You’ve probably listened in to a webinar or two – but have you hosted one? Hosting your own webinars can be a fantastic way to reach new leads online and bolster relationships with existing customers. Webinar marketing can help you provide useful information to your audience, establish your authority in your field, and showcase your personality. You can host a webinar on almost any topic – as long as it is relevant and provides value to your audience.
Wondering if webinar marketing is a good investment? Read on for our top 3 reasons to get started with webinars:
Reach a New Audience
When you host a webinar, you can reach a new audience of people interested in your topic. They may not know much about your brand yet, but they probably know that they’re interested in “Mastering Cake Decorating in 30 Minutes” (for example). Promote your event on social media, to relevant discussion groups or industry blogs, and to your email marketing list. Ask attendees to invite a friend. You may also want to pay to advertise your event through display or social advertising to your target audience.
You can increase your event’s draw if you partner with an industry influencer to promote or co-host your event. That way, your influencer can advertise the webinar to their audience, introducing more of them to you in the process. Remember to plan your webinars with enough advance notice that you have time to reach out and secure an influencer partner if you choose to work with one.
Educate Potential Customers & Establish Your Authority
Ideally, webinars provide information to attendees that they can actually use. They represent true content marketing – offering up information that can help make your audience’s lives better, easier, or more fun. In return, they’ll get to know your brand, and assuming your content is top-notch and consistent, they will ultimately view your brand as an authority in the space.
Webinars serve as effective content marketing tools because they can be customized for every stage of the buyer funnel. For example, you may want to offer “Cake Decorating 101″ for your top-of-funnel viewers, but “Tips & Tricks for Using Your Decorating Set to Its Fullest Potential” would be more appropriate for those close to converting or who have already converted. Customize your content for each audience group for improved results and retention.
Create Long-Term Content
Recorded webinars can serve a purpose long after they conclude. Upload the recording to your website either as a gated lead-generation tool or as free content on your blog and YouTube channel. Webinar content can even be re-purposed into podcast material, social media videos, advertisements, and much more. You may find that your most popular webinars can generate leads for months or years to come. You can revise webinars or add supplementary information as needed, but the core content is “evergreen” and should serve as a relatively passive lead source for some time.
Once your webinar event concludes, make sure to continue to nurture your leads with appropriate follow-up content. Thank them for attending, send them more relevant articles or downloadable resources, invite them to your next event, and survey them regarding their experience. You’ll lay the groundwork for a long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship by offering a valuable learning experience and showing you care about your attendees.
And check out our SlideShare deck for more:
3 Reasons You Should Use Webinars For Lead Generation from Vast Conference