The In-depth Guide to Webinar Marketing
In this blog, we’re going to learn A to Z of webinar marketing – what it is, why it’s suddenly so popular, and how you can include it in your marketing plan by following our 6-step process.
Today’s world is a global market. There is seemingly no distance so the marketplace is huge. As a result, it is imperative that new and improved ways of marketing your product and services should be considered.
Not only this, but it also means you are to offer value to your customers. And this is where webinar has started playing an important role. So here we will be discussing webinar’s role in marketing and advertising.
Before dwelling on the discussion, let’s begin by understanding what is a webinar. So in simple words, a webinar is like a seminar, which is held online.
This means anyone from any corner of the world who wants information that you are providing can participate in the webinar with a simple registration.
It is a very important tool for distributing information in a structured manner, but did you know it can serve as an important marketing and advertising tool too?
Let’s take a look at it in detail.
What is Webinar Marketing?
Webinar marketing is a good way to advertise the brand and services of your business on an online platform. It will enable your audience to have your brand’s visual representation.
With webinar marketing, you not only provide your audience with a deep sense of information. But you also gain active participation from their end and indulge in a real-time interactive session.
As a result, this might not just help your product or service but also help your brand as a whole in establishing interpersonal relationships with your prospective and current customers
The dawn of 2020 saw the emergence of the dreaded coronavirus. And now, webinars have become the new normal. They are a perfect way to handle your professional operations while keeping social distance.
Moreover, there is an increase in their use for sure. While webinars are not a new discovery, Many brands continue to discover it as the new normal and reap its benefits.
This is why we see more and more brands opting for this approach to reach their audiences and successfully so.
So what are the ways that you can use webinars to your marketing and advertising advantage? How do you incorporate webinar marketing in your marketing plan? We will see it now.
Why is Webinar Marketing Gaining Popularity?
Webinars have proven to be a boon for marketers in such a daunting environment especially now more than ever.
It is no surprise that we cannot eliminate the pandemic factor from any of our marketing and advertising strategies now. And it is a crucial factor that has contributed to the rise of webinar marketing.
Webinars could be video-based, email based or audio-based. It is a seminar held over the internet. And thus, the digital marketing landscape is being taken by surprise by the webinars.
No doubt that webinars have existed for the longest of time, gaining importance every now and then, but the pandemic world where everyone got isolated saw webinars shining and coming to the business and brand’s rescue.
The In-depth Guide to Webinar Marketing? 6-Step Process That Never Fails Share on X
In today’s world, marketers need to work relentlessly to build more identity-based audiences for an ever-increasing number of channels, and webinar marketing has been proving an effective way to do that.
Why Webinar Marketing, and Why Now?
Webinars support the current pipeline to participate. It ensures that significant market share and brand equity are not lost until the recovery begins.
Since consumer engagement is already more crucial than ever, you always need to strive to find ways to create an overall customer experience for them and what better way than a webinar?
Before the present pandemic, the growth of webinar marketing was already rising. They are a powerful platform for presenting leadership development and growing brand awareness.
Moreover, they also help in real-time interaction which gives customers a sense of personal connection with the brand.
A huge 73 percent of marketers and managers have already started using webinar marketing, as per a study conducted by GoToWebinars in 2019.
Moreover, To create brand recognition, 57 percent of them have also agreed to continue creating more webinars.
Not only this, The number of such online events organized has risen by 330 percent as of March 2020, as well as the number of participants has doubled with each passing hour.
Also, webinar marketing offers a valuable platform to capture the top of funnel contacts. This will be key to potential revenue opportunities as part of a deeper robust content marketing strategy.
Why Should You Consider Webinar Marketing?
Webinars continue to be a simple and fast way to educate large audiences, especially when participants are located in entirely different cities or even countries.
Moreover, they provide a convenient tool for business expansion, improving brand recognition, and sales to marketers.
Not only this, as already explained earlier, with webinars, you will have a chance to have an interpersonal connection with the audience.
Apart from the information that you will provide for a deeper understanding of your product and service, you will also thrive in the customer experience and relationship building.
A lot has been said about webinar’s role in the marketing and advertising of any brand. So here we compiled some of it for you.
