There’s a lot of buzz around webinars these days. Besides being a great way to keep your customers loyal by providing them valuable content and product information, web events put companies in front of hundreds of potential customers at relatively low cost. The exciting part for small business owners? With just a computer and a webcam, they can have the kind of reach that was previously reserved for large enterprises with marketing events budgets.
However, just as with in-person events, webinars require planning to be truly successful and produce measurable results. Recently, Anita Campbell, Founder of SmallBizTrends and producer of the popular web-based radio show, Small Business Trends Radio, dedicated some time to helping small businesses make the most out of their webinars. Featuring Dr. James Powers, CEO & President of iLinc Web and Video Conferencing, the show called “How to Realize ROI on Webinars” gave small businesses tips and best practices for planning, promoting and successfully executing online events.
Here are a few of the questions Anita asked:
1. Anita: How can a small business use a webinar to grow their business and increase sales? In other words, how do you get something out of a webinar?
Dr. Powers: By using web conferencing (and webinars) small and large businesses can save a lot of money. They can reduce travel costs by using web conferencing to see customers and reach prospects. Sales reps can demonstrate products virtually as opposed to traveling to meet face-to-face. They can host large webinars for lead generation, a very expensive way to communicate efficiently with many prospects.
2. Anita: What can small businesses do to effectively promote webinars at low cost?
Dr. Powers: There are many ways and people are coming up with new and interesting ways every day. Some of the ways we promote webinars include email marketing to every contact and prospect you have in your database. You can even rent or buy lists inexpensively to reach your target audience. You can also post on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. For example, we bought an ad for $62 on Facebook for a webinar event featuring Brent Leary from CRM Essentials and got 97 registrations. What a great response at a low cost. Of course, blog posts with links to your events are also effective, as are sites like EventSpan.
3. Anita: Any thoughts on the follow-up and providing access to the webinar?
Dr. Powers: Anita, follow-up is absolutely critical. Without follow up, you will receive a fraction of the potential benefit from hosting a webinar. Some techniques that we use are automated post-event emails from our web conferencing system. These can include a special offer and a link to a recording of the event.
You can even segment by who attended and who did not. You should also have your sales reps call qualified leads. If there is no response to your emails or calls, you can move these attendees to your pool of non-responsive prospects and include them in your nurturing or drip email campaigns.
To hear the rest of the recorded interview and learn even more best practices and tips, visit the Small Business Trends Radio website. If you want to learn more about iLinc Web and Video Conferencing—and get access to exclusive small business resources, click here.
Posted under Webinars, iLinc News
This post was written by Christine Olivas on May 22, 2009
