Hosting webinars can be a great marketing and sales strategy. You’re hesitant to try it. Perhaps you don’t have the time or resources to promote and plan a digital event. Perhaps you get a cold sweat just thinking about taking pictures. Maybe you thought that hosting webinars was too expensive and impossible for your business. You are wrong. You only need good webinar software and a plan.
Don’t worry if webinars could impact your budget.
This article will show you how to host a webinar. You will learn how to create your content, what platform you should use, top webinar marketing strategies, as well as everything you need to know about hosting a webinar.
We have lots of great information, so let’s get going!
Webinars: The Benefits
Let’s first discuss why you should host a webinar. Why is webinar hosting so valuable? This marketing strategy is worth the effort and time it takes. The answer is yes.
Webinar hosting has many benefits, but we will only focus on three.
1. Build More Trust
People buy from companies that they trust and like. How can you be the company that your target audience wants? Start with webinars
Webinars are a way to humanize brands. They allow consumers to meet corporations face-to-face and have deep conversations with them. Webinars allow companies to show their industry knowledge and skills to their target markets. This builds consumer confidence.
2. Qualitative Leads
Webinar attendees typically register for digital events using their email addresses. Webinar marketing is an efficient form of lead generation.
The good news does not end there. Registering for webinars is more effective than generating leads through other channels. Why? Simply because they have already expressed interest in your company’s products and services by signing up. You have many marketing tools that you can use to turn the information into profit. A good webinar platform can help you accomplish this goal. One of the most important features in a webinar is to increase marketing efforts.
3. Increase Sales
Webinars are a great way for companies to quickly increase sales without wasting extra energy. Your webinar content should address a common problem, and present your brand’s solutions as the solution. Why wouldn’t your audience make a purchase?
Selling part of your webinar must be done with professionalism. However, webinars can help you increase sales if done right.
Five Steps to a Host Webinar
After we have covered why, let’s move on to how to hold a free webinar.
The process is not difficult, however. You can host great webinar events if you follow the five steps that we have outlined below. You won’t have to spend a penny of your hard-earned cash.
Let’s get started!
1. Plan Your Content
The first thing you should do is plan the content of your webinar. The topics, details, and information that you will cover in your webinar.
This is possible by understanding your goals.
What are the benefits of hosting a webinar? Are you looking to increase your lead generation efforts? Do you want to increase sales by promoting a particular product or service? Perhaps you just want to make your brand more human for your existing customers.
These are all your goals. Before you start planning your content, you must understand your goal.
Next, make sure you know your target audience. What are they looking for in a webinar? What can you do to provide them with useful and/or entertaining information? What type of information do they want?
Research and buyer personas are key to understanding your audience.
A buyer persona, which is a fictional character that represents a particular segment of a target audience, is something you may not be familiar with. A buyer persona should contain demographic information such as gender, income level, occupation, and age. It also needs to include psychographic details like daily challenges and hopes.
It is simple to choose a topic when you have fully understood your audience and your goals.
Let’s take, for example, a clothing company. Your webinar’s goal is to promote your brand’s new women’s apparel. However, your audience wants winter fashion tips. Your webinar content can focus on current fashion trends, and show specific articles of clothing your company sells, including pieces from your women’s line. You can also use the recording later, e.g. you can send it to your participants, or create new materials based off it.
It is also important to choose the type of webinar that you will host. You also have the option of hosting an automated webinar or on-demand webinar.
You can see how it works.
2. Select Your Platform
Next, choose your webinar hosting platform. What tools will you use to host your digital event which tool should you use? There are many options. You can choose from three types of live video streaming: professional webinars, video conferencing or video conferencing.
Let’s look more closely at each option:
- Live video streaming. A live streaming platform such as YouTube Live or Facebook Live is the best way to host a webinar. These platforms offer many benefits, including easy usage, almost unlimited participant counts, and easy event marketing. It will be much easier to get your customers to join your webinars if your company already has a large following on Facebook and YouTube. These platforms were not designed for webinar hosting. These platforms were created to stream live events. They don’t offer the same high-end features as full webinar platforms.
- Video Conferencing. Next we have video conferencing software such as Google Hangouts. These tools can be used for hosting webinars, but were not designed for this purpose. These tools are better suited for hosting digital meetings. If you are determined to use Hangouts for webcast purposes, you will still benefit from the easy-to-use interface with built-in chat capabilities. Google’s G Suite, which is paid-to-play, offers slightly more advanced webinar features. Customers can also integrate live events with other Google apps like its email and calendar.
- Professional webinars. A professional-level tool such as Myexpopro could be used to host a webinar. The problem with professional-level tools is that they can be expensive to use. They usually do. Myexpopro provides a free trial. You will have access to the most advanced features such as screen sharing, polls, surveys, live streaming to Facebook and YouTube, and many integrations. You can also create live webinars as well as automated or on-demand webinars. This allows you to save time and gives your participants more freedom. You can also record webinars or online meetings and then use them later.
You should consider investing in Myexpopro if you intend to host webinars regularly.
Your goals will dictate the tool you choose to host your webinars. Although free webinar software is great for small events, it’s not designed to host large-scale webinars that are appreciated by hundreds of people.
A social platform is a great option if you are a YouTube or Facebook fan and only want to hold a single event. We recommend Myexpopro, a professional-level platform that offers all the bells.
You and your attendees will have a memorable webinar experience if you choose the best webinar service.
You now know the goal of your webinar, who it is for, and what platform it will be hosted on. Now you can market it. This is a crucial step!
