Whatever you call it --Webinar, Webcast, Web Conference, it’s an excellent (and very cost-effective) way to educate prospects about your product or service. It’s also a great way to generate high-quality leads for your sales people. So, you want to make sure that you do everything you can do ensure a great turnout.
Here are a few things to consider when planning your promotional efforts:
1. Check the Calendar – Make sure that your webinar doesn’t fall on any holidays or conflict with any competitor or industry events. Also, consider the day of the week and time of day…or night. Know your audience and make sure it’s convenient for them.
2. Get the Word Out Early and Often – Let everyone know with all the different ways that are available to you. Since it’s an online event, email and your website will draw the best response. But also include the URL address in your direct mail, print advertisements, and postcards at trade show or how ever else you communicate with potential customers. You may even want to consider creating a press release and sending through targeted newswire distribution.
3. Give All the Details But Not Too Much –Besides the obvious who, what, where and when info, your invitation should include lively and effective graphic elements. If you have a notable speaker or panel discussion, make sure to include photos and brief bios of participating speakers. This will attract more attention and increase your registration rate.
4. Send Out Reminders – Everyone has busy calendars these days. Send out a reminder the day before AND morning of the webinar. Some of the webinar software providers have a feature that does this automatically. Some even synch up with Outlook and other email calendar software so that as soon as someone registers it sets a meeting planner appointment directly on their calendar.
5. Timing is Everything -- Keep the webinar to a reasonable timeframe, most are an hour in length. Start promptly and make sure you leave 10-15 minutes for Q&A (questions and answers). The best webinars are interactive; some even allow attendees to submit questions online that can be answered in real-time. You want to make sure that your audience is engaged and stays on the webinar until the end…and looks forward to the next one too!
6. How We Doing? – When the webinar has concluded, send an email survey to all attendees, ask them what they liked, what they didn’t like, if they have any specific question and what they’d like to see if future webinars. Send a similar survey to those who “registered but didn’t attend” and ask them why. Send the survey shortly after the webinar, ideally the same day. You want it to be still fresh in their minds.
7. Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up – Do not leave anything to chance here! These folks took an hour of their time to learn about your company. Make sure you have a thought-out plan to follow-up with them effectively. You might even create a follow-up script that your sales team can use as a guide. This will also help maintain a consistent follow-up process.
Remember, it’s all about learning and making improvements for the next go around. Webinars can be a very effective method to educate prospect about your company and create leads for your sales people to then convert into satisfied clients.
Common-Sense Marketing Advice – For practical, no nonsense approach to effective
marketing contact bill@wmmcguire.com | 973-216-4152
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