Rule #1 in content marketing: never leave anything on the table! The better you leverage the many types of content available to you, the easier it is to attract a large and diverse audience and achieve constant growth for your company. Different types of content appeal to distinct customers, so when you’re trying to appeal to a specific group, you need to use the content they’ll respond to most strongly.
If that group is engaged customers with an interest in knowing as much as possible about your product or industry, the most effective form of content is the webinar.
What is a Webinar?
A webinar is a conference that is recorded and broadcast over the Internet for all to hear. Such conferences can be conducted entirely over the Internet, using Google Hangout and other technologies that let people communicate as a group even when they’re not in the same place. Or they can be ordinary in-person meetings that are broadcast while they’re happening or recorded and uploaded after the fact. In some cases, webinars are only released as audio recordings. But in others, particularly those where it’s important to see the participants or the visual aids they’re using, the webinar is released as a video.
Where & How Should I Use a Webinar?
Webinars are most effective for appealing to customers who are interested in educating themselves in detail about your product or industry. Such customers include:
- Corporate Clients – If your business sells directly to other firms, those firms will want to learn as much as possible about you. By releasing a webinar, you let those clients listen to detailed discussions related to your company.
- Past Customers – Past customers who had a good experience sometimes want more information about you before they decide to become loyal clients for the long haul. Webinars allow them to learn about your company, products, and industry in greater depth.
- Customers On the Go – Customers who are frequently on the road or in other situations where they can’t read may still want to learn more about your company. With webinars, you allow them to listen and learn about you while in these challenging situations.
Webinars are most effective if you host large numbers of them per month on a wide variety of topics. This way, customers who prefer to listen to content rather than read it don’t feel that they’re missing any important information about your company. Because clients may respond more strongly to webinars that they can hear or watch live, it is beneficial to broadcast them at times you think will be convenient to your audiences.
If you’re selling to other businesses, this time is likely during business hours, when company specialists will be conducting research. But if you’re appealing to individual consumers learning about your company on their own time, you should broadcast in the early evening when they’ll be home from work.
What Makes a Webinar Compelling?
To create a webinar that is truly engaging and effective, you must optimize the:
- Topic – Use your webinar to discuss topics that your audiences will find interesting and that relate directly to your company. Ideally, the conference should address some pressing problem customers have and offer a potential solution.
- Speakers – Invite industry leaders, experts, influencers, and other compelling speakers to participate in your webinar. Not only does this make the conference more engaging overall, but it will entice those individuals’ followers to listen.
- Length – While webinar listeners tend to be more patient than other types of audiences, they’re still not willing to invest more than an hour in a conference. On the other hand, if the webinar is shorter than 30 minutes, they may think it’s too brief to cover anything interesting. You should thus try to keep webinars within that range.
In addition to optimizing webinars themselves, you need to incorporate them seamlessly with other marketing efforts. Use social media posts to promote each webinar, reference past webinars in blogs and articles, and make sure your message is consistent across all these content forms. In this way, your webinar and other marketing materials all contribute to the good of your company.
What to Expect from a Writer Who’s Developing a Webinar?
Although you won’t be writing the webinar itself, you still need a writer to come up with questions, create descriptions and tags, and produce slides and other visual aids. Make sure your writer has as much information as possible about who will be speaking, what the topic will be, and what the webinar’s goals are. The more they know, the better they’ll be able to enhance the webinar.
It’s important to remember that your writers don’t know everything that will come up during the conference. You shouldn’t expect them to get too specific in their questions and aids. Instead, ask them to emphasize the general topic and keep the discussion focused throughout the webinar.
For more information on webinars and other crucial forms of content, contact WriterAccess today. And why not check out writers who are experts in writing webinar copy, too?
Andrew S has completed more than 1,300 assignments through WriterAccess and other marketing sites. He has written blog posts, articles, web pages, white papers, and grant proposals. His specialties include history, finance, healthcare, and the environment, though he is happy to learn and write about any topic at a moment’s notice.
