The popularity of broadband across Europe is opening new doors to businesses looking to reach and engage with prospects and customers online. Live web events or webinars are fast becoming an effective way to generate leads and build customer relationships, especially for companies targeting a business audience with high investment products or complex services.
In an increasingly competitive environment, broadcasting a webinar is a cost-effective way to potential customers through education, and of course to position your product or solution appropriately.
Ensure a successful event
So what is the secret of a successful webinar? Working with an online marketing partner can help ensure high viewing figures and return on your investment.
Plan your whole project as a campaign, creating a step-by-step strategy that builds up to the broadcast day. Consider the importance of your message: A compelling topic educating your audience on a subject that will genuinely benefit them will sustain viewers much more than a hard-sell approach.
Develop your customer relationships
To create a popular webinar you must use a range of marketing tools such as email and online advertising to drive traffic to registration pages. Develop customer relationships in new and exciting ways by interacting with your customers while the event is running. Using specially developed software, your presenters and participants can send and receive messages and information during the live broadcast.
A live webinar presents your business with opportunities to create new sales leads thought the registration process and attendance. Be sure to follow up your attendees within a week of the event.
Supplemental: Top 10 tips
The following ten point plan will also prove useful:
- Choose the right topic. Don’t waste your attendees time with a dry sales pitch. Engage them on a subject that will genuinely benefit and educate them and viewing figures will be maintained throughout the broadcast.
- Choose your technology. Your budget will determine the delivery technology. A live video feed will give your presentation maximum impact. Extra sophistication comes from synced animation/diagrams and a messaging panel for users to interact with the presenter.
- Target your audience. A webinar can be broadcast across national boundaries, even worldwide. Make sure you schedule it for an accessible timeslot when your audience is available. Clearly state the time zone for the broadcast eg. GMT.
- Publicise and promote. A carefully planned online advertising campaign will drive traffic to your registration pages and is an excellent way to create a new audience. Choose speakers who are real experts in their field and promote the benefits of participating in the event.
- Effective registration. Create an intriguing landing page with impact. Minimise click-throughs within the registration pages to streamline the process. Ask your registrants to send any questions they have on the webinar topic before the broadcast. This will help gauge interest in the subject and build up a portfolio of questions and topics to be used and discussed in the broadcast.
- Create reminders. Use all the elements of digital marketing, email, SMS etc. to send reminders and generate excitement before the event. Email is effective to send longer messages and to send ‘thank you for registering’ messages. SMS is ideal for short reminders just before the event starts.
- Incentivise your webinar. Setting a challenge during the broadcast with a prize is an excellent way to highlight a specific message within your presentation. Set a question relating to a key sales point within the broadcast.
- Follow up. Your audience may want to watch the broadcast again in a few days. Provide a recorded version so anyone can watch it on demand. This also enables anyone who missed the broadcast or who dropped out to watch it.
- Offer a takeaway. After the webinar your audience will be hungry for more information on products and your company. Make sure you have any reports, white papers, transcripts or case studies readily available to download. These can then be shared with colleagues.
- Get feedback. Call participants and ask them for feedback, or carry out an online survey. Find out which elements of the broadcast were the most successful and which could be improved on in the future.
