How to Choose the Best Webinar Software for Your Small Business

Tell us if this sounds familiar… You own (or work for) a small business and are looking for reliable ways to grow your company. You’ve heard about the power of webinars and are curious about them. Can they really help you improve your organization as they have for so many others?

You decide that webinars probably can help you grow your company. Then you jump online to find the perfect webinar tool, only to be stopped dead in your research as you realize the sheer number of webinar solutions available on the market.

If you’ve ever experienced the above scenario, we’re here to help!

In this article, we’ll give you step-by-step instructions on how to choose the best webinar software for your small business. By the end, you’ll know exactly what to do and will be able to make your webinar tool choice with confidence.

Sounds like a plan? Then let’s get started!

Table of Contents

What is a Webinar?

We’ll begin with a definition — just to make sure we’re on the same page:

A webinar, according to Lifewire, is a “live, web-based video conference that uses the internet to connect the individual (or multiple individuals) hosting the webinar to an audience of viewers and listeners from all over the world.”

In a nutshell, webinars allow businesses to interact with their target audience — no matter where the attendees happen to be.

Webinars hosts can use webinar software to deliver presentations and/or product demos, illustrate workflows by sharing their computer screens and promote their company via digital events that happen in real-time.

The Benefits of Webinars for Small Business

What’s the big deal with webinars? Do you really need to start hosting digital events to promote your business? Of course, you don’t have to. But it’s worth considering! Small businesses can benefit from webinars in many ways.

For example, webinars are excellent lead generation tools. They’re also great for boosting sales and fostering relationships between an organization and its customers.

Let’s take a more in-depth look at each of these three benefits:

Generate More Leads

Webinars help you generate leads. By hosting a digital event and requiring a person’s contact information from them to attend, you’ll be able to quickly fill your leads pipeline with high-quality prospects who can be marketed to in the future.

Think, why wouldn’t they sign up? Especially, if you host a webinar that promises to deliver valuable information, and your attendees only have to give you their email address to gain access.

The answer is, in most situations, they will sign up!

The lead generation benefits that your small business will experience by hosting webinars don’t stop there. Not only will webinars help you boost the number of leads, but they’ll also help you generate higher-quality leads than most other marketing activities.

This is because webinars will give you the chance to establish your brand and build trust with your audience before you attempt to sell them a product or service.

By ensuring that your target market knows, likes, and trusts your small business before they’re ever asked to make a purchase, you’ll almost be guaranteed that more prospects will do it when an offer appears.

Make More Sales

Webinars can also be used to close deals and boost revenue for your small business!

Product demonstration webinars will allow you to showcase your products (or services) in all their feature-filled glory and get people excited about using them. You can then include purchase links that attendees can follow to your company’s website or online store.

According to The Branded Solopreneur, an average of 2% – 5% of people who attend a webinar buy something from the host.

While this number may seem small, it doesn’t take into account the multitude of sales that happen down the road because of webinars. Just because someone doesn’t buy something right away doesn’t mean they never will.

It doesn’t matter what you want to sell — physical goods, digital products, expensive services, or shares in a business to venture capitalists, in all likelihood, you can sell more of it by incorporating webinars into your sales strategy!

Foster Better Relationships

Finally, webinars help small businesses build and foster better relationships with their target audiences. If you commit to delivering quality information regularly, your attendees will begin to appreciate and respect your company. These deeper relationships will eventually lead to improved sales numbers, as we just discussed.

And as one-time buyers start to become lifelong fans, you’ll have plenty more opportunities to upsell, cross-sell, and do any other type of selling that you want!

But it all starts with a strong relationship between your small business and its target market. If you can build a bond between them, you’ll reap the rewards for years to come. Fortunately, webinars are the perfect platform for relationship building.

This is perfectly illustrated by Arturo Tedeschi, an architect and computational designer based in Milan, Italy. He’s also the founder and creative director of the online school A>T. Arturo uses webinars to stay in touch with many of his students and build deeper relationships with them.

Choose the Perfect Webinar Software

Now that we understand what webinars are and why they’re beneficial to small businesses, we can talk about how to choose the perfect webinar software for your company.

The four-step system outlined below will help you discover which webinar software (there are many!) will best suit your personal needs.

Let’s dive in!

1. Understand Your Goals

The first thing you need to do when choosing the perfect webinar software for your small business is understanding the goals you set for your organization. What are you hoping to achieve by hosting webinars?

Do you want to generate more leads and improve sales numbers? What about timing? Do you plan to host digital events regularly, or are you just planning a one-off webinar?

These kinds of questions are the ones you must answer before doing anything else. Without a solid understanding of your objectives, it will be nearly impossible to select the right webinar software for your small business.

For example, if you plan to host a small, one-time, online meeting, you might not need all the bells and whistles that a full-service webinar solution provides. A simple app like Google Hangouts might suit your needs.

If, on the other hand, you hope to be holding webinars rather frequently, we suggest investing in a fully-functional tool that will allow you to record your webinar and includes important features like screen sharing and Q&A mode.

