Time and time again, webinars have proven to be one of the most successful ways to convert leads into customers. Better than superior customer service, better than educational handouts and content, even better than white papers, webinars boast an impressive conversion rate of 20%.
People like to learn about how and why they should use a product rather than be bombarded with ads about how great the product is, which is why webinars are so effective. Another reason for their success as an online marketing medium is that people like to connect with a human behind a company or a product, this type of personal connection is highly effective and much more so than a cold sales page.
In order to host an effective webinar, you need to first perfect each of the four main webinar components. These essential elements are the brick and mortar of a successful webinar presentation.
Table of Contents
4 Components Of The Perfect Webinar
The Webinar Platform
Your webinar platform, such as that provided by ClickWebinar, should be high quality yet easy to use for both you and the participants. The interface should be simple and visually appealing, with controls at the top or on the side and a large viewing screen.
Your platform must also contain all of the necessary tools for running a webinar, including audio conferencing via phone and computer, webinar recording, desktop sharing, mobile viewing capability, whiteboard creation, the exchange of keyboard and mouse control, internal chatrooms, poll creation, room branding, support for various visual elements and more.
Another critical consideration when choosing the best webinar platform is support that is offered. Support from the service can be invaluable when you or your audience runs into tech issues and a representative from the webinar service is needed to make corrections quickly and efficiently.
The Presenter
The presenter must be familiar with the webinar platform (although not an expert – that’s the assistant’s job!) and should perform several practice runs before the actual webinar event to test his or her knowledge of the software. More importantly, the presenter is responsible for engaging the audience in the product or service.
During in-person presentations, the presenter can use body language and heightened energy levels to help engage the audience, but during a webinar, the presenter has only his or her slides and voice. As a presenter, practice being overly energetic with your delivery and bringing your personality into it. You may want to stand up and present as you would during an in-person presentation, even though no one will see you, as this helps get the energy flowing.
An important tip for presenters is to focus on how the product or service helps people rather than on its features. Businesses too often approach webinars with the mentality that participants want to know all the technical details about the product. In reality, they want to know how the product benefits them specifically. A successful webinar is one that focuses on the user.
The Assistant
Every presenter needs a technical assistant who is an expert at the software platform. Without fail, webinars seem to always have a technical glitch somewhere along the way, or participants will be unable to log on to the webinar or turn on their microphone. An assistant can jump in as needed to address participants’ technical problems and fix any other issues that occur. This saves time and prevents participants from getting frustrated and logging off prematurely.
In addition, assistant can be invaluable for organizing questions and queuing such for any type of Q & A session planned.
The Audience
Ultimately, your company desires audience members to choose to purchase your product or service as a result of the webinar. As previously mentioned, webinars result in an impressive 20% conversion rate, to maximize this percentage (and even surpass it); you must strategically target your audience.
Conduct research to determine the demographics of those purchasing your products, and use this information to market your webinar to a targeted audience via hashtags on social media, targeted online ads, and other marketing tools.
Research shows that webinars normally result in a 33% attendance rate, but through targeted marketing, the attendance rate can be as much as 65%.
To capture the largest audience possible, one that is genuinely interested in your company’s information, your marketing team must look beyond traditional, general marketing techniques to the more targeted techniques ushered in by the age of social media and mobile applications.
Most importantly, you must follow up with participants after the webinar via a survey or email to point them back to your products and capture their business. This is crucial is establishing and facilitating long term business relationships as opposed to a one off interaction through one webinar that may or may not result in a single purchase.
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