As promised, here is a guest blog from Vanessa Steele of Eon Systems, who runs very successful webinars for her company:
Webinars are a very good way to get known on the Internet. To let your potential customers know that you exist. It is the opportunity to build credibilty. But there are some rules that should be followed.
If you are going to do what I call a Public Service or Free Information Webinar, be sure to give information that the person attending can use, whether they use your service or not. Everyone that attends the webinar should leave with information they can use right now. They do not get stories of how your company fixed this problem or that.
Only at the end of the Webinar should you invite the attendees to your website or to some kind of action.
I can’t tell you how many Webinars I leave before they are done because the entire thing is set up to promote how that company has fixed whatever. If I am going to spend time out of my day to go to a Webinar I want information that I can use or that I find helpful.
If I want to know what your company does I’ll go to your website. If you website is not getting you sales you should look at having it redesigned.
You should have some type of survey at the end of the webinar giving the attendees the ability to give you feedback ON THE WEBINAR. Not on your company or about your company. Yes at least one of the questions should be something about “Would you like to know more about how we can help” or something like that.
Also pick a Webinar Service that will track the attendance and the interest of the attendees during the Webinar. I like gotomeeting.com They have a very good reports system.
You need to look at why you want to do a Webinar. Is it because you want to collect prospect contact information? Personally I find this to be dishonest as they don’t give me anything I can use from the webinar and then send a bunch of junk emails.
The basic point is: If you give something valuable people will remember that and even if they are not ready to buy right now they will remember you later when they are, because you gave without expecting back.