Making Webinars part of your marketing strategy
A webinar is a way of presenting to a large number of people at one time. It allows you to hold a virtual presentation with people regardless of their location, as long as they have Internet connection they can attend.
Holding a webinar is a great way to increase your company’s profile and to be seen as an expert in your field. The idea is that you present your content to a target audience in an educational way, so giving them some valuable information to take away with them.
In a webinar you can include a slide show, video, live demonstration, in fact pretty much any type of media that you can usually view via desktop, laptop or mobile device.
It is important to remember that you have invited people to attend in the belief that this is going to give them value. It is not a sales pitch and it should not be about you telling everyone how fantastic you are. By presenting in a clear and concise way on a subject that is of interest to your audience, you will be proving how fantastic you are without the need to verbalise it every five minutes! That’s not to say you cannot include a call to action at the end of your webinar, in fact you should absolutely finish by communicating to your audience how they can engage further.
Tips for holding a successful webinar
At the start of your webinar make sure everyone can hear you. Go through any housekeeping such as whether you will take questions throughout the webinar or whether there will be time at the end. I would recommend you mute your audience microphones and use the chat functionality. This allows you to control the webinar from start to finish.
Make sure you outline the main areas that you will be covering and that you stick to them.
Don’t make this a 70-slide presentation; focus on one or two areas there is always the opportunity to hold a series of webinars if you have lots of content to share.
Make sure you keep to time, if you promoted this as a 30-minute session then don’t run over. If there are still lots of unanswered questions, ask people to email you directly afterwards.
Make it free to attend, unless you are very well known people are very unlikely to pay.
Check the technology ahead of time, using an established tool such as join.me or go to webinar helps negate any issues but do test it out before hand.
Practice, practice and practice some more. Gain some feedback from someone to make sure that your content is easy to understand and also adds value to your target audience.
