Promoting Your Business With Webinars

With coronavirus generating greater use of videoconferencing, webinars are gaining momentum as powerful tools in the small business marketing mix.

Webinars offer an effective platform for lead generation and prospect nurturing. Although a webinar is not likely to lead directly to sales, a webinar can be a valuable way to promote your business, highlight your expertise, and deepen your relationship with prospects.

According to one estimate, about 20 to 40 percent of webinar attendees become live leads. This is a much higher percentage than you typically see with email marketing or direct response campaigns.

The most common webinar format is an educational presentation or demonstration followed by a question and answer session. It is designed to help attendees understand a specific issue or trend better. If a webinar tries to offer a direct sales pitch, it’s likely to turn attendees off and prompt people to disconnect before the webinar ends.

In contrast, using a webinar to provide educational information helps prospects and customers know your business better, and can make them more likely to eventually purchase your services or products.

Choose a Topic

While the idea of choosing a topic for your webinar may appear daunting at first, there are plenty of sources of compelling subjects. A good place to start is looking at the questions your customers are asking your sales or customer service teams, popular topics in your social media feeds, or emerging industry trends or developments that your customers need to know about.

If you can explore these topics in detail, you position yourself not only as an industry expert, but also as an important resource who can be trusted and helpful to your prospects and customers.

It’s important that your webinar focuses on education. Plan to cover about 45 minutes of discussion on your topic, followed by 10 to 15 minutes of Q&A to help round out the hour. With this ratio, you can safely close your session by telling attendees how to contact you to learn more. This will provide a subtle sales opportunity that few attendees will object to because the rest of your webinar has been helpful.

If you don’t want to discuss a topic by yourself, consider formatting your webinar as an interview with an industry expert, or a panel discussion as you would see at an in-person conference. Inviting people outside your company to participate as webinar speakers can help reduce the amount of time that you speak, while also creating cross-promotional opportunities as your guest speakers enlist attendees from their audiences.

Choose Your Software

You’ll have a variety of webinar platforms to consider as you evaluate the best choice for your needs. For occasional use, less expensive software and free online conferencing tools may be all you need. Be sure to try several tools, and make sure you are comfortable with the platform you select before your event.

After your webinar, offer a replay to attendees and consider making a discount offer to thank them for spending time with you. Separately, send the replay to people who registered but did not attend, along with a “sorry we missed you” note that can help continue your relationship.

With some planning and practice, webinars can provide a powerful complement to your other online marketing tools.