Using Webinars in your Marketing Mix

Conferencing has been around forever and with the passing of time the technology gained to host conferences has adapted in such a way that there is no longer a need to be in person to hold a conference. The webinar, a specific type of conference, is usually one way from the speaker to the audience with little or no interaction from the audience.

There is tremendous marketing value in webinars and one that I implore you to dig into a little deeper in order to see if it’s something that will help you in your business. Let’s say, for instance, that you sold copiers and as a copier sales person you know that most business don’t even use most of the features copiers today come with. As a sales person you know that if you could educate business owners on all the features a copier has, it will make selling them a whole lot easier.

So, you decide to have a free webinar that you can educate business owners and entitle it something catchy like, “10 Things you Must Know in Order to Get the Most out of your Copier.” You then create a great sales letter and squeeze page complete with video testimonials and even hire a top copywriter to write it all for you.

Sounds good right? Of course it does and by marketing it correctly you sign up a thousand business owners across the country to listen to you speak but you know that in order to turn these listeners into possible buyers you have to go about things the right way.

This weeks ‘Chart of the Week’, MarketingSherp.com polled webinar attendees to get their top webinar turn offs, the chart follows…

If you look at the number 1 biggest turn off you will see that it says, “Content not as advertised.” You better make sure that if you market your webinar as “10 Things you Must Know in Order to Get the Most out of your Copier,” then that is what it better be about because that is the only reason they signed up to listen in in the first place.

Number 2 is “The presenter read directly from the slides.” While it’s good to have visuals nobody likes to be read to so make sure that your presentation is top notch and don’t be afraid to inject a bit of humor. Be as dynamic as possible and always strive to give more than the listeners were expecting.

I’ve always believed in the law of reciprocation and Zig Ziglar said it best when he said, “If you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want.” If you look at the number 3 turn off make sure that you do not start with sales information and jump right into the meat of the webinar. In fact you should only give your information at the end of the webinar but make sure that you do not ram it down their throats.

Keep the call short and sweet at an hour or less and make sure that the information given isn’t common knowledge or you will get people logging off the first time you tell people how to turn on a copier. Make sure to speak at a normal rate, don’t slow down just to make the call longer or talk so fast that you can’t be understood, make sure to make yourself an outline before you start the call and stick to it.

At the end of the call leave time for some Q&A in order to get feedback then make sure to send a survey to all the attendees so that you can gauge the success or failure of the webinar. Feel free to leave a comment I’d like to open this up so that we can all expand upon what each other is finding out there in the beautiful world of webinars