How To Improve Your Lead Quality With Webinars

This post is sponsored BigMarker. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the sponsor.

Looking for a marketing strategy that can really:

• Generate higher quality leads?
• Expand your brand to a global audience?
• Drive engagement while conducting audience research?
• Create customer loyalty?

Turn your attention to webinars.

53% Many marketers say webinars are the best in-funnel format that generates the most quality leads.

When done right, webinars are the powerful secret weapon you should add to your marketing strategy in 2022.

You are about to take a crash course in one of the most successful ways to generate quality leads.

But first, let’s learn exactly what makes these webinars so successful.

Why you should use webinars

What do you gain from adding webinars to your marketing strategy?

• You can build instant trust and credibility with your audience. Through webinars, you can provide your audience with the information they need to make a decision about purchasing your product or service. You can position yourself as a trusted resource before your audience needs to make a purchase – and do so at the scale you need to grow your business.
• You will be able to generate higher quality leads. High quality leads are individuals who are very interested in making a purchase. They will most likely do a long job, like watching a webinar, before making a purchase, and you want that purchase to be with you. When you RSVP, you’ll have the ability to quickly turn it into a sale, increasing your marketing return on investment.
• You get increased conversions in real time. Because webinars are interactive, audiences can easily connect with you via chat, polls, and Q&A, and you can easily locate each potential customer on their buying journey.
• You can extend your brand to a global audience. Especially if you also post them on demand, webinars are widely accessible to people with time and/or geographic constraints, which broadens your audience of potential clients.
• You get a scalable way to create more content. Each successful webinar you finish can generate at least 3 pieces of new content for your site. Simply turn their content into multiple blog posts, shareable content pieces, and videos.

By showcasing your expertise, reliability, and trustworthiness in a successful webinar, you will be able to capture hundreds of quality leads who are likely to make a purchase from your business.

Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EAT) aren’t just about Google SERPs.

How to generate more leads with webinars

The key to a successful webinar that can generate quality leads and increase your return on investment is a thoughtful vision, a solid marketing plan, and a solid follow-up strategy.

1. Select the audience you want to reach

As you begin planning your webinar, use surveys, online research, past buying behavior, and your checklist to get a clearer understanding of the needs and interests of your ideal buyers.

This will help you understand the buyer persona you are targeting with your content.

The more you understand your audience’s needs, content preferences, and buying behavior, the more you’ll be able to customize your webinar and offer to meet their needs.

2. Clearly state your unique webinar solution

Ask yourself:

• What outcomes will viewers get from this session?
• What answers or solutions will the viewer leave in your webinar?
• Will they learn how to do a certain operation?
• Will the speaker offer your audience insights they couldn’t find on their own?
• Will you be giving them any useful handouts or templates?

Then, make sure they can’t get that information anywhere else.

Your webinar will be more valuable and attractive to potential registrants.

Whenever possible, back up your claims with social evidence, testimonials, and speakers’ biographies.

3. Design a compelling landing page

Your webinar landing page is the “front door” to your registration form.

If the front door looks old or doesn’t work well, no one will want to enter.

Your landing page functionality can make or break your event.

If its design is sloppy or messy, or if its copy doesn’t “sell” the value proposition of your event, potential registrants may lose interest in your pre-registration webinar.

While creating your landing page, make sure of the following:

• His copy matches messages on social media ads and email invitations. Having a different version can reduce the response to the invitation.
• Its design is as simple as possible with all relevant information appearing before the user has to scroll.
• It is mobile optimized and loads quickly on all types of devices.
• Includes biographies of each presenter.

4. Maximize your reach – host with a partner

Imagine that you can double your audience overnight with just one move.

Hosting partnerships make this possible.

By hosting your webinar with another brand, you can double or triple your potential audience with very little extra effort.

From a cost-benefit perspective, this is the single best way to gain additional leads.

Heres how to do it:

1. Find a partner whose audience is similar, but not identical, to yours. This way, you can talk to new people who are very likely to be interested in your product. For example, if your primary product is project management software, you might consider partnering with a workplace communications software company.
2. Create a promotional group for your event partners to keep everyone on the same page. When pitching to potential partners, present them with proposed copy, graphics and social media posts promoting the webinar. This allows them to help market your event in a way that aligns with your brand – and also saves them time and effort.
3. Run a dry run for your webinar platform. Before the webinar, schedule a training session with your partner so they know how to access and use the platform. We recommend that your partner use the camera and microphone, answer questions sent via the chat function of the platform, and use any technical features they will use during the live session.

Learn how to host joint venture webinars with our best practices.

5. Include sharing features in your webinar

What separates webinars from Ted Talks? Strong participation and interaction from the audience.

However, as we’ve all experienced in the past couple of years, it’s much more difficult to connect with people virtually than it is “in real life”.

But you can spark interactions that feel more natural and “real” with the following sharing features, all of which you can find on your webinar platform:

1. General chat: Make the session feel like a conversation by encouraging attendees to come up with questions and ideas in the chat box. (Pst: If the activity starts to stop, ask the moderator to ask a question in the chat box every 10-15 minutes.)
2. Question and Answer: Attendees can send questions directly to presenters. Even better, other guests can vote for which questions they’d like answered, so presenters can tackle their audience’s most pressing questions first. (For an extra personal touch, you can even have attendees send videos of themselves beforehand asking these questions.)
3. Polls: Use surveys to gauge the audience’s past experience with the topic, then tailor your presentation around those needs.

6. Incorporate pop-up offers into the webinar to increase traffic and sales

During the RSVP process, you collect potential customers data to market to them later.

What if a potential customer is ready to market to during your webinar?

Capture those leads who want to purchase or book an in-session demo by adding a popup within your webinar:

1. 40 minutes into the session, add a brightly colored, centralized pop-up presentation within the webinar room.
2. Create an offer around the most relevant next step, such as a demo or a specific product to buy.
3. Set the popup to open in a new tab, so your potential customer can convert without leaving the webinar room.

Compared to other webinar features, pop-ups are very effective in creating business because they encourage viewers to act on their interests right away.

7. Make sure your webinar is available on demand

Almost half of all webinar attendees Watch later, so make sure you enjoy the convenience of watching on-demand content.

Not only does this feature make your leads happy, but it also helps you create future content that will help interested registrants continue to find you weeks or months after your event ends.

You can create an ever-renewing pipeline of new leads while giving yourself time to create your next webinar.

Do you want to host interactive webinars, virtual events, and hybrid events?

BigMarker is here to help: Schedule a demo to start.

Image credits

Featured image: BigMarker image. Used with permission.