If it isn’t known about, even the best content can be useless. Spread the word about your webinar to get people to show up at your event. Marketing a webinar is no different from marketing any other product.
These three strategies will help you promote your event efficiently:
- Social Media Marketing. You have amazing access to your target audience through social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Make use of it! Two weeks prior to the event, announce your webinar via social media. Post reminders and updates leading up to the event. Pro tip: Don’t just post about your event. Engage with your audience. Respond to their questions and comments. Social media works better when used to initiate conversations and not as a digital billboard.
- Email Marketing. Email Marketing. Although it’s traditional, email has the best ROI. According to the latest statistics, every $1 of invested in this strategy yields a return on investment of $44. This means that if your webinars are not being marketed via email, you are missing out. Send a few emails to your subscribers and invite them to your webinar. You should promote your event via email at least two weeks prior to the event, just as you do with social media posts. This will give your subscribers a better chance to clear their schedules and attend the event. You can automate a lot of things by choosing the best webinar software. Myexpopro allows you to send out webinar invitations and reminders about the upcoming webinar. You can also thank attendees for attending the event with Thank-You emails. All of this is automated.
- Paid advertising. Google Adwords and Facebook Ads give marketers unprecedented access to their targeted audiences. Watch as webinar attendees line up to meet the people you targeted. There’s more to it than that, but a strong paid marketing strategy can make a huge difference in webinar marketing.
- Space provided through the webinar platform. To easily market your event, you can use webinar software. If you use the right tool, there is plenty of room for this. An organized webinar registration page will make it easy for users to register to your webinar. To create an environment conducive to learning, customize your hosting area. Your attendees might find useful content in the waiting area before the webinar session. You can also create a landing page for your webinar, which will contain information about your company, the events you are hosting, and other content. It’s also a place to promote your business and make it visible in search engines.
The type of webinar you are marketing will determine the best way to market it. These three ideas will work with any type of promotional strategy.
Be sure to choose a suitable date. Your webinar should be scheduled when it’s most convenient for you and your attendees.
4. Send Your Information
Now your content is ready, you have chosen the right webinar platform, and you have marketed your live event. All you have to do now is organize that thing!
It’s an exciting time. Your hard work is finally paying off. We understand that you may feel nervous, especially if this is your first time hosting a webinar. Hosting webinars isn’t difficult, but it can be nerve-wracking.
These best practices will help you host with expertise.
- Create a webinar script. You can reduce stress by creating a webinar script that you can use during your live event. You will only need a basic outline of the topics and some bullet points for each. You can rest assured that your webinar will be prepared in advance.
- Engage Your Audience. Your webinar should be treated as a conversation, not a speech. Ask your attendees questions throughout the event. Engagement can be boosted by simple questions like “Let’s see if this makes sense”. Interactive webinars are the most powerful. Make sure your webinar is open to your audience.
- Do some practice before you go live. It doesn’t mean that you have to go live every time. It shouldn’t. Practice your presentation before you go. You will feel more confident. You can also get to know your webinar room by learning how to host a webinar on the platform you choose.
- Have fun. Enjoy yourself. What is the worst thing that could happen? Even if you stumble over words, your attendees won’t notice. They will notice if you act like you don’t want to be there. You’ll have a lot of fun and it will be great!
Although it may seem daunting to present during a live webinar, it is not. You’ll soon find your style and confidence with a little practice. Engaging webinars can be made more engaging by practicing!
5. Follow up effectively
Your free webinar doesn’t necessarily mean that you are done. To make the most of webinar marketing, you must keep in touch with your attendees to integrate them into your company’s global world. This is often done via email advertising.
It is not an option to follow up. How you follow up depends entirely on your original goal and the content that was delivered.
If your webinar’s goal was to increase sales, you might offer another chance for attendees to purchase in your follow up email. You could also include social media links and a CTA to “Follow Us Here” if your goal was to increase brand awareness.
These four points should be shared by every follow up message:
- Send your follow-up messages within 24hrs. This helps you to build brand recognition. Your attendees might forget who you are if you don’t contact them enough.
- Say thank you. You could have given them a million more things, but they chose to spend their time with you. It is the least you can do to thank them. In your follow-up email, let them know how much you appreciate their attendance.
- Capture Your Event. Remind your attendees to thank you for attending the webinar. This doesn’t mean you have to go into great detail. It’s enough to give a brief overview of the key points they will be able to refer back too in the future. Record webinars so that you can send the recording out to your attendees.
- Ask for feedback. Ask each recipient to give feedback. What did they think about the webinar? What parts were they most impressed with? Which parts can they improve upon? You’ll be better prepared for future webinars if you have more feedback.
Your webinar planning, marketing and hosting took a lot of effort. Do not let the opportunity slip by. Keep going strong to reap the benefits of your efforts.
This is also true for webinars that are used for marketing purposes. They do not just generate leads. Lead nurturing, i.e. it is best to take care of your leads. It’s easy to choose the right webinar platform.
Get Webinars for Free to Supercharge Your Business!
It’s clear that webinars will help you build trust with your target audience, generate more leads and make more sales. Now you’re able to use them without spending a lot of money.
Follow the five steps to webinar hosting that we have outlined:
- Plan Your Content,
- Select Your Platform
- Promote Your Event
- Send us your information
- Follow up effectively.
MYEXPOPRO, a powerful yet simple-to-use webinar hosting platform that is both professional and user-friendly, is your best choice. You will have access to customized branding features and automated webinars. Event polls and surveys are also available. Chat rooms are just a few of the many options that our platform offers.