With the costs of commuting and real-world logistics on the rise, the potential for expansion, refinement and promotion of the webinar as an educational and/or marketing tool is inevitable. There is no other means (within the realms of virtual meetings globally-accessible classrooms where you can so successfully interweave the magic of webcam, instant messaging, PowerPoint (ecch!), polling and information distribution.
In the hands of a reader of The Mad Marketing Tactics Blog, a manager, educator, promoter or company brand manager wishing to deepen the impact of their brand while getting greater customer involvement and a higher rate of conversions, Webinars, either free or by paid reservation only, can be an unparalleled catalyst.
Assuming that you have a worthwhile subject and an objective to construct a webinar or a webinar series around, you have to know how to:
- Produce an excellent webinar, with all of its ancillary marketing and teaching benefits;
- Market your webinar to the proper audience through the proper media;
- Follow-up after the seminar, with an eye toward after-marketing!
The following SlideShare presentation is brought to you courtesy of the folks at GoToWebinar [a Citrix company], a highly popular and well-regarded web conference hosting organization, although I personally and professionally believe that they are a bit overpriced.
Please click on the link below, give it a quick look and come back here...we'll be waiting:
http://www.slideshare.net/GoToWebinar/3-things-to-do-before-during-and-after-a-webinar
Here are some other tips and tools ("How Tos") for conducting a webinar or a webinar series after you have vigorously marketed it using social media, direct, personalized email and trade e-publication and/or multiwebsite advertising and promotion:
1) Choose a reasonably narrow, but technically thorough topical focus. Play to a well-identified audience;
2) Make sure that the sound and visuals are crystal clear, and use high-resolution colorful graphics to support and bring technical or statistical information "to life";
3) You must speak as I you were on a podium in front of a live audience. This means that you must modulate the pitch of your voice; pause after an important point and then repeat it; vary the dynamics (the volume) of your voice and the pace of your speech to keep your speech interesting (unpredictable) and engaging.
4) Pause at least three times during any webinar to "sum up" the points you've touched upon to that point;
5) When you speak of your company or brand (mention its name at least five times during any webinar and show your url on the screen for no less than 20 seconds at the beginning and at the end of the presentation), use the term "we" at "______ "(the name of your organization), but avoid any advertorial content. EDUCATE. DON'T ADVERTIZE!;
6) Be certain to provide a means for interested attendees to privately contact or consult with you at your company, and be certain to follow up every single presentation with thank you notes to each of the attendees;
7) Send each attendee a survey about the webinar -- especially narrowing their focus (market research) to what they found most interesting; what they would like further information about; would they recommend the webinar to colleagues; compute and sort your webinar's demographics and psychographics -- this will give you the "sweet spots" to focus your marketing and subject matter on in the future.
A quick sidebar: If your webinar lasts more than 45 minutes, it's just too long. A series is fine, but a properly scripted webinar chock-full of great facts and pointers loses its luster after 45 minutes -- even if you do amazing magic tricks (like my late Uncle Sid). Also, if you have to stretch out twenty minutes of conversation into a 45-minute webinar, you are puffing -- you will not leave your audience hungry for more, you will leave them frustrated and feeling cheated.
Another quick sidebar: Keep your attendees at attention and involved in the communication and conversation processes by frequent polling, voting and "yes/no" answering of questions. Make the experience intensely interactive. This creates anchoring [visit The Sending Signals Blog for more about anchoring ]
Critical Inch:
The problem faced by most neophyte webinar or e-learning promoters is the fixed cost associated with getting and holding the venue. If you are not certain as to what your level of attendance will be, this can be daunting. There is a company which offers a unique and helpful alternative. ConferTel does not charge a fixed front fee. They charge a fee per attendee subscribed. While you'll sacrifice some of your profit margin, the beauty of this approach is that the folks at ConferTel (they do webinars for The American Bar Association, so you know that they are very, very careful as well as professional) have magically converted a fixed cost barrier to entry into a variable cost invitation.
Here's a cute little picture for your enjoyment. If you click on it, a
Then again, we at The Mad Marketing Tactics Blog make no promises. Except (maybe) this one, extracted from The Global Futurist Blog: As long as logistical and transportation costs are rising, and telephony and device usage is growing exponentially, the demand for webinars and e-learning systems will be growing. Now is the time to jump a bit ahead of the curve.
Thank you as always for reading me, and for sharing my articles with your contacts and colleagues through the miracle of social media. Did I spell social meteorite? [humor - especially for Braintenance Blog fans]
Douglas E. Castle
Sponsored by:
Global Edge Technologies Group LLC
CFI - CrowdFunding Incubator LLC
ICS - International Connection Services
#MadMarketing
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