A webinar is one of the most personal forms of online marketing. It is a (live) online event in which you can personally persuade your target audience to take action. It is also the ideal way to communicate your message personally to your audience. There are various marketing and sales objectives for which webinars are exceptionally well-suited. In this blog, you will discover all the ins and outs of hosting a perfect webinar. Expand your network and collect even more high-quality leads.
Who are webinars suitable for?
Every entrepreneur can benefit from hosting a webinar. Even for most niche markets, hosting a webinar is an excellent tool because creating personal contact with your target audience is incredibly valuable. Personal contact with your audience is the fastest route to success for any business. The more data you can gather, the better you can ultimately sell your product. Naturally, the approach varies by industry.
There are numerous types of webinars, all suitable for different purposes. The most common reasons for hosting a webinar are: collecting leads and converting prospects. Ultimately, the goal is primarily focused on sharing valuable knowledge with your target audience. In this way, you can inspire your audience to learn more about your company.
The 5 Core Values of a Good Webinar
1. Link your webinar to a goal
The first and most important step is establishing a goal for your webinar. The more concretely you describe the goal, the better you can manage it. Let’s take an example: I want to sell my software tool. For this, you can set up a webinar focused on conversion. A clear goal helps you assemble the content. It is a means to map out the process steps that will lead you to your objective.
2. Specify the target audience you want to reach with the webinar
Once you have established a goal, you can map out the corresponding target audience. You look for the ideal customer. As a company, you often already have an established customer base to start with. Make sure to utilize this.
Once you have determined a target audience, the next step is approaching them. This can be done in various ways. For example, post about your upcoming webinar on your personal and business LinkedIn pages. Create a separate menu on your website or write a blog. Find ways to reach your target audience with your message so that your webinar will be well-attended when you host it. We will delve deeper into this later in this article.
3. Ensure a valuable webinar, but maintain an overview
Entrepreneurs are experts in their own fields. This makes it difficult to align the content of the webinar with the target audience. Terms or connections that are completely obvious to you as an expert may be gibberish to the participants. If a webinar is hosted live, it can easily happen that you lose track of the overview. After all, as an expert, you have a lot to tell. It is therefore important to keep in mind what you need to tell the audience to achieve your goal.
Prepare a solid plan in advance. In this plan, include the components of your webinar that are interesting for your target audience. This gives the content an organized structure. It is extremely important to pay attention to this beforehand. It may seem easy to tell an interesting story about a subject you know a lot about. In practice, however, it turns out that the more you know about the subject, the harder it is to convey it clearly. Therefore, keep your own goal firmly in mind when devising the content and describe all activities in your script briefly and concisely.
Tip: ask a few colleagues to provide objective and constructive feedback.
4. Create a clear call-to-action during your webinar
I cannot emphasize this enough. Whether it concerns a white paper, an advertisement, a blog, a webinar, or any other form of content, pay attention to the call-to-action! This is the moment to make an offer to your participants. Ensure there is a special moment in the webinar where the call-to-action is clearly highlighted. Often, you place a call-to-action at the end. You will likely have been speaking for an hour or even longer by then. No matter how interesting your webinar is, the participants’ attention decreases as the webinar progresses. It is therefore truly essential that you wake the participants up when the call-to-action is presented.
Give the people participating in your webinar a special discount if they decide now. This encourages participants to make a decision and register (or get in touch) immediately. The participants following your webinar are likely more than interested in your product or service, so an exclusive offer makes the chance of conversion even greater.
Tip: create a special offer.
5. Incorporate received feedback into the next webinar
The chance that your entire target audience is exhausted after one webinar is very small. Therefore, it certainly does no harm to host the same webinar multiple times. Ensure that you always include a moment where people can provide feedback. There are several ways to collect feedback. An accessible way is to have participants fill out a poll. In the online poll, you can, for example, ask questions about satisfaction, the duration of the webinar, or the content. All this information is relevant to making the quality of your next webinar even higher.
It is recommended to hold a Q session at the end of your webinar. Set aside time for this. This is an excellent moment to answer questions about the content of your webinar (or about the product/service). In this way, you ensure personal contact with your target audience again. Matters that were not sufficiently highlighted during the webinar can still be clarified during this Q session.
What types of webinars are there?
Live webinar
The live webinar is one of the most common and obvious types of webinars. Because it is a live event, you can engage in deeper interaction with your target audience. In a live webinar, you can ask for feedback in real-time and engage in conversation with your audience. This ensures that you come across as personal and persuasive. As a result, the chance of conversion is also significantly increased compared to an offline webinar.
Offline webinar
This might sound strange, because isn’t it then just a video? With a recorded webinar, you stream it at a specific time for your target audience. Even with an offline webinar, you can enable the audience to interact. You do this by means of a chat function. To achieve a higher conversion rate, you can choose to answer questions live in the chat. This means you don’t have to give a live presentation, but you can still answer any questions from the audience live. You can always send the recorded webinar to your audience afterwards as a follow-up for feedback.
Hosting a webinar in this way is much more efficient. In the long run, it often yields a higher ROI compared to a live event. The disadvantage of recorded webinars is that the personal contact is lost. It is more difficult to convey your enthusiasm for the subject via a recorded webinar. This can lower the chance of conversion.
