Are webinars part of your marketing strategy?
Do you run webinars as part of your marketing strategy? If so, how often? Do you offer them free of charge or charge a fee to attend or download? What other webinars have you attended lately?
Good Answers (3)
Brad S
Director of Marketing at Ino.com Inc.
Best Answers in: Advertising (1), Internet Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1)
Christopher,
The short answer yes...but it depends on what you want to accomplish. Sell product, motivate employees, teach, etc etc. In my situation I use webinars to connect with our partners to help educate them on our products, teach them some helpful marketing tools/techniques, and just to have a presence with them. Since they are resellers of my products I feel helping them succeed is the best way that WE will succeed.
However, if you're trying to sell directly to the consumer then you SHOULD approach them the same way..."let me teach you something". Asking someone to spend 45min to an hour with you while you pitch them is foolish. However, asking them to spend an hour learning from your expertise, will put you in a much better situation to connect with them and sell to them.
Cheers and best of luck,
Brad Stafford
Webinars are not yet a part of our strategy, but easily could be down the road. We're currently exploring offering in-person training as a service/strategy more than we are webinars. As with any resource (article, book, speaker, training), I think webinars can be good or bad, depending on the quality of the content, the quality of the delivery, and whether I as an attendee match the intended audience/skill level that the webinar was designed for.
Our design team has only participated in a few webinars, but for the most part, we find them to be of decent value. As a director, I generally respond well to the idea of spending $129 and 1-2 hours for our team (with no travel costs) to gather around and hear an expert speak. It's a fairly low-risk investment in my mind.
We generally find the UIE and Adaptive Path webinars to be of interest.
Links:
Douglas K
President and CEO
Best Answers in: Blogging (2), Direct Marketing (1), Internet Marketing (1)
Hi Christopher! We have weekly webinars for our clients and regular webinars for sales acquisition. They are a key means for us to educate both prospects and customers on how to leverage our platform. That's a huge cost savings to us in travel and human resources. We provide them to both parties free of charge - but all require registration so that we can contact prospects with our outbound sales team and track client progress on our internal webinars.
I just did a webinar today on building effective Calls-To-Action for your blog sidebar where we covered 5 customers and redesigned their CTAs then revisited them 6 weeks later to provide the results. 5/6 had increased conversion and click-through rates!
I don't have any immediate plans for attending any.
Links:
More Answers (4)
Erica F
Social Media Optimizer, Publisher at ALC Publishing, President of Yuricon
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Short answer - no.
I haven't ever really gained much from a webinar, and most presenters are woefully unskilled at keeping people's attention. Most people start to fade out after 10 minutes, and there's the presenter reading the slides, which is a crime unto itself, in the same tone of voice, for an hour. By the end, I'm hard pressed to remember what the point of the session was.
People mostly find relevance in their own work - what you did for someone else is far less compelling to me that what you can do for me *right now.*
If your webinar doesn't address that, I'll pass.
Cheers,
Erica Friedman
Yurikon LLC
Intelligent Business Promotion
http://www.visualcv.com/elfriedman
PS - I *am* interested in what you did for our competitor, for cometitive intelligence reasons. So, thanks for using them as an example all you trainers out there.
Julie G
Sacramento Marketing Coach & Consultant - Helping local businesses with seo, social media & reputation management.
I think they're great. I work from home, so I listen to 2 or 3 webinars a week. The best ones I show to my sales crew in our weekly meeting. I can multi-task and listen & take notes while doing other work. Most allow a repeat viewing, so if it is good enough to need my full attention, I can watch the rerun.
One very critical factor is - do I have to download special software to view. I had Real Networks on my PC and it was very unstable. I do not want to load it on my new Mac. If that's the only option they give me, I say skip it.
I haven't offered webinars yet, but I think I will. Right now I'm producing one minute DIY SEO tips and loading them on Youtube.
Frank S
Presenter at Whizinars, seminars with impact. Partner, CD at Recipe Food & Beverage Marketing
No.
But we are users, especially from other firms in our industry. We find them easy and informative. It is great to hear what others think, how they speak and to see the types of questions and discussion the webinars raise.
Frank Scotti
www.whizbangideas.com
Yes! We present quarterly free webinars to our subscribers, during which we further explore the topic of the most recent eTip (which is what they subscribe to).
We've realized positive returns that can be measured in many ways - financial and otherwise.
As other posters here pointed out, the key to a successful webinar is to educate - not "pitch".
Lee
