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3 Reasons Why you should be hosting webinars

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One of the most common questions we get asked is “Why should we do webinars?!” The premise behind the question is that they’re already doing other activities and they do not necessarily have time, or resources, to add more to their sales and marketing mix. It’s a fair question. If you’ve attended any webinars, you’ll know, and appreciate, that many companies do webinars really, really bad.  Let’s be honest – have you ever left a webinar minutes into it because you were falling asleep, or it just wasn’t giving you any value-add? We understand.  These types of experiences can leave you not wanting to produce something if you can’t do it well. Doing something well takes time, and that’s often the one thing we’re all in short supply of.
How about we let the facts speak for themselves when it comes to why you should be doing webinars? In a recent study conducted by MarketingProfs, the following facts were uncovered, based on the 46% of companies that were actively doing webinars:
Why does your company conduct webinars?
  • 69%    Generate Leads
  • 69%    Increase brand awareness
  • 57%    Build loyalty
  • 40%    Drive website visits
  • 37%    Build in-house database
  • 28%    Drive offline business
Do you find webinars effective for:
  • 50%    Generating cost effective leads
  • 47%    Generating quality leads
  • 38%    Producing large volumes of inquiries
So there you have it — point #2 above gives you the answer to the question raised in our headline. If you have time, continue reading this blog because we’re going to take it to the next level.
What’s really interesting about this research is that it doesn’t even address how webinars can be repurposed for numerous additional pieces of content. This is critical! Understand that a webinar is typically a live event. Once its broadcast, everything said on that broadcast is now part of the public domain.  That means you can use this content to quickly and easily produce additional content without seeking any additional approvals. Let me repeat this – you can use this content without seeking any additional permissions. Examples of this additional content would include:
  • Podcasts
  • Transcripts
  • Quotes
  • Case Studies
  • Whitepapers
  • Press Releases
  • Blog Posts
What other piece of content can you produce that can be as easily, and affordably, repurposed? The answer is – nothing.
Why do you want to create additional content? Because now you can use this content in your lead nurturing programs, in your social media outreach, in your sales objection handling, and in your website Call To Action banners.  All of this content, and utilization, starts with a simple webinar.
Let’s look at it from a different perspective.  Let’s be really pragmatic about this. You’re busy. You don’t have time to call all of your target prospects, let alone your existing clients. You’re busy delivering on client commitments. Yet, despite all of this, you understand you need to be regularly communicating with your target audience if you want to keep feeding the sales pipeline. Even more frustrating is the fact that you often spend cycles with email, social media, or on the phone explaining the same concepts over and over again to your clients and prospects.  You’re not working efficiently or effectively.  When we talk to our clients, they readily admit this truth. They also acknowledge they’re frustrated.
With a webinar, you can reach your entire audience – customers and prospects and partners – for an investment of approximately one hour of your time. Best of all, the content is archived and then becomes available on-demand, suddenly freeing you up from explaining concepts over and over again in the future. Now you simply send them a link to the content and then follow up to see if they have any questions.
Webinars are not a cost. They are an investment that generates substantial ROI. You can measure it in increased sales and marketing productivity, or increased lead flow, or increase sales volume, or increased revenue.
It’s time to letter your on-air personality out. See you on the airwaves.