You’ve heard all the buzz about webinars. You’ve even attended a few yourself.
But you may still be thinking, “Why would I want to use webinars in my business?”
Webinars are a highly flexible method for teaching all kinds of information, and they also can also be a powerful sales tool. Whether you do free or paid webinars, there’s no doubt that the benefits are HUGE.
Here are 8 reasons webinars might do AMAZING things for your business:
1. Webinars are a great tool for email list building.
Webinars are delivered online, which means your participants will need login information to access the training. You’ll need to email that login information to all your attendees.
That means your participants need to give you their email addresses in order to sign up for your webinar.
Because you collect email addresses every time you host a webinar event, webinars can be a fast, effective and FUN way to build your list (or start building a list, if you’re not already doing so).
The great part about gaining new subscribers with webinars is that you’ve also got the opportunity to make a great first impression on your new community members. If a new subscriber’s first experience with you is attending your generous, top-quality webinar, you can turn that subscriber into a huge fan — fast.
2. When people attend a webinar with you, it helps you build relationships with them.
Online marketing is all about getting people to know, like and trust you, and giving away free content via webinars is a great way to start doing that. There’s something about people being able to hear your voice and get to know you via live online events that really speeds up the “getting to know you” process.
Using webinars, you can connect with your audience in unique ways that sometimes aren’t possible with text or recorded video content.
3. Webinars convert better than almost any other sales medium.
There are lots of people who sell products and services on free webinars. It’s one of the reasons people host webinar trainings. Webinars convert like crazy, and you can make tons of sales if you know how the deliver an effective sales pitch during a live free training.
Don’t get me wrong, though — I have no tolerance for online experts who waste my time by giving me an hour-long sales pitch and calling it a webinar. I think there should be a special place reserved in online marketing hell for people who deliver overly-salesy, poor-quality webinars.
But if someone deliver a content-rich webinar that happens to have a sales pitch at the end? I’m fine with that – and most other audience members are, too.
I think webinar presenters need to earn their pitch time, though. Webinar content matters more than anything else.
When you’ve got the right system, you can earn lots of money by hosting free webinars and incorporating a sales pitch for a relevant product or service. It’s a model that consistently works well for all kinds of businesses.
4. Webinar presentations help you establish yourself as an authority.
When you get in front of a webinar audience to present information about your topic (and answer questions from the audience), it helps cement your reputation as an authority in your field.
Just like with live speaking events, people trust the person at the front of the room.
Doing high-quality webinars makes people say, “Wow! She really knows her stuff!” which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to establish yourself in your field.
5. Webinars allow you to get valuable feedback from your audience.
One of the best things about doing webinars is getting feedback and questions from your participants.
So make sure to pay attention during your webinars — are there particular questions that come up again and again? Where are people getting stuck? Where do they need more information?
The data you can glean from webinar questions can be invaluable to you — not just as ideas for future blog posts and podcast episodes, but also when you’re evaluating ideas for products and services.
The listening part of webinars is just as important as the talking part.
6. You can add webinar training programs to your products and services.
Webinars are a great tool for delivering your training, teaching or coaching services.
You can offer paid online classes that you run from a webinar platform, then record your live sessions and package them up as products to sell on your site. If you’ve been dragging your feet about creating online products (or you’re not sure where to start with online product creation) this is an easy way to get started.
You can also host live Q&A sessions, create and deliver presentations, and do live demonstrations using webinars. Almost anything you can do during a live, in-person training session, you can do during a webinar.
There are tons of ways to incorporate online events into your product line, so being able to use webinar technology to deliver paid content could be a HUGE boon for your business.
7. Webinars allow you to partner with other experts in your industry.
Inviting another expert in your niche (or strategic partners in a similar or overlapping niche) to co-present on a webinar is a great way for you to develop relationships with other influencers.
And once you’re feeling comfortable with selling from webinars (if that’s what you decide to do) you can host joint venture webinar trainings where you present a webinar to another person’s audience. When you do joint venture webinars, you often split the income from the event — so that can be a nice income stream for you, too.
Webinars can be great for rubbing elbows with influencers, experts and other authority figures in your field. And those relationships can help your business in all kinds of ways. You can also help THEM – which is a wonderful way to start (or maintain) a relationship!
8. Webinars make you a better presenter.
I noticed that the more webinars I do, the more comfortable I get with speaking in front of groups. Webinars require different presenting skills than speaking in front of a live audience, because you don’t actually get to see your audiences’ faces. Personally, I think that could be a positive or a negative thing, depending on how comfortable you feel in front of people.
There’s no doubt, though – presenting during webinars can help you feel more comfortable delivering information to a group, sharing slides, and answering questions in front of a live audience. It also helps you learn to go with the flow if something go wrong during your speaking event!
Creating and running live webinars is one of the best things I’ve done in the last few years to improve the flow, pacing and engagement level of my presentations. I highly recommend doing them to make your live and in-person presentations better.
Why Webinars May Be the Best Thing You’ve Ever Done for Your Business
Webinars are an incredibly flexible, powerful tool for you to build your list, increase your bottom line and build relationships with your audience and other experts in your niche.
Want to try out a couple of webinars? There’s nothing stopping you. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial of GotoMeeting or one of the other popular webinar tools, and get started today.
The world needs more great content, and more high-quality trainings from experts just like you.
So go get ‘em, tiger – the webinar world is waiting for you.
