Webinar Marketing Tips | How to Have an Effective Webinar

Webinars are very effective ways to market your products and services as well as train your team. Webinar marketing really helps get your point across much easier than using just a teleconference since you can show the attendees exactly what you are talking about.

Here are ten webinar marketing tips so you can have an effective webinar:

1. Plan ahead. Create a schedule of when you will hold the webinars, contact and schedule the speakers, create a way to register for the webinar, get clear on your budget, create your webinar marketing plan, and create any slideshows and visuals you will need.

2. The best time. Choose a time that you will be able to reach the most potential viewers. Mid-afternoon times are best for national audiences. Webinars held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays have better attendance ratios.

3. Market it. Know your target market and how to reach them. Have multiple marketing strategies to promote your webinars. Social media is a great place to build an audience fast.

4. Practice and be prepared. Make sure your speakers have a plan walking through the flow of the webinar and any technical info they should know. Also be prepared in case something happens and your speaker is a no-show, have a plan b. Have a run through practice to learn how to use your webinar client properly to help avoid technical mishaps and have a plan for if a technical challenge presents itself during a live webinar.

5. Do not rely on just webinars. Webinars should be one part of your marketing plan. While webinars are extremely effective you will need to have other methods of marketing as well to diversify.

6. Keep your audience captivated. In the world of multi-tasking it is extremely important that you are able to keep your audience's attention focused on your webinar as much as possible. Make sure your content is interesting and have speakers that are exciting. When you go over your material ask yourself the question, "So what?" at the end of every paragraph. If you are unable to answer it then the information is dull or irrelevant.

7. Conduct polls or surveys. This is a great way to keep your audience engaged as well as to get some great feedback on your webinar i.e. how to improve it, what the audience liked, how likely are they to take action, etc.

8. Soft sell. Respect your audience and the fact that they took time out of their day to come see you. It's okay to sell, it's okay to have a call to action... It is not okay to hard sell, it's obnoxious and will make you look like a jerk especially on a webinar. Provide value with a call to action so good the audience will not be able to resist taking action.

9. Utilize registration to the max. When someone registers for your webinar you have an opportunity to get to know them. Most webinar vendors allow you to customize the registration page with what information you want to capture and can even ask a question relevant to your webinar to better be able to help your audience.

10. Pick a reliable vendor. There are a lot of options for webinar vendors. Make sure to not only pick one that is in your budget, fits your audience size and that has the features you require. Also, check reviews and talk to current users to find out what you can expect from partnering with that vendor.

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Comments

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 at 3:18 PM, by Ryan Brown
These are excellent tips!

Another one I would add is - Make sure you follow up on the leads! It ought to go without saying - but a follow up email after the webinar is not enough.

Get aggressive - especially in this economy it takes a bit more to convert a sale from a lead generated through your webinars.

As far as a webinar provider goes, I prefer to use GoToWebinar for most of our webinars. We've been using it internally for several years now and have managed about 1000 webinars.

They've recently introduced some new features that have made using it so much more effective and easy to use. More here: http://tiny.cc/vBte4

A license of gotowebinar also includes a licenses of their popular GoToMeeting - which we use for quick desktop sharing sessions.

The webinar service allows for up to 1000 attendees, provides a choice for users to listen over their computer speakers, use a VOIP (Voice Over IP) headset or to call in on their telephone.

All for just $99 a month for unlimited use!

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