Engaging one-on-one with suppliers, as well as one-on-one and one-on-many with existing and potential customers, can do wonders for any business. Webinars make it possible for businesses to do exactly that, helping them reap a variety of benefits from cost and time savings to better branding value and an enhanced online presence.
Utilizing webinars can be rewarding for any business out there, irrespective of its industry of operation. If you have been thinking about integrating this modern communication platform into your organizations’ information systems, but have yet to make up your mind, read on below to learn everything you need to know about the main benefits of a webinar.
What Is a Webinar?
Just like a seminar or convention, a webinar helps businesses bring together a wide and varied group of people, albeit over the internet. To host a webinar, you will need to find a webinar platform that will help you share your presentation with others online. This webinar software will let you create your own virtual online meeting rooms that you and your attendees will use to view and follow the presentation. Presenters can also share their desktop screens, files, and any open applications on their computer or mobile device, with their audience during the presentation.
It is worth mentioning that webinars are quite different from simple marketing videos, in that the audience follows your presentation in real time. Furthermore, the presenter and audience can engage with each other, leading to the sharing of highly insightful information.
Read on to find out what the pros and cons of webinars are, and why your organization should be using them more often.
The Benefits of a Webinar
As previously stated, webinars are among the best marketing platforms available for businesses in this digital age. Here’s a comprehensive list of advantages of using a webinar.
Enriching an Organization’s Online Content
One of the main reasons why businesses should seriously consider making use of webinar services is the fact that they help increase the amount of content available to interested parties online. Every webinar you host helps you address common questions and concerns harbored by the average prospect, client, supplier, or employee. This helps create a rich collection of information that is not only relevant to current important human assets of your business, but also to future generations of important human assets.
Furthermore, the latest webinar platforms, such as MegaMeeting, come with a recording feature. This makes it possible for hosts to record their presentations, including Q&A sessions, for future reference. These recordings can also be converted into things like blog posts or Q&A articles, helping you grow your organization’s online content for a more vibrant online presence in the long run.
Establishing Authority
People often flock towards those they believe have the answers they seek; organizations or individuals that are authoritative in their field of expertise. One way you can establish yourself or your organization as an authority in the market you serve is by creating and hosting webinars that are packed with insightful and valuable information for your audience.
Once your audience gets through your webinars and finds them to be informative, because they address their primary concerns and questions, they are bound to start looking at your business and your brand as an authority in your field. This means that from this point forward, your brand will often come to mind whenever your target audience is in search of informative content.
Wider Reach
Webinars are accessible to a global audience. This means that businesses can extend their reach to anyone across the world effortlessly and conveniently, provided that they have access to the necessary internet enabled devices. With a solid webinar app, businesses are no longer limited to only marketing their services or products to the clients within their geographical reach, but also across borders and oceans!
To grow their geographical reach, businesses have historically been required to physically send representatives to far off locations. These representatives finalized deals through one-on-one, face-to-face exchanges. Webinars and video conferencing also facilitate one-on-one, as well as one-to-many, virtual meetings between business representatives and other stakeholders in an efficient way, without the need to waste resources on unnecessary travel.
More Engaging
As previously mentioned, webinars are among the most effective digital marketing tools available to businesses today. One of the main reasons for this is that they are better at holding the attention of the audience than, for example, traditional marketing videos.
How does this happen exactly? For starters, webinars are highly engaging, live online events. This means that anyone who would like to follow the entire presentation will do their best to be there for the event – in front of a computer, tablet or smartphone – from start to finish. This not only ensures that attendees don’t miss a thing, but also that they also get the opportunity to ask their questions and have them addressed in real time.
Secondly, while it is possible to pause, stop and close marketing videos for later viewing, this is not possible with webinars. Webinar attendees have to stick around and watch the webinar until the end if they are really interested in the content.
Enhanced Branding Value
Considerable time, effort, and money goes towards the branding of businesses. Some webinar platforms, such as MegaMeeting, make it possible for users to use their own brand colors, logos, and domain names to customize each and every aspect of their webinar presentations to match the uniqueness of their own brand. This is known as “white labeling.”
Throughout each webinar, your attendees are exposed to your brand repeatedly. With time, your brand becomes increasingly memorable to your target audience. Afterwards, every time that the attendees think about your industry, niche, or product, your brand is likely to come to mind due to this repeated exposure to these unique brand elements.
Compare this repeated exposure made possible by white-label webinar solutions to the 30-second mention you might get at traditional in-person events for networking or conventions, where numerous other brands would also be present, and you will begin to understand the powerful branding value offered by online webinars.
A Great Source of High-Quality Sales Leads
Any business that is serious about surviving in today’s cut-throat business environment needs to generate a continuous stream of high-quality sales leads. Hosting online webinars allows you to gain access to many attendees, all at the same time. Since all of these attendees are prepared to spend their time following your presentation, they are qualified leads.
