In our last blog post, we discussed the rising popularity of webinars for business.
They’re an entertaining and engaging way to share ideas and connect with new audiences.
But they do require a lot of time and energy to produce high-quality webinars that will actually attract viewers and produce ROI.
So, before you get started, you’ll want to know how to create webinars that actually drive revenue. Below, find a few of the most important rules to follow to produce profitable webinars.
Do Something New
A webinar might be new for your company–but is it new for your viewers? Are you offering something that they can’t get anywhere else? Before you get started, do research on what others in your field or industry are producing. Always look at similar topics and what information has already been covered for your audience. It’s always best if there is already an unmet demand for what you’re doing. However, if you’re not sure about necessity, consider how your webinar format can make the information seem fresh or offer a new spin on it. For example, maybe you want to share baking recipes, and a lot of people are already doing that! But maybe your webinars feature different cute cats sharing baking recipes. (This is especially a great idea if your introductory marketing research has shown a large overlap of bakers and cat lovers!) Given a choice between your webinar and others online, your audience might choose to hear the same thing told by cats.
Consider Length
To reduce the time, cost, and labor it takes to produce highly creative webinars, you can consider making a large number of shorter webinars instead of hour-long productions. (Many business webinars are 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 60 minutes in length.) However, doing quick webinars doesn’t mean they need to sacrifice information or quality. It can also mean you’re valuing your viewers’ time. One way to reduce time is to eliminate the classic Q-and-A portion of the webinar. Some audiences do love the chance to ask their questions in real time, but you can invite participants to submit their responses through some kind of chat feature, answered later. Plus, depending on your audience, younger viewers do tend to have shorter attention spans!
Make It Interactive
On that note: Don’t bore your viewers by lecturing them the entire time! The great thing about webinars is that they are not one-way videos. They offer a chance for viewers to interrupt with comments and questions, participate in polls and surveys in real time, and chat with each other during your segment. All of this and more should be not only available, but encouraged.
Choose Your Host Wisely
Additionally, a great webinar host is everything. It’s important to have a consistent host and promote them just as much as you promote the series itself. Your host needs to have everything you’d want in a television host: camera appeal, eloquence, intelligence, humor (of course, you’ll want to customize based on your industry and topic). Ideally, every company has a few good candidates that would fit the bill! Otherwise, it is always possible to hire someone for a day to shoot a handful of webinars for you (if you’re interested in doing on-demand webinars, of course). There are a lot of options, but the bottom line is that someone with a lot of knowledge but no charm isn’t going to captivate return engagement the same way that someone with a lot of natural charisma will. Regardless, people like to return to someone they know and trust.
How Are You Promoting Your Webinars?
You might create some truly great content even if you’ve never done this before. However, that won’t matter if you don’t know how to promote your webinars once you start churning them out. You need to let customers and clients know that they exist—while also trying to attract brand-new audiences with them. You want people to subscribe in advance, so you need to give yourself some lead time, as well as follow up. Then, you need to store the webinars somewhere and promote that content library for others to discover on their own. This is how you’ll get the greatest long-term value from your webinars.
Mad 4 Marketing can craft a custom strategy to promote your webinars online and help you grow a loyal audience—before you even create your first one. (Of course, we can lend a hand with that, too.) Reach out to see how we can maximize your webinar success.