If the term is new to you, “Webinar” is short for “web seminar”. It’s an online workshop and it is being used by thousands of businesses to interest prospective new customers / clients and to start to get them acquainted with the company and its products or services.
There are many subscription services that make delivering webinars easy, notably GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar and WebEx.
The formula for successful webinars is straightforward:
1. Sign up with a service.
2. Find something to talk about or show people that is related to your products/services and in which your prospects would be interested!
3. Prepare materials and script for delivery. Practice using the service and practice delivering the webinar so you’ll be polished the first time you deliver it!
4. Schedule your first webinar. Get the word out about it (minimally by promoting it on your website) and get sign-ups! Realize probably only half the sign-ups will actually show for it.
5. Deliver the webinar. Make notes of ways to improve delivery and effectiveness.
6. Followup on the leads the webinar generates!
7. Repeat, working out over time how often and when (day/time) the webinar should be delivered, how best to promote and how best to take advantage of it to generate new business.
Of course there are tons of details this omits. The main point is that there are many, many types of businesses for which webinars work great. Perhaps yours is one?
In the next few days, we’ll have a guest blog from one of our clients who is successfully using webinars.