Overview
How do you sell a $1,000, $10,000, or $100,000 service online? What is the best way to educate a customer on the benefits of your services?
For many businesses, they have found that webinars provide a great outlet for improving results. However, setting up a successful webinar takes planning and execution.
Below we list the steps you need to take create a successful (and profitable) webinar for your company.
7 Steps to Create a Successful Webinar
1. Plan
Webinars do not just happen. As you probably noticed after joining a webinar that had no direction, the best webinars require planning in advance.
Therefore, start planning your webinar at least 2 months prior to the event.
Start thinking about what topics you should offer, how to promote the webinar, and what the timetable will be.
Note: Usually the last two weeks are where you receive the vast majority of your attendees. Any longer and people forget or lose interest. Therefore, if you start 2 months in advance, you have 6 weeks to create your promotional material and prepare your webinar content.
2. How to create interesting topics
Let’s start with your webinar topic. Choose the topic carefully, because the right or wrong topic could be the difference between success and failure on your webinar.
The best way to create an interesting topic is to survey your email list or prospects about what their greatest pain or need is at the moment. Then determine how you can solve that need in a webinar.
Also, make sure the product you promote at the end of the webinar addresses this need in greater detail.
3. Speaker
A big question to ask is are you going to present the material, or will you have a guest speaker come in to talk about the problem?
For some companies, having a guest speaker talk to the audience might bring in name recognition and additional people to the call. If your goal is to build a viable customer list, this could be a good promotional strategy with the right speaker.
They are a partner in your quest to bring people to your event.
On the flip side, if you are selling your own product someone at your company should speak. A guest speaker will not sell your product unless they have a serious financial incentive to do so.
4. Promote Your Webinar
Webinars do not work on the “build it and they will come” model. Instead, you need to market your webinar to the targeted audience.
Remember your topic. It will provide you with the answers on how to best promote you’re your businesses services.
For example, do you have an email list of people who would be interested in this information currently? Perhaps you considered using Google AdWords or Facebook Ads to spread the word?
While we are talking about ads, do you have a promotional budget? Webinars are not high cost marketing tools, but they do have expenses like advertising and the webinar platform you use.
Make sure to factor that into your promotional plan.
Finally, do you have some promotional images and content that can easily be shared? Create a blog post with the image along with the copy of your webinar. This way, people can promote your webinar by sharing it on social media.
5. Webinar Platform
While a number of webinar platforms exist for free or cheap, you might want to consider using a premium webinar platform if you plan on selling goods during your webinar.
Here are few platforms you can use:
- GoToWebinar- The standard in webinar platforms. They provide you with the ability to easily present your webinars with different types of content, record your webinars, and capture customer information before, during, and after the webinar.
- com- Create webcasts that show who you are with on24, as well as the set up interactive webinars for customers. These webinars permit users to access them from mobile, tablet, and/or desktop devices.
- Adobe Connect- Another premium webinar software. You can use Adobe Connect for enterprise level webinars that need access to large-scale classrooms, as well as virtual classrooms that allow you to integrate live and virtual students together.
6. Test everything in advance
Webinars definitely run on Murphy’s Law. Therefore, do a dry run of your webinar before you go live. While something can also go invariably wrong during a live webinar, it is best to weed out as many of the technological problems ahead of time.
Ask a few people to join you on a webinar call to see what happens when you have multiple people listening in. Ask yourself these three questions after the test.
- What problems did everyone have?
- What went smoothly?
- Does all of your equipment work properly?
Nothing worse than a bad mic or participants not being able to access your webinar when you are live. Things can still go wrong, so it is best to be on the call and start a few minutes late. That way people have time to get online.
Bonus: While we are at it. Most people forget about a webinar, because they are busy. Do not just test things from your end. Send a reminder email to test/jog the memory of your attendees.
7. Post-webinar
Once your webinar is complete your job is not done. Whenever promised, remember to send a recorded copy of the webinar to participants, so they can review any points they missed or did not fully comprehend during your webinar.
Additionally, you should follow up with participants to find out how they need your services. The point of a webinar is to drive targeted leads to your business.
After you are done, follow up with participants by email and phone (when possible) to find out what they liked most about the presentation, as well as if you can help them with your services.
Final Thoughts
Creating a successful webinar takes a lot of work to do correctly. Therefore, start early in the process. Make sure you have everything in place to create the best webinar possible for your audience.
Not everyone will move forward with your services, but with a quality webinar you can improve the number of qualified prospects who become clients.
If you need help setting up a successful webinar process for your business, contact us at Shout for a free initial consultation.
