Webinars are a profitable and popular way to disseminate information to a lot of people at one time. It’s just like an in person seminar except that it’s performed over the Internet. You give presentations just like you would in person with slides, handouts, and other companion information. It is essentially a web based seminar. You can teach a class, deliver a lecture, conduct a workshop, and host an interactive Q & A event via webinar.
The technology allows event hosts to deliver their information to multiple locations at the same time because the attendee simply needs to be able to sign on to a computer terminal with Internet access to participate in the event. Usually attendees can participate in a variety of ways from chatting in a chat room, to raising their hand electronically to speech, by using a microphone.
If you have a lot of information you want to disseminate to a number of individuals or groups but don’t want to spend a lot of money doing it, a webinar is your answer. Participants can join from anywhere, home, work, any country — as long as they have a computer and an Internet connection they can join.
They are economically feasible for small or large groups. What’s more, they are secure, in that unauthorized people cannot enter the webinar. In most cases the participants only have to download a small program to help them access the event, have ear phones with a microphone, the special link or password to join, and they are in.
Why Have a Webinar?
Many reasons for having webinars were mentioned above, but let’s get specific. Hosting a webinar can advance your business to the next level. It can jump start and excite affiliates, and customers alike. Face it, events are fun but they can be expensive and hard to plan. Webinars can be planned from the comfort of your home office, or from any location with computer access and an Internet connection.
Lead Generation
Webinars are an effective way to generate more leads. But you’ll need to book speakers that excite your target audience. A targeted topic will also help draw both speakers and attendees. By providing targeted content through a webinar platform with planned speakers you will position yourself to become a thought leader who provides credible, valuable and usable information about your niche.
To generate leads with a webinar you’ll need to ask for information at registration. That information should be sent to an email marketing mailing list segmented for potential webinar attendees. In this way you will be collecting leads via your webinar sign up process. By marketing the webinar, you’re marketing your email list.
Earn More Money
Another great reason to host a webinar is to make more money. Even if your initial goal is to get more subscribers, with more targeted subscribers you’re going to generate more income in the long run. But, if you charge for your webinar you could make more money in an hour than you thought possible. Imagine if you sold the hour for just 10 dollars each. If just 100 people attend the webinar you will have earned 1000 dollars for the hour. Granted you have to spend time developing the event, but imagine if you perfect the event and create a series conducting weekly webinars. How will that add to your bottom line?
Advance Content Marketing
The other thing that webinars do is simply disseminate content in a new way. From one hour long webinar you can create a year’s worth of content all from one event if you set it up right. Just get four to six speakers, record the event, then repackage the event in multiple ways to generate almost unlimited content all year long.
Once a webinar is over you can break it down to shorts that you use in your email marketing blurbs or as an eCourse. You can also transcribe it and create an eReport out of the event. Some people are creating Kindle books out of webinar materials. The sky is the limit with the amount of and different forms the content can take from just one webinar event.
Customer Satisfaction
Sometimes your goal is simply to improve customer satisfaction over a product. You might invite only people who have bought your product or service to a webinar that is exclusive to them. Your goal in this case is perhaps to conduct a Q & A to help customers utilize a product or service more fully.
Your objectives for having the webinar can be more than one of the above, but it’s better if you focus on just one or two objectives in order to create marketing materials that work. Determining objectives and setting goals indicates what metrics to study when deciding whether your event was a success or a failure. Having metrics to look at will assist you in perfecting future webinar events by identifying what works and what doesn’t work. By doing so, you’ll be able to develop a best practices manual for webinars of your own that is fully targeted to your unique market.
