Webinars are a powerful but underutilized marketing tactic that can help you ramp up your demand generation and retention efforts. These events are extremely effective because they allow you to serve up fresh content, interact with your audience, go deep into what sets you apart from competitors, and learn first-hand what troubles your customers so you can further personalize your marketing efforts. Furthermore, when used wisely, they allow you to attract, educate, and nurture your target audience at every stage of the customer journey.
At Act-On, webinars are an integral part of our marketing strategy because they give us an opportunity to connect with both prospective and current customers. These live web events don’t only allow us to share our expertise and offerings with our audience, they also provide an opportunity to learn what’s keeping them up at night and what questions they’re hoping we can answer to get them back on the path to marketing success. In short, webinars benefit us just as much as they do our customers because they allow us to learn more about what they expect us to deliver.
Are you convinced yet? If so, keep reading for a few essential tips to help you plan your first event or help you make your current structure even more effective.
Pick a Topic That Will Entice Your Audience
The possibilities are endless when it comes to choosing webinar topics, but not every subject will guarantee you an audience. If you want to attract current and future customers to sign up for your event, you have to offer them something of value and provides them with answers to some of their most pressing questions.
Luckily, figuring out what your audience wants to learn about can be fairly easy, and there are a variety of ways in which you can mine topic ideas to continuously fuel your webinar marketing efforts. To start, you can survey your audience via email, social media, and even at in-person events to find out what they would like to see you present on in a future webinar. You can also look at your analytics to gain a sense of keywords searched by your target customers and formulate your topics to match those pain points and interests.
Landing on a topic that piques the interest of your target customers is the first step toward ensuring that your webinar is successful. The great thing is that once you’ve got the ball rolling on webinars, you can even ask attendees to suggest ideas for future events so you’re never stuck contemplating your next webinar topic.
Choose a Presenter Who Brings Credibility to The Table
Webinars are a great way to establish your company as thought leaders in your industry. To do that, however, you have to choose a presenter who instills trust and credibility in your audience. Choosing a presenter who brings a great amount of expertise will not only enhance your audience’s perception of your brand and what you have to offer in your webinar, it will also motivate them to engage with your content in the future.
When choosing a presenter, start by looking at qualified leaders within your organization. Getting your target audience acquainted with the main players at your company is an excellent way to show them that your entire team knows what they’re talking about and are qualified to solve their problems.
Partnering with an influencer within your field is another excellent way to build your credibility and also expand your audience. Your target customers are likely to turn to these influencers when looking for recommendations on a product or solution, so this is the perfect way for you to get on their radar.
Promote Your Event to the Right People
When formulating your webinar promotion strategy, keep in mind that casting a wide net won’t always get you the most bang for your buck. For example, if you are planning a webinar intended specifically for individuals working in the retail sector, your resources will be better spent and your marketing efforts will yield more conversions if you specifically target people affiliated with that industry.
For optimal engagement, create targeted lists and tailor your emails to match the interests and industry language of the individuals you are hoping will attend your webinar. For paid ads, make sure to get as specific as possible about who you expect to view your promotional efforts, and make sure you are investing in channels that appeal the most to your target customers.
Don’t Forget to Continue to Engage Customers After Your Webinar
Very few attendees are likely to immediately convert to being customers after attending your webinar, so you should have a game plan of how you plan to stay in touch and keep them engaged once the event is done and gone.
Following up with individuals who signed up is also a great opportunity to capture potential customers who couldn’t make the webinar due to a scheduling conflict or who were absent on PTO. A follow-up email is a subtle way for you to get back on their radar and continue to nurture a relationship with them that will eventually make them want to learn more about what you’re all about.
For best results, we recommend segmenting your audience and entering them into targeted automated nurture email campaigns so you are able to engage your new contacts with relevant and targeted information. This will enable them to see value in what you have to offer past the webinar, motivate them to engage, and hopefully get them on the path toward becoming loyal customers.