The word of the day is webinar! When your event marketing plans have been dashed and you can't make those expensive conferences work, webinars are the best alternative. And actually, webinars tend to be more informative and cost-effective than large-scale events anyways.
If your Marketing strategy has always been geared towards in-person events, don't fear. You can make webinars work just as well, or even better, for your business! A webinar is an interactive online presentation, teaching, or training that takes place in real-time and allows for two-way communication between organizers and participants.
In this post, mbudo will explain the advantages of webinars, do a webinar software comparison, discuss HubSpot integrations for webinars, and share strategies for getting the most out of your webinars.
Advantages of Webinars
There are many reasons why every business should start hosting their own webinars today. Discover the advantages below:
- Perfect for B2B: Develop great business relationships by providing more information to your leads upfront and engaging with them more than you could via networking or events. Personalize your interaction style and grow together!
- In-depth information on attendees:In exchange for such valuable webinar content, your attendees will provide you with in-depth personal data. This is a gold mine for piecing together who they are and being able to follow up with them after the webinar.
- Not limited by location: People can participate from anywhere. Do you have a global Marketing strategy in place yet?
- Cost-effective: As opposed to expensive events, where you need to invest in plane tickets, hotels, and networking, webinars are highly cost-effective. All you need a good webinar platform, stable video and internet functionality, and a partner like mbudo guiding you on strategy, content, and automation.
- Highly interactive: Webinars allows for a high level of interaction in terms of feedback, questions, and engagement. At events, it can be tough to talk and engage with everyone, but webinars allow you to hear from everyone, address specific questions, and easily share and download materials.
- Fast sales process: You already know that your webinar attendees are interested in what you have to teach or offer. This immediately makes them Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) and through some engagement and follow up, you will quickly be able to resolve their doubts and close the sale. Talk about a fast ROI.
Webinar Software Comparison
What are the best webinar platforms out there? In our webinar software comparison, you'll find out!
Zoom
Zoom functions not only as a popular tool for video meetings, it's also perfect for hosting live webinars. This platform is widely used by corporations and business people, so it is extremely likely that your webinar attendees will be familiar with the platform and will have no problem connecting.
Zoom will win you over with its reliable system, ability to broadcast to Facebook Live and YouTube, control options for participants (mute/unmute), as well as subtitling options. One downside is that it doesn't have many advanced features such as automation.
GoToWebinar
GoToWebinar is a great platform (available via app or desktop) for businesses to live stream webinars and afterwards send the recordings to attendees. It also includes features such as forms and email notifications, but does not include automation or scheduling features. Prices vary depending on number of participants (up to 5,000). One cool thing about GoToWebinar is the ability to use live chat and polls, and share files among members.
This platform needs a little more support in terms of Marketing and Sales, which an integration with HubSpot can easily make up for.
ClickMeeting
ClickMeeting is another great webinar option for live and recorded webinars. It shares a lot of the same features as the others platforms, such as sharing recordings, engaging viewers with polls and chat, and quality analytics, but has some unique characteristics: customized invitations, branded waiting rooms, a whiteboard feature, and monetization of content with a PayPal integration.
Mix live and recorded webinars at will, and conduct polls and surveys even when content isn't live. ClickMeeting is a solid webinar choice for anyone.
More Webinar Software
There are many more options for webinars that we can talk about The fact is, whatever platform you choose, the main point is that you start delving into the world of webinars to get an idea of what you can do. Demio, WebinarNinja, and JetWebinar are a few popular platforms, but you can see 10 great choices in this blog post. For HubSpot users, discover the top 6 webinar integrations with HubSpot.
Advantages of a HubSpot Integration
Webinars can function on their own, but there is so much that goes into the before and after of a webinar. HubSpot is regarded as the best Inbound Marketing platform that is also the perfect companion for your webinar ecosystem. Discover how to pair HubSpot's offerings with your webinars:
- Landing pages: Create landing pages for webinar information, registration, and materials. Incorporate forms and CTAs easily.
- Content: Set up your website, blog, and more on HubSpot, and use their content strategy tool to produce great content to keeps leads interested.
- Email Marketing and Lead Nurturing: Follow up with your attendees before and after your webinar with automated, yet personalizable emails. Marketing Automation comes into play here.
- CRM: The HubSpot CRM will keep track of the personal data of your leads in a simple, organized manner. If you use a different CRM, this can also be integrated with HubSpot.
- Analysis and Optimization: Track results and optimize pages.
Strategies for Webinars
mbudo are experts in webinars and we recommend these simple strategies for making the most out of your business webinars:
- Your setup should involve a great internet connection and webcam (or video camera), a prepared presentation, several test rounds before going live, and a list of questions for audience engagement. Don't let your participants be passive, it should be a fun, interactive experience.
- Consider tailoring your webinars to a specific group of people (think about your Buyer Personas), with a limited number of attendees. If your group is too big, not everyone will get the chance to have their questions heard.
- The goal of every webinar is to teach your audience something or provide value. Start out broad then narrow your webinars down. Tailor new webinars around questions/feedback from previous webinars.
- Host regular webinars to build up your brand, convey authority and trust, and become thought leaders in your sector.
- Once your live webinar is over, repurpose webinar content into videos, blog posts, Q&As, etc.
If you're just getting into the wide world of webinars, don't go it alone! mbudo are here to help you adjust your event marketing strategy to work for webinars, or even take charge of your entire Marketing Strategy and deployment. If you're interested in learning more about webinars or about mbudo, contact us.
Mary Swick
Mary is a professional copywriter with over 10 years of experience in Marketing and Advertising. As an American expat in Madrid, she enjoys the relaxed Spanish culture, hiking, and the latest shows from Netflix and HBO. Mary also loves cats and music (she's the office DJ!)