- Webinars are the perfect addition to your inbound toolkit.
Efficiently showcasing your company's skills,
assuring a real time interaction with your prospects
and becoming a valuable piece of authoritative
content when it's done right.
62% of all B2B marketers use webinars
in their content marketing strategy to entice
new leads and move existing ones down the sales funnel.
So are you care to get learning, well, let's get started.
(bright music)
Howdy, it's Trav from Neighborhood, where we help brands
find sell and keep that people.
By definition, a webinar is simply a web based seminar.
While most companies execute an event marketing strategy
that involves face to face interaction,
maybe a networking event or a thank you dinner,
with webinars location is definitely not an issue.
Businesses who decide to create and host a webinar give any
person living anywhere in the world the opportunity
to participate at the exact same time.
While you might think that doing these events takes away
the human connection, it's entirely the opposite.
Webinar software enables the host to provide
a virtual connection to the attendees in the comfort
of their own home or office.
It's important to start by asking yourself whether you
should produce a webinar in the first place.
Here's the truth about why there are so many painfully long
boring webinars out there.
Many marketers don't produce a webinar
because it will be useful to their audience, but rather,
because they think it'll be a great lead generation tool.
Ensure you ask yourself, honestly,
am I providing genuine value?
If you can't work that out,
then think about whether you wanna watch your own webinar.
Would you be willing to drop everything and sit glued
to the screen to watch your own webinar?
So here's the take on.
Most people are too busy to stop what they're doing
and watch a webinar that doesn't interest them.
So let's get on their level.
As well as this you might wanna ensure that the content
that you're assigning to webinar is webinar worthy.
In other words, is your idea well suited
to the webinar format.
It's also worth remembering that lying to your attendees
with the promises of a sensational content and then failing
to provide the goods is absolutely not a good look
for you or your business.
Being old chat and no game is actually
a one way ticket to get on the bad side of your audience
and tarnish your overall reputation.
Once you've put in the groundwork though,
and have really sat and thought objectively about
whether your webinar will be a winner,
then you can get started.
The first step to building a webinar
is to firstly choose your topic.
Choosing a relevant topic is the key
to delivering a webinar that works.
In short, answer the questions
that your prospects are asking.
Next up is to set up the webinar software.
So you can go ahead and actually create the event itself.
This will allow you to immediately send registered users
information with the link to check out the webinar
and then to go ahead and set up the basics ahead of time.
Here at Neighbourhood we use
a platform called 23 for our webinars, to eliminate
the manual webinar process by bringing landing pages,
emails, production and on-demand videos onto a single tool
and allowing marketers to gauge a full understanding
of its performance.
So now that you've got the software set up the topic
and the date locked in, all we need is signups.
You need to be setting this up at least
two weeks before D-Day.
So don't worry if you don't have a full presentation
all fleshed out just yet.
But at this point, you should have some bullet points
as to what you're gonna be talking about and exactly
what your audience will be getting out of this webinar.
Take this knowledge and then create a landing page
that features a summary explaining how the webinar
will affect and benefit the attendees.
And be sure to position the event host
as an expert on the subject.
As you weren't seeing nearly
as many registrations otherwise.
And now for the all important bit, writing the content.
It's important to know however,
that writing content intended to be read and to be spoken
is completely different.
Edit brief with dot points and the main areas
to cover flowing through your logical presentation.
So that you have plenty of room
to explain things that sounds natural.
So in order to keep viewers engaged and keep
the good vibes flowing, it's helpful to incorporate humor,
pop culture references or famous figures
in brightening up the presentation.
This also works to reduce this salesy aspect of some
webinars, which can be further reduced by making a concerted
effort to be helpful, demonstrate how can take an action
and best practices.
This is what will sell not aggressive promotion
of your brand.
Next on the list is to start getting the word out,
about the webinar.
Email your customers and tell them to watch this space.
Share it on all of your social media platforms
and run ad campaigns.
You could even include it in your newsletter
or promote it in your personal LinkedIn to encourage signups
from connections that you know could receive
some benefit to it.
Well, only a small portion of users who will sign up will
actually attend the webinar.
Keep in mind that you're still getting
that late information.
And hey, they can always watch the recording later on.
Number six is to ensure that you've got all the appropriate
equipment long before you record your webinar.
For best results, you should ideally have a microphone
that isn't the one that belongs on your laptop.
I'll also suggests that you hook a second screen up as your
primary computer so you can easily see your notes
and the questions that people are asking.
Also, if your internet connection has been playing up
in the lead up to the day,
ensure that you get someone over to fix it.
Fix that stopping and starting to make the viewer experience
as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
Next up before everything goes live,
it's super important to do a trial run.
Even if that means getting all of your co-workers
to tune in for an hour to ask questions
and make sure the flow is consistent,
and everything is running smoothly.
Doing this, you can ensure that you can watch
back the recording that your microphone works
and that the video and sound quality is good.
As well as this, if this is your first time in particular
with your webinar software, it gives you a chance to get
familiar with the system and recognize the glitches.
So that by the time real thing rolls around,
you'll know how the platform works inside and out.
It's also important for you to prepare
for the worst from experience again.
Even if you're the most prepared person in the world,
you simply can't predict what's gonna happen
when your webinar goes live.
Therefore, you need to ensure that you practice
so if things do go wrong,
that you'd be ready to keep it rolling.
So the next step is to try to open the webinar right
on the promised time or even a little bit early
so that users can interact with you in the waiting room.
Also make sure that you record the webinar so that it can be
used as evergreen resource that you can upload to YouTube
or any other social media channel later on.
We sent out our webinar recording
in our monthly newsletter and posted it to social channels,
got it behind landing pages to encourage lead generation
far after the webinar took place.
Some best practices to keep in mind when you're actually
running the webinar is to include remembering
to take questions during the webinar.
You should also be sure to let users know at the beginning
that the recording will be online after the webinar too.
Be sure to include an offer at the end
for your products and services.
But don't aggressively sell them
throughout the whole presentation.
Last of all, what's your chat box or get one of your
co-workers to do it for you because if all of your attendees
are typing that they can't hear you,
you wanna be fixing that straightaway.
Last up, ensure that you send out follow up emails
just asking for a bit of feedback.
After weeks of prep and planning,
I'd say the last thing you wanna do is think about how you
can be doing it better next time.
But the world of webinars doesn't sleep.
Here's why you should follow up with your participants
after the events.
One, firstly, unless your participants have never seen
a webinar before they're most likely developed
a protocol in their heads,
where getting a follow up email is expected.
Number two, sending a follow up email
also cements relationship.
As the webinar creator, you'll spend ages working on your
first promotional campaign to build an audience.
If they've given you a chance,
the last thing you wanna do is lose them.
Number three, follow up emails are also perfect
follow up for lead nurturing.
And a great way to establish that link while your
participants still remember you.
Once the foundation is set,
all you've gotta do is keep in touch with them to see
those leads maturing into paying customers.
In conducting our first webinar,
we found that integrating great content with actionable tips
and a bigger focus on helping instead of selling
is ironically enough the best way to sell
your products and services.
So if webinars aren't currently a part of your
inbound strategy, now you can see why they should be.
To develop authority, trust, create relationships,
build brand awareness and qualify leads.
So if you found this video helpful,
then feel free to share it with somebody that you know
that needs a hand getting off the ground with some webinars.
You can also subscribe to our blog where you'll find
a bunch more tools, tips and templates to help you find sell
and keep your people, just Like Neighbourhood does.
And that's it for me, happy marketing.
(gentle music)