Webinars provide the perfect solution for any business wanting to succeed and engage the enormous global audience that is the Internet. You already have the expertise of your business and webinars will help you not just establish yourself as an expert, but as an authority.
A webinar is simply an online seminar. It is hosted through some type of webinar platform, like ClickMeeting, that offers the ideal virtual meeting place, which includes the use of video, images, desktop sharing, polling, branding, chat rooms and much more.
Webinars are a very cost-effective marketing tool because they allow you to engage an unlimited number of people and reach your target audience in a virtual setting that is dynamic and far more interesting than written content or a cold sales page.
ClickMeeting evaluated more than 8,000 webinars and found what drives companies towards webinars:
- 85% do so to educate existing and potential customers
- 77% do so to generate leads
- 60% do so to build their brand and gain a strong position in the market
Let’s look at the 3 key purposes of webinars – building traffic, strengthening a brand and getting more leads that convert to increase your bottom line.
Table of Contents
Attracting Targeted Traffic
Webinars are an amazing way to build traffic to your site and as any business knows, you need traffic to get leads and you need leads to make money. Many companies report that when they start using webinars, traffic to their site jumps. This is mainly because webinars that use engaging and in-demand topics attract people far more than written marketing mediums.
Webinars are akin to video, which is boasting extraordinary statistics in the online market place. According to Forbes, 65% of executives have visited a vendor’s site after watching a video. MarketingProfs reports that 70% of marketers report that video converts better than any other medium and Mist Media says that the average Internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video.
However, webinars are even better than video since there is a live presenter, more customer engagement and even Q&A sessions that allow for audience participation.
ClickMeeting evaluated 8,197 online meetings in a 6-month period and found that most companies run more than one webinar each month, and for good reasons. Engaging quality traffic is one of those.
Reaching and engaging a very targeted audience is easy as those who sign up and attend are truly interested in the topic that is being presented, so the presell value is extraordinary.
Of course, you will have to work at promoting your webinar to get people to sign up. This can be done through blogging, email marketing and social media.
One awesome way that webinars can be used to build traffic is by recording them. Recorded webinars can be a gold mine for building more traffic to your site and engaging future traffic with quality content. 30-minute or 1-hour webinars could even be edited and split into six or 12 5-minute segments.
These short 5-minute videos could deal with specific training or answering questions. You then upload these to your website, YouTube and other video sharing sites. You can then use long-tail keywords with these videos to target a specific audience. Remember, Google is now including video results in its algorithm, so your chances of being found have just increased tenfold.
Brand Building
One of the major factors which influence clients and customers is a strong brand. What do we mean by this? A strong brand is one that is easily recognizable and is associated with authority. A strong brand also has a unique selling proposition – that is, something it does better than anyone or everyone else does.
Webinars allow businesses to excel in brand building. For example, you are able to target a specific audience. You can give clear and concise answers to questions they may have. You can also show how and why your product or service is better than your competitors.
One aspect of brand building is your authority. There is no other marketing tool like webinars for building authority. You get the chance to talk to your audience and convince them of your expertise, and quality of service or product. Webinars also allow you to showcase all your brand has to offer in an interesting and dynamic manner.
Nowadays, it’s possible for anyone to be a so-called ‘expert’ on just about anything. Being an authority is different. Authority commands respect, and more people are influenced by those in authority.
Lead Engagement
When participants register for a webinar, they have to do this using their e-mail address. People will gladly do this if they know that they are going to get value in return.
So we are not just talking about lead generation, but lead engagement. In other words, you need to nurture your leads. Why this is a key purpose of webinars? Well, a person who signs up for the webinar has already shown a measure of interest in your product or service. During the webinar you can hand out more product-specific information in the form of PDFs or videos. All of these can have links back to your site. Having e-mail addresses also builds your marketing lists, allowing for long-term engagement with your customers.
Once again, remember that the person has already shown interest, therefore, will be more willing to convert on emails you send out.
The leads that you build in the end are of much higher quality and there is more chance that they will convert to a sale.
In the end, webinars are amazing tools for any business. Use them to generate traffic, build brand awareness and strengthen lead engagement.
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