To help businesses capture important information on attendees, webinar solutions come with an attendee registration form feature. Each interested attendee is required to enter their contact information in the registration form before they can attend the actual webinar itself.
In addition to the contact information mentioned above, hosts can collect even more valuable information on the attendees by asking them to participate in a Q&A session, as well as in polls that the host can display during the webinar. All this information can be used to build-up leads and sales contacts.
Building Trust
When properly executed, online webinars can be used to build brand loyalty by getting existing and potential customers to connect with the brand/business at a more personal level. How is this possible? Well, first and foremost, webinars introduce a human element to brands, and give them a face through the presenters.
Furthermore, as you continue to demonstrate your skills, knowledge, and expertise in your line of business through the insights offered in your webinar presentations, the target audiences’ trust in your services, products, and brand as a whole, continues to grow exponentially.
Building Stronger, Lasting Business Relationships
While networking events have previously been the go-to method of making business connections and building long-lasting relationships, the little amount of time you actually get to introduce yourself and your business at these events is often too little to make a lasting impression.
Webinars, on the other hand, give businesses and their representatives the opportunity to properly introduce themselves to their target audience, including prospects, customers, employees and suppliers. They can demonstrate their products or services and communicate their mission in as much detail as the webinar host desires. The host gets to decide how long the webinar runs – and if they are engaging enough, they will have all of their attendees’ undivided attention.
Better Understanding of Your Audience
Businesses that have a good understanding of their target market are more likely to develop better-suited products and services, make more sales, and perform better in the long run. Furthermore, any existing products can be retrofitted or adjusted to suit the specific needs of the target market as more information about their requirements comes to light.
Among all the pros and cons of webinars, as previously mentioned, they give businesses access to a goldmine of valuable information, straight from interested participants. Through polls and Q&A sessions held during the live event, businesses get the chance to learn more about what prospects, customers, suppliers, and employees are looking for or need help with.
Sharing Information with the Audience
Businesses not only get the opportunity to learn more about their target audience during online webinars, but also get to offer insightful information in exchange. Webinars can run the range from relatively intimate tutoring sessions to large-scale training sessions. This means that the audience usually has much to gain as their interests and concerns guide the direction of the discussion being carried out in real time. This actually sets online webinars apart from any other platform that businesses use to share information with their audience.
Attendees and hosts get to engage on a personal level, even when the number of attendees is large, as each attendee is given access to the host(s) via a chat feature. The private and public chat feature found in the best webinar platforms, including MegaMeeting, facilitates orderly and discrete engagement between all those participating in the webinar. All in all, this setup gives each of the attendees the opportunity to have their concerns addressed in a personal, generally satisfying manner!
Cost-Efficient Communications
One of the most significant benefits of a webinar come in the form of its affordability. The basic requirements for hosting a successful online event include an internet connection, computer, webcam, and access to a solidly built webinar app. Cost-efficient operations play an essential role in driving up the profitability of any business or organization.
With the help of webinar solutions, businesses can reduce the amount of resources spent on unnecessary travel to networking events, seminars, and one-on-one meetings. This means that instead of wasting money and time on travel to meet a small group of existing or potential suppliers or customers, businesses can create cost-effective webinars on a regular basis. This not only ensures that they maintain close, one-on-one contact with everyone in their network, but it also allows them to grow their network via larger, one-to-many marketing and sales webinars.
A Chance to Invite Industry Experts
By hosting regular webinar events, businesses get the opportunity to invite industry experts to some of these online events. This means that they can leverage the knowledge, expertise, and market reach of the industry experts, achieving even further gains when it comes to attracting new leads and sparking new interest in their brand and products.
While it is not their job, influencers and industry experts usually promote upcoming online events they have been invited to speak at to their own audiences. Additionally, having an industry expert speaking at your webinar events on a regular basis further enhances the perception of your brand as an authority in your industry.
Conclusion
Webinars give today’s businesses an easy and efficient means of connecting with their target audience, from all corners of the world. With the right solution and proper execution, businesses can enjoy all of the above described benefits of a webinar on a consistent basis.
For close to two decades, MegaMeeting has been one of the leading, feature-rich webinar solutions available on the market. Some of the main features that set it apart from the competition include a built-in public and private chat system, white-label branding capabilities, attendee registration, secure data transmission, WebRTC and browser-based communication, and screen sharing, among others.
If you want to get the most out of your webinar experience, visit the MegaMeeting website to find out more – or even sign-up for a free trial to see how utilizing webinar software and a solid webinar platform can benefit your business!
MegaMeeting solves the biggest challenges of modern video conferencing. For users, it is an all-in-one platform that delivers both video conferencing and webinars in a single, simplified interface. For attendees, it is 100% browser-based, making it highly accessible; joining a meeting is instantaneous from a single click. For enterprises, it is highly customizable, with white-labeling options for a private branded solution. For developers, it is API-driven and easy to integrate.
Powered by WebRTC, Node.js, React, and GraphQL, it is a cutting-edge platform that is fun and easy to use for users and developers alike.
