to motivate them to make a purchase.

In this article, we’ll talk about online webinars used for business promotion. Also, you’ll get tips on how to increase your brand’s awareness, create sales funnels, and draw more customers to your industry.

What is a webinar?

The main concept of any online webinar doesn’t really differ when compared to seminars or lectures. The only difference is that the space is entirely digital with everything being presented online. The popularity of webinars keeps constantly growing and expanding. Webinars are not only used to teach and provide training online but also are a multipurpose marketing tool for boosting business processes like sales and brand awareness.

According to the statistics provided by the State of Webinars 2020 Report, only during the year of 2019, there were over 627,000 webinars given and hosted on such Internet platforms like ClickMeeting. The number of participants exceeded 8,500 million people worldwide. In other words, people like to stay connected and receive information from the experts directly, even if they live in other parts of the globe. Webinars are great in terms of saving time, money, and expanding knowledge with an opportunity to interact right here and right now without actually traveling anywhere.

How can online webinars help build your business?

Here what you can do with webinars for boosting business:

• Offer playbacks of the recorded video material (use later for marketing promotions for leads and sales);
• Offer live presentations of a webinar’s host (to build more trust through personal interaction with people);
• Offer two-way interactions mixed with slides and screenshots with important info;
• Deliver expertise, provide feedback with marketing efforts more clearly;
• Expand your e-mail list by asking to register to take part in the webinar;
• Grow sales and generate marketing leads;
• Offer affordability and low-price maintenance (free options for webinar hosting sometimes are also available);
• Offer an expansion of your market reach through the involvement of like-minded experts;
• Last but not least, one of the most convenient things about online webinars is that you’re not tied to any location whatsoever. You are totally independent in terms of the area you host it from with the possibility of bringing people together internationally.

A couple of things to keep in mind before organizing a webinar. First, make sure you feel confident in dealing with technology. You should know how to handle glitches or lapses that always happen during any video presentation. Second, learn some tricks that will help you capture and retain people’s attention. Also, in case you have some problems speaking in front of a whole bunch of people, learn tactics on how to be a confident speaker.

What do you need to host a webinar successfully?

Take a peek at some points we’ve outlined on where to start and what steps to take:

• Decide whether you will be building leads or promoting your company with a webinar.
• Prepare an outline of the content you want to cover during a presentation. If you’re going to talk about marketing, then prepare a presentation that will cover the hottest and most pressing topics that people are interested in at the moment. If the main purpose of the webinar is an email list building, then write down information that will cover common questions people ask about your business.
• Highlight ideas that you think are the most important for your presentation and think what are the best ways to organize your talk. It’s better to keep the introduction short without giving too much broad information. Leave some time for questions and for discussion. Remember about the sales pitch and try this strategy at the end of the presentation. Draw people’s attention by going over special bonuses, discounts, and any benefits available. Keep in mind and remember about your CTA (call-to-action) and pass some promotional information asking to either visit a company’s website or any other online resources pertaining to your company.
• Think of the time and the date that would be the best for organizing a webinar. Try to set it up according to everybody else’s convenience. Organizing a webinar on a weekend is not the best idea. That’s the experience of those who have done webinars a few times. They said that the best time to host it is the middle of the week in the afternoon or in the evening.
• Make nice slides because this approach is useful for keeping participants’ attention and keep them focused on the topic of the presentation. If you have never used PowerPoint and have no idea where to start, then make slides in either Google slides service or try Canva, Piktochart, ClickMeeting, and SlideDog.
• Decide whether having another expert to co-host your webinar is a good idea or whether you want to invite guests. The main bonus of bringing a co-host is that he can introduce your business to a part of an audience that they already know. The more new potential clients, the better.
• Get all your tools together and double-check to make sure everything works before starting a webinar. Test all your tools that are necessary for a successful webinar, such as web camera, microphone, chat functionality, software used for a webcam.
• Choose a webinar system you want to work with. In this case, you’ll need to decide whether you want to carry webinars as a common practice and make it a part of your business. If yes, then paying for LiveStream software, WebinarJam, or GoToMeeting might be a good investment. If you are not sure, you can just stick to either Skype or Google Hangouts. Just make sure that free software will accommodate the number of people you are going to bring.
• Create reminders about your webinar. Offer a page where participants can sign up for the webinar and provide e-mail addresses in order to receive the information about the webinar. Then you‘ll need to create a webinar funnel with a landing page for providing info about the webinar and a special form for registration. Once somebody is registered, send a follow-up letter saying thank you and include a reminder with the date and time.

Once your webinar was held and you got a recorded video version of it on hand, use it for promotion or offer to people who couldn’t participate.

To get more information about using webinars for your business, engage in online learning and take an online course offered on Grinfer “How To Use Webinars For Your Business” for only $29.99. This course was created by Sorin Constantine, an entrepreneur, and marketer with 10+ years of experience in e-commerce and affiliate marketing. You will learn how to use online marketing tools and methods for driving more sales and profit with webinars. By the end of the course, you will be able to create one-page webinars and use 8 steps techniques for organizing them for free.