2. Do Your Research

Once you understand the goals you have for your small business in regard to webinars, you can start step two: the research phase. Now is the time to scour the internet for user reviews, compare feature sets of various webinar solutions, and evaluate the options.

Some of our favorite review sites are:

Have you ever heard of Capterra? It’s one of the best places to go when researching software tools — especially video conferencing and webinar solutions. Make your way to the site and read reviews for all the different webinar platforms available.
This website is a hub for WordPress freelancers, bloggers, and creators. They also happen to have a stellar blog post on the topic of webinar software. Give it a read before selecting a webinar solution for your small business.
Growth Marketing Pro.Similar to our last entry, Growth Marketing Pro is a popular blog site that has a post on top webinar software. We suggest checking it as well before committing to any one solution.
Adam Enfroy. Finally, let’s talk about Adam Enfroy’s website and his blog post on the best webinar platforms in 2020. Adam’s take on the topic is straightforward and worth reading before making any webinar software purchases.

There are, of course, plenty of other websites and online resources to look through. A simple Google search for “best webinar software” will give you more results than you’ll ever have time to read through. We recommend starting with the four sites listed above. Then move to a more generic online analysis to see which webinar tool suits your fancy.

3. Test Your Options

At this point, you should understand your webinar goals and have begun conducting thorough research in regards to which webinar platforms will help you reach them. You’ve likely narrowed your list down to a few specific options. The next step is to test them out for yourself.

Detailed blog posts and user reviews are all well and good. But at some point, you need to bite the bullet, sign up for a free trial, and use the webinar tools on your list.

This is the fun part!

Dive in and check out each webinar solution you’ve been considering and the webinar features that come with it. A certain option might look good on paper, but prove to be difficult to use in real life. The opposite is also true. A webinar tool you thought would be subpar might blow you away once you get a chance to test it out.

Take your time and find the right webinar solution for your small business. While you can always change platforms down the road, learning new tools takes time and energy away from growing your company. Do your best to make a conscious decision at the start and avoid this!

4. Make Your Choice

The only left to do at this point is buckling down and choosing a webinar tool for your small business. Consider your goals, the opinions of other users, your experiences testing each option, and your budget. Then select the webinar software that fits you best.

Like we mentioned previously, you won’t be locked into any tool. Just because you choose option A to start with, doesn’t mean you can’t switch to option B or C down the road.

So, don’t get bit by the analysis paralysis bug!

Do your due diligence and then make a decision. Once you make it, learn everything you can about that specific webinar tool and how to use it. Then use it to grow your small business. The best webinar software in the world won’t help you if you don’t commit to hosting webinars.

The ClickMeeting Webinar Solution

Don’t have the time or desire to do the research yourself? If you’re looking for a quality, fully-featured webinar solution that won’t break the bank, look no further than ClickMeeting.

Our popular webinar solution has all the features you need to host amazingly successful webinars, whether your goal is to generate more leads, sell more products, or build better relationships with your target audience.

With ClickMeeting, you get:

Custom Branding. With ClickMeeting, you can give your various webinar pages custom branding. Change the colors and background images, and attach your logo to your webinar’s registration page, waiting room, thank-you page, and more.
Live Streaming. If all goes well, hundreds — if not thousands — of people will join your live webinar. But not everyone in your target market will remember to attend. Fortunately, ClickMeeting allows users to extend their reach by streaming live their digital events on Facebook or YouTube.
In-Webinar Perks. To host a stellar event, you need access to in-webinar perks like screen sharing, polls and surveys, whiteboard options, private chats, and Call-To-Action buttons. We’re happy to report that ClickMeeting is equipped with each of these features.
Event Analytics. How do you know if your webinar was successful or not? Besides simply counting the number of attendees and revenue generated, the analytics dashboard in ClickMeeting will give you all the relevant details. Learn things like which country your attendees are from, what kind of device they watched your presentation on, and what they thought about your webinar. Then use that information to craft better webinars and marketing campaigns.
Automated Webinars. Last, but certainly not least, ClickMeeting allows users to create automated webinars. Simply record your presentation, select a time for it to run, build your webinar timeline, and then let ClickMeeting grow your business on autopilot! For busy business owners, this feature is a true lifesaver.

If ClickMeeting sounds like the right kind of webinar platform for your small business, sign up for a free, 30-day trial right now, and get started with our software.

Grow Your Small Business with Webinars

Webinars are a great way to grow your small business. They can help generate new, high-quality leads; boost sales and revenue numbers; and build deeper, more impactful relationships with your target audience. But you have to have the right webinar tool to make it all work.

Fortunately, you now know exactly how to discover the perfect webinar solution for your company. Simply follow the four-step system we outlined in this post:

Understand Your Goals;
Do Your Research;
Test Your Options;
Make Your Choice.

And don’t forget about ClickMeeting! Our webinar tool is fully-featured and loved by our many users. Give it a try for free today and see for yourself.