A web seminar, commonly known as a webinar, is an online sharing event, training session, or presentation that allows participants to join remotely from different places.
For businesses trying to increase their leads and gain new customers, a webinar offers an effective solution to help achieve these goals. Almost 95% of marketers said that webinars are an important part of their digital marketing strategy.
By providing valuable, innovative, and up-to-date information through webinars, businesses can leverage their brand awareness and establish relationships with the participants. As a result, helping them grow their audience and build their email lists with potential customers.
From demonstrating products and services to sharing knowledge and skills, there are various webinar formats available. The more variations you provide, the better your engagement rates will be. To help you explore new ideas, here are the eight most effective webinar formats to help you grow your business.
1. Employee Training
Continuous talent development is vital for maintaining business growth and success. One of the most effective ways to support talent development is by providing training sessions. Many businesses train their employees to maintain their competence and qualifications.
In addition to personal development, training has been proven to boost your relationships with employees. In the United States alone, around 39% of employees agree that training helps contribute to their job satisfaction.
The more employees undergo training, the better their performance, improving their productivity and helping them work more efficiently.
Among all different types of training, webinars are one of the most effective methods for many businesses. Training webinars offer an exciting and engaging way to deliver information. Especially with the current pandemic situation, webinars enable employees to develop their skills remotely.
There are different ways you can deliver webinars, including videos, presentations, and sharing sessions. One good practice is to create a dedicated website to store all training material and provide access for all employees. Do this by registering a domain name and subscribing to a hosting provider, like Hostinger.
2. Lead Generation
Hosting webinars gives you the opportunity to engage with a specific audience that is already interested in your industry. When you’re able to provide helpful content through your webinars, the audience will view your business as proficient in the industry. As a result, it will increase their interests and build trust towards your business.
This will let you engage with them and nurture these relationships to generate quality leads. Once you have obtained quality leads, it will be easier to convert them into sales as they are already engaged with your business.
To have a lead-converting webinar, it is essential to provide relevant and compelling content. Start by exploring your content archive and measuring your statistics. Figure out which content gains the most traffic and has the highest engagement rates, and turn it into webinar material.
Including a call to action at the end of your webinar is another great way to generate leads. This can be anything from prompting people to sign up for an account, offering a limited offer for a certain period, or giving them free eBooks in exchange for email subscriptions.
3. Thought Leadership
Thought leadership shows that you have expertise in a particular field or area. Many company executives and leaders strive to be thought leaders within their industries. Businesses use this strategy to build credibility and reputation for their brands.
In addition to brand image, thought leadership also helps increase businesses’ sales growth. More than 60% of business decision-makers are willing to pay premium prices for a brand with established thought leadership.
One of the best ways to deliver thought leadership content is through a webinar. It allows you to share your skills and knowledge in a real-time situation. This way, it is easier to assert yourself and engage with your audience.
Make sure to carefully select your webinar topic – provide new and relevant information within your area of expertise. Learn about your audience, understand their pain points, then offer solutions through your webinar.
Presenting real-world examples, recent statistics, and best practices will also help your webinar be more helpful. If you succeed in providing quality webinar content to your audience, chances are they will see your brand as credible and trustworthy.
4. Product Demonstration
Product demonstration webinar lets you showcase your products and their advantages. With that in mind, it is paramount that the webinar is well-rehearsed and well-prepared. Otherwise, it can change how your audience perceives your products.
Product demo webinars, also known as deminars, offer an excellent opportunity to promote your products to your prospective and existing customers. Because they are already interested in your products, it is easier to nurture their engagement and turn them into leads.
To ensure an effective and successful product demonstration, always emphasize what your product can do to solve customers’ problems. Instead of mentioning too many features, start identifying their problems and demonstrate certain benefits that can help accordingly.
It is also important to highlight your unique selling points to show that your business is better than your competitors’. Telling your customers’ success stories can also help build trust for your audience.
All in all, remember to focus on the products and make them the stars of the show.
5. Coaching or eLearning
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Hosting a coaching or eLearning webinar is another great way to grow your business and get your name out to the public. The goal of coaching or eLearning webinars is to provide new knowledge on a specific topic. Hence, this type of webinar tends to have more participants.
With the assistance of various platforms, like Zoom and Prezi, teaching through webinars can be as effective as in-person classes and sometimes even more interactive.
You can set up a virtual classroom environment and share a virtual whiteboard – the tutor and participants can then annotate on it. Additionally, you can record the whole webinar session and make it accessible to the participants for future learning.
Hosting this type of webinar doesn’t have to be complicated. If you have high-performing content that generates a lot of traffic and engagement, try to repurpose it, expand the idea, and use it as the webinar material.
6. Customer Onboarding
For every business, especially SaaS, customer onboarding is a crucial step to ensure success and growth. Similar to the sales funnel process, it is vital to nurture customers from the time they make a purchase until they get comfortable using your product.
Customer onboarding refers to all customer activities before they start using your product or service. This helps introduce your product and make them understand its value. When implemented correctly, customer onboarding can reduce churn rates and increase customer retention.
Generally, there are a few steps of customer onboarding, from greeting messages and welcoming emails to product tours and knowledge bases. However, you can pack all of these components into one customer onboarding webinar and be more efficient.
With this type of webinar, you can walk your customer through every step of the way slowly and effectively. The real-time situation will let you ensure their understanding and answer their questions in a timely manner.
Additionally, you can provide a pre-recorded webinar and include it along with your welcoming emails. This approach gives customers more flexibility as they can choose to watch the webinar based on their needs and availability.