Let’s see what kind of role a webinar plays when it comes to marketing. Learn more about webinar’s role in marketing. And in what ways do they prove useful.
Webinar Facilitates Convenience
A webinar is one of the most convenient channels to meet the target audience of a marketer. On-demand webinars are very easy to have because everybody has an internet connection at this stage and a way to access it.
All you need to do is make them aware that a webinar is taking place and they can connect with you through a link registration. Then they become a part of your webinar.
So, It enables you to interact with others around the world without making them leave their homes. Pretty easy I’d say don’t you think?
It Compliments Other Marketing Strategies as a Whole
Multichannel marketing is more important than ever. The customer preferences shifting and decision-making processes are becoming increasingly digital.
The bottom line of this is that consumers have more decisions than ever before when it comes to absorbing information with such technology.
Webinars, therefore, have won their position as one of the most powerful and creative platforms for marketers to tell the business story.
Moreover, with webinars, you can project your other marketing strategies to your audience and make them intrigued about your brand.
It will also help you reach individuals, provide them knowledge, help them gain interest and desire for acquisition of your product.
Not only this, Webinars can correlate and be paired with other strategies to add value to companies, complementing other marketing practices such as email and content marketing. So all in all, a win win right?
An Effective and Efficient Element of Marketing
The arrangement of accommodation and the attendance of conferences, seminars, and sales meetings will result in high costs for any company.
Using webinars, however, both time and cost savings can be made, as they offer an effective process that quashes the need to travel to meetings or rent rooms.
This enables advertisers to connect in a simple and versatile way with prospects all over the world.
Webinar Helps in Acquiring Essential Insights
One of the primary purposes of a webinar is to provide in-depth information to the participants.
With webinars, you are directly communicating with your audience, and giving them a sneak peek into the functioning and experience of your product.Moreover, during the webinar, polls, and surveys help improve participation.
By attending pools and services while hosting a webinar, you will get useful insight into the attendees’ thoughts. So it will not just prove informatory for the audience, but for the brand too.
This data can be used to collect feedback and schedule potential topics and material for webinars, but most importantly, it can also be used to profile the audience.
So you get the joy of information and insights both ways: Brand to Audience and vice versa.
It Facilitates a Personal Interaction
From a content perspective, webinars are an effective and efficient way to get a point across.
They enable marketers to communicate on a wide scale with clients and prospects. Moreover, webinars will also help provide a path for companies of any size to be themselves and establish a real link with their consumer.
This makes it much easier to develop profitable relationships. Furthermore, webinars help brands to introduce their best speakers, positioning them as experts in their sector and the right people to discuss business concerns, building a reputation, and also the profile of the brand.
Webinar Helps Establish an Overall Brand Awareness
Webinars are a great way to promote the brand and services of your business on an online portal. It will enable your consumer to have your brand’s visual image.
You actively need to endorse the market and sell a single concept, message, and reputation to maximize your brand awareness.
This is how the product will be able to build strong brand recognition and webinars will help you achieve just that and that’s what webinar’s role in marketing strategy.
The In-depth Guide to Webinar Marketing? 6-Step Process That Never Fails
Hosting a webinar is more than showing off the newest and greatest items and promotions. Since the participants are spending time, you need to make sure that the content generated is important and interesting.
Webinars can be a key revenue driver when implemented correctly and also play a critical role in marketing operations.
Not only this, webinars are capable of educating, provoking participation, and offering concrete perspectives, all while directing participants from leads to clients.
Now that we have established the importance of webinar’s role in marketing, let’s get to the action. Here are some tips to make your webinars work better and smoothly.
Step 1) Choose an Intriguing, Friendly, and Competent Presenter
This will help get your target audience excited about attending and to keep their attention during the event.
It will also help your audience feel a sense of belongingness and will represent a positive image of your brand.
Step 2) Evaluate Whether it Will be Live or Pre-Recorded
Your webinar can either be live or it can be pre-recorded. It totally depends on you. While important topics will require a live webinar as it has more scope for interpersonal interaction.
You can give a sneak peek at mini webinars which can be pre-recorded ones. This will help your audience know what they can expect, and in turn, opt for a full version.
