The Power of Webinars in Sales

Low-cost and easy-to-produce, webinars can expand a business and increase sales revenues in multiple ways.  Delivering high-demand and high-caliber content, these live presentations have the potential to create both current and residual revenue because they can be recorded and later posted on slide-friendly or video-friendly social media, such as Slideshare or YouTube. They can also be offered as downloads on a website.

As a marketing method, webinars are used by 59 percent of businesses who market to other businesses, so says 2013 research by the Content Marketing Institute. The Institute expects webinars to grow even more popular in the future. If you’re debating whether your business should do more to harness the power of webinars, here are some benefits that may convince you that using webinars for sales is worthwhile.

1.       Provide new stream of income.

The most basic financial benefit of webinars is that it can immediately become a digital content product that you package, market and sell for a fee. Several special sites exist to facilitate the collection of registration or admission fees through PayPal and other online pay services. Webinars also can be added to a product page on a website to be sold along with other tangible goods.  A caveat: unless the information is highly rare and coveted, this fee-based tactic can produce limited audiences and income as some people refuse to pay for webinar content.

2.       Increase brand and product awareness

Webinars often work better free. News about free stuff travels fast and chances are there will be more links, shares and chatter about the webinar and the website or businesses offering it. This, too, makes money because it can increase your brand profile and give you the chance to highlight various products in your actual webinar, as you tie the products to various benefits and practical uses.

 

Participants may come for the free content, but leave with knowledge of a tempting product that can improve their business or their lives. Good sellers don’t leave the buying potential to chance. They include calls to action in the actual webinar, directing participants to do something immediately after it’s over, such as use a soon-to-expire promo code to purchase a good or service, open an account or visit a particular landing page to learn more.

3.       Tap into new audiences (i.e. leads) by hosting webinars on leading      industry sites.

Webinars generate leads for sales. These leads are qualified because they have been attracted to a topic they are interested in and motivated to learn more about. Such people are highly likely to buy products and services linked to the topic. The bigger the audience, the more qualified leads you can get. So, don’t waste the effort on a small, obscure site even if it’s your own. Team up with a popular, well-known leading industry site to create the atmosphere of trust and seriousness for your webinar. In addition, you’ll benefit from that site’s enormous audience.

4.       Establish relationships with prospects.

Webinars, which typically include question-and-answer sessions, gives sellers a chance to interact with their audiences and start building relationships. By registering for the webinar, audiences provide personal contact information and typically are more than happy to receive follow-up correspondence in the future. This allows you to increase your contact list.

You can immediately start cultivating the relationship after the webinar by sending an email to thank participants for their attendance and giving them a link to the downloable version of the webinar – on your website or store site, of course.

5.       Network with Industry Influencers

Often it’s hard to form relationships with leading thought-shapers in the industry. However, sending such people an invitation to be a guest on your webinar, gives you the chance to meet them and meet their audience base.

6.       Serve as online demos to thousands of viewers

Using webinars for sales gives sellers a chance to present demos to prospective customers.  These demos are essentially free trials of a product or service that a customer is considering to solve a problem in his or her life. If the content previews a book, course and other resources or if it shows how a product works and dramatically emphasizes its features, these visual presentations can be persuasive enough to convince the customer to invest their money. 

 7.       Cements you as an authority

After several successful webinars, a business or sales professional who is an excellent teacher and presenter becomes known as an authority. Blogs, articles and social media posts touting the content in the webinar establish a lasting reputation.

 By choosing a great topic and putting together a dynamic slideshow presentation full of interesting, informative content, you can begin harnessing the power of this online lead generation tool. Get started!