Webinars aren’t dead, they just might smell a little funny with the rise in live-streaming platforms, particularly on social media. However, the concept of a webinar has not changed much – speak to an audience, inform, educate, learn from the audience, put a face on the brand, sell, build relationships, increase traffic, and engage. There’s a lot of potential for your brand with webinars; here are five reasons you may want to consider trying one:
1. Helps with brand awareness
I recently sat on the panel for a webinar hosted by my organization. While we were looking to drive people to a specific event, we also realized that this was an excellent opportunity to explain who we are as a brand and why we are doing what we do. Rather than lead with “come to our event, here’s the details,” we spent time talking about our mission and vision. We prompted our audience with the question – “how can we meet your needs?” This naturally led us to talking about our upcoming event since we think that’s a great way to help our audience. This allowed for a good, open discussion that has improved the overall conversation about our brand and its potential role within their own respective organizations. Additionally, we had people attend this webinar that had no prior knowledge of what we could do for them. Now they do. How did we do? It’s still too early for me to tell the end result, but I have observed a notable uptick in new customer inquiries and web traffic post-webinar.
2. When done right, webinars are engaging
Webinars generally aren’t short. Most of the ones that I’ve attended have been between 1-2 hours depending on the subject area and purpose. Anybody that registers and takes time out of their day to listen to you speak on a specific subject are already engaged. You’ve got an attentive audience that wants to learn from you. Additionally, webinars should not be a one-way conversation. You’ll have the opportunity to take questions from your audience or ask questions of the audience. This is a fantastic way to get real-time feedback that will better inform your business, marketing, or sales goals. Not to mention, these folks attending your webinar would likely be high-quality leads.
3. Establishes credibility
Webinars can help you and your brand establish credibility. Again, you will likely be speaking for 1-2 hours about your brand and showcasing your knowledge in a subject area that your attendees are engaged with. You’ll have the ear of everybody in the webinar, and they’ll be evaluating your knowledge and expertise while measuring that against their own knowledge and experience. Assuming you understand the subject matter and can speak well to it, people may start looking to you as an expert when they need help. Additionally, you'll be building (and hopefully not destroying) trust with your intended audience.
4. They’re cheap
There’s not much say here but that webinars are very cost effective. Although they may cost a little money to market in order to get people there, they generally do not cost a fortune to host. If you’re able to generate a single lead from a webinar, that alone may be worth it.
5. They are the gift that keeps giving
Video content is extremely popular and critical to the success of most brands. Webinars can (and should) be recorded. That way, you can continue to share the webinar with audience members that could not attend and help feed your social and digital media content. This doesn’t mean you need to strictly release the webinar in its entirety, but you can break it up into smaller sections to share as needed or incorporate on your content calendar.
Need help reaching your audience? The KJMdigital mission is to help connect artists to businesses through our online landscape. And the KJM Team works because our mission and values align with what we value - radical transparency, autonomy and flexibility. At KJMdigital, we put people first because we know real relationships are what matter most.
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