Step 3) Provide the Attendees With Resources
With webinars, you can provide your participants with a list of resources beforehand.
This will help them understand what to expect from the session. And that way they will be in a better-informed position overall.
Step 4) Keep the Content Easy, Understandable and Relatable
While hosting a webinar, you are representing what your brand personality is. So the type of content plays a major part here.
You need to ensure that your content is easy, intriguing, and offers valuable insights to the participants.
At the same time, you’ve to also ensure that you execute the content in such a way that your audience remembers it for a long time and develops an interest in your brand as a whole.
Quicktip: If during your webinar you can bring in a guest, the surprise element, the subtle shift in sound, and the additional expertise to learn from, will certainly get the attention of the audience.
Now, with the tips surely you can host a webinar effectively but do you know which software to use for webinars?
Step 5) Choose software to conduct webinars.
Demio
One of the best webinar platforms currently available is Demio. It provides a new and efficient platform, while many other platforms are obsolete and have struggled to catch up with the trends.
It is a webinar tool focused on the cloud, with one of the best-looking interfaces. For your participants, this can translate into a fantastic experience for you and your audience.
Registration pages can be generated, reminders, and loads of interactive features, such as mentions, Q&As, surveys, shareable files, and much more, can also be accessed.
Livestorm
It soon became clear that the Livestorm webinar program has one of the most elegant interfaces for producing many types of videos.
It knows that webinars come in all shapes and dimensions. They take care of everything for you so that you don’t worry about any of the technical stuff.
GoTo webinar
For good reasons, GoToWebinar is one of the most common and best applications for webinars. It’s owned and marketed by the individuals behind LogMeIn.
Together with the GoToMeeting app, this brand, let’s just say, is well versed in video communications. The price is almost on par with the other similarly featured options, but you can afford more subscribers than many of the competitors.
Zoom
It is a video conferencing platform for general purposes that caters to corporate meetings, teamwork, and dedicated webinar solutions. It is the most common application now.
With Zoom, there is no webinar automation available, but if all you need is live webinar hosting, you get a secure system for an incredibly modest price tag.
However, low prices come at a cost, and with Zoom, there’s very little in the way of webinar marketing features but it is great for short meetings or conversations.
Step 6) Host the Webinar
Hosting a webinar is an easy job. You just need to follow these quick easy steps given below:
Create a reliable team
It’s understandable that when you’re doing a webinar, teamwork wins.
Teamwork produces better performance since each individual will concentrate on doing one thing instead of one individual doing it all.
So, Create a team and assign individuals who, when handling their jobs, have the right abilities for each area.
A webinar includes an organizer, a moderator, and a few assistants who can take care of microphones, backups, lighting, and editing.
Select software for the webinar
In hosting your webinar, the next step involves you to select software that fits your particular needs. For example- Zoom, Google meet, or any other.
Invite your target audience to sign up
It is indeed important to invite individuals to register for your webinar and join it.
The date and time of your event will be clearly stated when you invite these members of your address book and network to enroll, possibly by email.
They would know this way if they are available and they’ll need to make time to attend on their calendars.
Send a confirmation email
For any participant who has signed up for webinar registration, you need to send out a confirmation.
You could do this by uploading registrants with their confirmation information to a new landing page. One other choice is to give participants a follow-up email soon after they finish enrolling.
Provide a link for the participants
One of the most important things you do before the webinar is to have clear instructions about how to enter or watch the event for your participants.
For instance, on the confirmation landing page or in the follow-up email we mentioned above, you can have a referral link to join or watch your webinar.
Key Takeaway: Webinar Marketing
A webinar offers excellent opportunities for both participants and panelists. It not only helps the audience understand the brand but also helps the brand understand the audience.
To execute a webinar, always ensure you have a clear-cutting plan. A very well-planned and interactive webinar offers an important and innovative way for every form of organization to profit.
Webinars are now a major part of how markets will flow in the future and this is the webinar’s role in marketing. You should always give it a shot for yourself.
Moreover, there are also plenty of companies out there that offer comprehensive free trials for webinar software that is even very highly professional grade.
There you go folks, that is all.
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