Webinar. Step by step guide to the ultimate B2B marketing tool.

When you struggle to acquire new leads and increase your customers’ engagement, webinars can significantly strengthen your hand. We will try to convince you to add them to your marketing arsenal and share most successful tactics. Also, we will provide answers to burning webinar questions, like whether to record a webinar, how to use after registration landing page and how to handle participants’ questions.

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Why Host a Webinar? 6 Benefits

B2B marketers love webinars! Why?
1. You become an expert: Webinars present you as an industry expert and leader in a field.

2. Lead generation: registrations on webinars are the 3th source of new leads, according to Adobe report.
3. Increasing your credibility: as a specialist you can win customer trust – you talk to them as an advisor sharing her experience, not a salesperson.
4. Another area of education. When it comes to consuming knowledge, a lot depends on the form. Sometimes you just can’t get it when you read plain text, but when you listen to the material, you suddenly get it. For many people, a webinar is a perfect form to learn.
5. Cost-effectiveness. Producing a webinar isn’t expensive, especially when compared to revenue.
6. Convenience. For your audience, a webinar is convenient, because it provides all the benefits of face-to-face contact without having to leave home or office.

Advantages of webinar over other forms of content

Webinars have several advantages over other forms of content marketing. However sharing knowledge in posts and ebook is useful, webinars show unique qualities, which make them indispensable.
A) They’re interactive: webinars enable communication in real time, so users can ask questions right away, what helps them understand the problem.
B) It’s easier to focus: as webinars are less monotonous and engage both sight and hearing, they are easier to follow, even if a user isn’t extremely focused. Knowledge is easier to digest.
C) They provide material for scoring. When somebody downloads your ebook, you can’t say whether she has read it and did she pay attention. With a webinar, you can easily spot active users. No more problems with establishing the hottest leads!

How to host a webinar?

1 Choose a topic: it should be actionable and fascinating, but also related to your product. Otherwise, you might gather an audience that won’t translate into sales. When looking for an idea, resort to customer feedback: see which posts on your website do they read most often or what questions do they ask.
2 On your own or with a guest? Maybe you can invite a star to attract more participants?
3 Prepare slides. Plan your presentation and prepare slides, yet remember that webinar doesn’t mean reading your presentation. (you can use our tips from post on the best presentations – many of them can be applied to webinars). Make contact data visible, so users know when they can reach you.
4 Choose software. It’s always hard to pick a good one. Here you can find a reliable comparison of most popular platforms.
5 Don’t try to say too much at once. We know that you want to satisfy customers’ expectations, but there is nothing more frustrating for them than to overloaded with too many knowledge. It results in frustration and anger, so rather leave some additional information for a blog or the next webinar.
6 Gather audience. Use email and social media. Remember about the power of “Last chance to register” message.
7 Questions are a vital part of a webinar, defining its interactive form. Prepare for them and decide when you’re going to answer them – best the idea is to do so after your presentation or after closing a part of it. Don’t answer them on the spot, spontaneously, because it will hurt the clarity of your speech, and participants might feel lost wit you changing subjects all the time.

Pro Tips

1. The webinar shouldn’t last more than an hour. Only virtuosos can keep people’s attention up for longer.
2. Get inspired by best presentations – e.g. from TED.
3. Use confirmation pages (thank you pages) – namely the landing pages user goes to after registration. Eg. You can put an offer there or box for questions than a user can ask in advance, before the webinar. That’s a great idea for getting ideas for topics.
4. Follow up. Have a strategy for communication with attendees. How to grow their knowledge more? Are they ready to be called? Staying in touch is vital – send follow-up within 24 hours.
5. Recording. Provide a recording of the webinar or make it available to watch online: when you have an international audience, it’s hard to find a good time for everyone. That’s why it helps to allow them to watch it later. Recording might diminish the number of audiences, but increases the number of leads in general (people register more willingly because they know they will be able to watch recording).

Webinars for B2C

B2C marketers adapt many B2B strategies, e.g. Lead Nurturing. In 2014, 42% of B2C marketers used webinars, 58% of those found them efficient (CMI). Why implement webinars in B2C?
– They help you grow an audience. Thanks to great content you can reach new customers.
– They deliver value. So you can build customer loyalty and attract new ones.
– Increase your credibility. If you’re an expert, your position on the market changes.
– Enrich your content marketing. As webinars have serious advantages to other content forms, including them will help you deliver knowledge more efficiently.

Webinar – both in B2B and B2C – help acquire more leads, deliver value and build your brand as an expert.