How to Create Lead Generating Webinars
Do you usually rely on trade events and conferences to generate business leads?
What are you doing in place of canceled in-person events?
Webinars can replace in-person events for lead generation
Webinars have grown bigger than ever during 2020, and for good reason. You still need to connect with prospects. A well-produced webinar can bring you the same quality leads as a conference or trade event. Even better? The content you had lined up for a conference presentation can easily translate to a webinar.
Choose a topic to generate great leads
Like any presentation, the first step is finding the right topic. A niche topic can be especially effective with so many webinars out there. Instead of the topic “Planning for Retirement,” you might narrow that to something like “Retirement Planning for Medical Professionals.”
This is a good opportunity to leverage your unique value proposition. What topics can you, uniquely, present?
Research can also help you choose a topic that resonates with leads:
Run a social media poll asking followers which topics they want to learn more about.
Look at search keyword data. Are there any long-tail keywords that would make a great webinar topic?
Consider a guest speaker for your webinar
Bringing in a guest speaker can organically grow your audience. That person brings along their own audience and may even offer some cross-promotion.
Bonus: you won’t have to create the whole presentation yourself!
Set up for your first webinar
You don’t need to make a large investment to produce quality, professional webinars. You likely have most of the necessities already:
Camera: The camera on your laptop is likely all you need.
Mic: You may need to buy a microphone, but test your laptop’s built-in mic first.
Space: Find a quiet space with good lighting to run the webinar.
Software: Choose a webinar platform. Most include registration pages, allowing you to collect attendee information and follow up later.
Run a dress rehearsal a few days before your webinar. You wouldn’t want to be ready to go, only to realize that you need to download new software to connect to your mic!
Enable engagement during your webinar
Break up your presentation with some audience interaction. No matter how good your content, attendees can lose interest without opportunities to engage. Think about how you want the audience to interact, both with you and with each other.
Polls encourage participation and let you get to know your leads. Prepare your poll questions in advance.
Live chat helps the audience engage with each other. Your presentation can include questions that they can answer in the chat, for example, “what do you hope to learn?”
Include time for Q&A. It can be helpful to have a couple of prepared questions so that nobody in the audience needs to be the first to speak up.
Raffles are another way to keep participants involved. Everyone who stays through the whole webinar gets a chance to win a small prize, like a free trial or consultation.
Develop a marketing campaign for the webinar
To get the most leads from your webinar, treat it like a marketing campaign. Your marketing strategy should cover two phases: before the webinar and after.
Before: Get registrations for your webinar
Before the webinar, the focus is getting potential leads to register.
Begin marketing the webinar four weeks before. Expect registrations to be steady in the first few weeks -- the majority of registrations often occur in the final week.
Make sure that your marketing includes email -- a survey by GoToMeeting reported that 57% of webinar registrations come from email campaigns.
A small budget for advertising can go a long way here because your webinar content is valuable and you’re targeting a small niche. Consider using Google Ads and Sponsored Content on LinkedIn.
After: Leveraging your webinar content
Your webinar is finished. Now what?
With recordings, your upfront effort continues to work even after you’ve switched off the mic.
Make the recording available on YouTube. Include a compelling headline and description (optimized for search keywords) and link from YouTube back to your website.
Repurpose the content into a blog post or publish the recording on your site with a transcript. You can manually transcribe, or use a service like Scribie. The recording itself is useful, but video content can’t beat written content for SEO.
Promote your new content on social media.
Follow up with webinar attendees
Once someone has attended your webinar, don’t jump straight into a sales pitch. Put your lead onto a nurture track. Focus on informative and useful follow-up content:
Next day: Email the recording of your webinar.
Week after: Send a short recap of the webinar, highlighting some key takeaways.
Beyond: Continue to engage your leads with informative and usable content.
What about no-shows?
It’s disappointing when half your webinar registrants ghost on the actual webinar, but it’s normal. And it doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. Many people are too busy to attend the webinar, but will review the recordings. No-shows go into a nurture track, just like attendees.
Bonus ideas for a seamless webinar
Although you can absolutely run a webinar without these, they’re a sure way to improve the experience:
Have a second person on-hand to manage the tech, queue up audience questions, ask your prepared questions, and interact in live chat. You’ll be free to focus on presenting while your helper runs everything else.
A green screen or backdrop hides distractions and lets the audience focus on your awesome content. Although virtual backgrounds can do this, they’re prone to glitches that can be even more distracting.
Generate leads with webinars
Truth: webinars are more work than a simple blog post or LinkedIn update. But, they’re also a powerhouse for lead generation and provide much-needed 1:1 connection with prospects.
