Why a Webinar Can Help You Build Your Customer Base
The webinar is one of the hottest marketing strategies for modern businesses. When you recognize the power of a webinar to build your customer base, it’s no surprise why so many marketers are coming up with webinar options that fit their business.
A webinar gets its name from “website” and “seminar,” because it combines these two concepts into one easily accessible, highly valuable offering you can extend to people who are likely interested in your business and what you do. A webinar is an online seminar that you either broadcast live or offer for streaming at a time that’s more convenient to a viewer (though many webinars will opt to offer both formats). You can share your insight as an expert in your industry as a way of establishing that know-like-trust factor we’ve discussed before.
It's important to remember that, although some businesses will charge a registration fee for a webinar, many will offer them for free. Therefore, they aren’t necessarily about profit as much as they are about attracting more potential customers to you. This doesn’t mean that everyone who participates in your webinar will automatically convert to being a customer, but don’t lose sight of how important it is to have a broad, interested base for your business if you want to eventually convert some of them (or most of them) to paying customers.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways a webinar can help you, and what you should keep in mind if you plan to develop a webinar for your business.
Engaging and Informing Your Audience
At its core, a webinar should be about educating your audience. You aren’t trying to sell a product or service right away—that’s a sales pitch. Instead, a webinar should be focused exclusively on building your customer base by demonstrating that you are a person in your field who knows your stuff.
Educational content gets your audience’s attention and engages them without any expectation that they will make a purchase (unless, of course, they’re already spending money on a registration fee for the webinar). Many of those who tune in for your webinar will not end up becoming customers right away, but you are creating that relationship so they feel comfortable spending money with you later.
To increase the value of your webinar, you could consider making it interactive. Include live Q&A sessions, polls, or similar activities. These parts of your webinar can help your audience feel better connected with the material, so they learn better and get more out of it. This will also create a stronger sense of community among you and all the participants involved.
Remember: an informed, educated audience is an audience that feels confident in their spending choices—it ultimately creates customer satisfaction.
Lead Generation and Audience Expansion
So, we’ve established that your audience is gaining knowledge from this webinar, and all of that is good for you as a business owner. Now you have a broad audience of people who see you as a leader in your field. Where do you go from here?
In terms of marketing, this broad audience is now what you would refer to as “leads.” They might become customers or they might not, but you know they’re at least interested in what you have to offer because they took advantage of a freebie (in this case, your webinar). You can now continue to build a relationship with them, whether that’s through email blasts or social media.
Throughout this process of nurturing that relationship, you want to make sure your interaction with your leads is as personalized as possible. To achieve this, it’s always best to get as much information about your webinar registrants as you can. Try to include questions during registration about things like their interests or their discretionary spending budget. However, make sure you’re careful about collecting information with a lead magnet like this—you don’t want to be an irresponsible business that gets known for sharing or selling a customer’s personal data!
Showcasing Products or Services
At some point during your webinar, you’ll be addressing common problems that most members of your audience presumably face. In marketing, these problems are known as pain points. They’re aspects of life that they would like to resolve to live a better, happier, more fulfilling life. It doesn’t matter whether the pain point is big or small. If you’re an HVAC service, your customer might want a more efficient heating system so their bills go down and they don’t have to worry about their budget quite so much. Or if you’re a home improvement contractor, your customers might want more space to accommodate all the life activities they like to do.
Your webinar can touch on a possible resolution for these problems, although the best solution might ultimately end up being patronizing your business. So if your HVAC customers want a more efficient heating system, you could lead a webinar on how to keep your home’s HVAC working efficiently and extending its life.
It’s smart to conclude the webinar (or follow up via email immediately afterward) by offering a special rate on your product or service, or by suggesting a way that your audience can stay engaged with you. Maybe you offer a half-price diagnosis on their current HVAC system, for example.
Even if they don’t want to take advantage of what you have to offer, continue to nurture that relationship after the webinar so you are at the front of the customer’s mind if they ever do need your product or service.