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Webinars are a good way to connect with new customers and drive sales.
What is webinar marketing?
Unless you have been living under a rock these last few months, you would have attended at least one webinar during the pandemic lockdown. Simply put, a webinar is a seminar conducted over the internet. Given the lack of physical interactions during this time, there are a lot of webinars happening. However, not all webinars are made equal. What sets the good ones apart? And more importantly, how can you ensure that your webinar is effective at gaining more customers? It all comes down to the webinar marketing tactics you employ.
Getting started with a webinar
Before you launch a free webinar, let’s look at some stats for it.
The average webinar attendance is 40-50% only.
The preferred length of a webinar is 30-40 mins, with 92% attendees expecting a live Q&A at the end.
46% of the people register a week before the webinar, while 11% register on the day of the webinar.
Knowing this, plan your webinar and it’s marketing strategy carefully. First of all, pick a webinar topic that aligns with your business. The topic should be related to your product or service but provide general information to the people attending. At the end of the webinar, they should feel that they have learnt something and want to explore your product or service more.
Decide upon the length of your webinar. Since this is a free webinar and you are using it to build awareness, keep it at the recommended level of 30-40 mins with Q&A at the end.
Let’s take an example of a travel brand. During this time, the industry is struggling to generate sales. But travel companies are trying to retain mindshare of their customers by hosting a free webinar. The webinars are focused on one destination, with in-depth information about that destination. It covers how to get there, places to stay, what to see and insightful tips for making it a great trip. As a travel company, the webinar also covers the services that the company will offer to the travelers. Finally, there are offers for the people who attend the webinar.
Webinar marketing tactics
The webinar marketing can be divided into three stages.
Pre-webinar
During the webinar
Post-webinar
Pre-webinar marketing
The objective of this stage is to get as many people to attend as possible. Start your marketing early, at least a week in advance. Use all the channels that you have a presence on like social media, email marketing and networking. In the marketing, you should be talking about what people can gain by attending the webinar. Is it knowledge? Is there a special offer that they can avail? Whatever the draw may be, be sure to talk about it explicitly.
You will need a good creative for the marketing activities. Whether it is a poster or a video, it should be aligned with your brand and stand out from the others.
Next, make a robust process to sign up for your webinar. People should be able to receive confirmation of their registration immediately. Ideally, you should also send out the webinar joining info in the same email.
Finally, send them a reminder email 1 hour before the webinar starts, along with the joining info again.
During the webinar
Remember the ultimate goal of your webinar is to generate customers. If you have a good link between your topic and the product, then your job is nearly done. Use interactive tools like polls to keep the audience engaged throughout the webinar.
An additional thing to keep in mind during the webinar is to actually talk about your product or services. Dedicate a few minutes to do that, preferably just before the end.
This is also a good opportunity to draw the audience’s attention to your offer. Maybe you are offering a discount on your product to the people attending. Or you may have a gift voucher for one lucky person. Do this at the end, so that people stay for the entire duration.
Post-webinar marketing
It is important to follow up your webinar with email marketing. This will help to convert more people to customers. Ideally, you should split your marketing into two segments.
Attendees: If you have promised to provide a recording of the webinar, or additional resources related to the topic, then send that over email within 24 hours of the webinar. Take this opportunity to remind them about your product or service again. If you had an offer that can still be claimed, then send that too.
Non-attendees: The people who signed up but did not attend could be given another opportunity to attend. Or they could be sent the recording. If you want to see an example of a pre-recorded webinar, check out my webinar to introduce you to digital marketing. Bear in mind that their engagement is already low as they signed up but did not attend. So you have to give them a compelling reason to watch the recording.
Webinars are cheap to host and produce. You can so use the same content for multiple sessions, giving you more return for your efforts. If done well, a good webinar can get you about 10% conversions. So create a webinar marketing plan for your business and reach out to new customers
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