Besides webinars being an excellent way to introduce a subject to your target audience, they are also perfectly deployable as lead generators. Both live and recorded webinars are excellent for collecting contact details from potential leads. These leads are extra valuable because you know they are interested in your product or service. You can hardly get them more interested than that!
How do you use a webinar for lead generation?
What should your webinar actually be about? When collecting leads, it is important to think carefully about the subject. A target audience that is unfamiliar with your company will be less likely to register. Keep this in mind. Webinars are very versatile. It is therefore important to keep an eye on the goal of the webinar.
We have now arrived at lead generation. The subject of the webinar must be adapted to this. You actually have the leads in before you have even started the webinar. A good subject that attracts the target audience is enormously important for generating leads. A good way to determine a subject for your webinar is to think from the perspective of the target audience in two steps:
- What concrete problem do you solve for the target audience?
- And how does this lead to better results for the target audience?
Take ICT consultants as a target audience, for example. What concrete problem do you solve for that audience? Communication problems, outdated software, time loss due to inefficient systems? How does this lead to better results for the target audience? A good ICT department ensures smooth communication, increased efficiency, and ensures that you are always up-to-date and have the latest software at your disposal.
For these ICT consultants, good subjects for the webinar are:
‘How do I resolve communication problems and time loss due to outdated systems?’ or ‘How do I ensure better communication and more efficient processing?’
Your target audience includes a number of prospects who fit your ideal customer profile better than others. By applying this technique, you immediately filter out the companies for which you can solve problems. These prospects will be interested in what kind of solution you propose for these industry-specific problems.
Tip: be specific when choosing both the target audience and the subject. The more specific you are, the more personally the target audience will feel addressed. This certainly applies to problems they specifically encounter!
How you can promote your webinar
To collect registrations and thus leads, it is necessary to inform your target audience that a webinar will take place. You do this by utilizing all channels where you can find your target audience. Start promoting your webinar on time. A few weeks in advance is often enough, depending on the size of the target audience. In any case, start the promotion three weeks in advance.
Organic
Ensure there is a registration button for the webinar on every online platform. Think of your personal LinkedIn profile, the LinkedIn company page, your website, and other social media. In the run-up to your webinar, regularly post about it on these various channels. This post should not be too long and must clearly state what the webinar is about and when it takes place. Include a CTA to the webinar registration page in every post.
Personal
Nowadays, it is also not unusual to approach your prospects personally via LinkedIn. Remember not to come across as too stalker-like. You certainly run the risk of appearing pushy, and that can lead to a poor reputation. Also, ensure that you personalize the messages as much as possible. Post these types of messages in LinkedIn groups where your target audience is active as well. This allows you to reach a lot of people in one go.
Paid
Webinars work ideally in conjunction with online advertisements. By using sponsored content, it is possible to address a large portion of the target audience. However, do not make the advertisements too complicated. Also, ensure it is clearly highlighted what the webinar is about and when it takes place. Naturally, a CTA to your webinar’s registration page is a must. You can also choose a mix of paid and personal by utilizing InMail messages.
Tip: spend time on the landing pages. A good landing page can truly make the difference in the number of registrations! This is also an important step in the customer journey.
The best structure for your webinar
Content
Even though you already have the contact details of your leads once they have registered, the content is still important. This is because it will reveal whether your target audience is interested in what you offer. If the content does not resonate as expected, these leads lose their value. The reverse applies exactly: the more your story appeals to the target audience, the higher the value of the leads will be.
Beginning
Start with a personal introduction. The power of webinars lies in the personal aspect. Introduce yourself and explain why you are the one hosting this webinar. Emphasize not only your expert status but also that of your colleagues, for example. Ensure the target audience gets a clear picture of what is going to happen.
Middle
Here you start by talking about the problem that you can solve for the target audience. Provide a clear problem statement in which the target audience recognizes themselves. Then explain what kind of solution your company has for these problems. Try to ensure that you do not give a sales pitch for your own product or service. Share value that the target audience can use themselves. Give them something back for sharing their contact details.
Tip: in this part of the webinar, it is important to let your own enthusiasm clearly shine through. No matter how beautiful your advertisements look, they will never have the effect of the enthusiasm of an entrepreneur who addresses the target audience personally!
Conclusion
Start the conclusion with a clear summary of what you have told. Explain the problem and the solution once more—in as few words as possible. The shorter, the better. This way, your message is received better and sticks more effectively. Then, ensure there is time for questions. This increases your expert status even further. Finally, make an appeal or a call-to-action (CTA). This can be anything: register now for the next webinar, follow our company page, download our e-book, etc.
Tip: give your target audience a useful gift! If there is one thing many people never say ‘no’ to, it is free things. What exactly that is doesn’t even matter that much. When you reward your target audience with, for example, a free e-book, a white paper, or other valuable content, this will contribute to the positive experience the prospects have of your company at that moment. This is also another opportunity to convey your information to the target audience.
Conclusion
Now you have the most important information about collecting leads through webinars. The great advantage of webinars is the personal aspect. Because the target audience can actually get to know you as a person, the emotional value people attach to your company increases. You raise your expert status, engage in humanizing your company, and generate high-quality leads during the process.
Do you have questions about LinkedIn marketing or are you looking for other online marketing advice? We can be reached via:
info@primemarketing.nl
