As the world is battling the Coronavirus epidemic, webinars are gaining momentum. With millions of people stuck in their homes with the Internet being their only window to the world, now is the best time to raise brand awareness through online events.
Webinars are highly effective tools within each company’s reach. They have impressive potential and a significant ROI. Let’s look a little deeper into the benefits of webinars and their ability to raise brand awareness.
Benefits of Hosting Webinars for Brand Awareness
Online events come with a variety of advantages over traditional gatherings. Many companies are already switching gears, reaping the benefits of an online presence.
1. High Educational Potential
Webinars give you an opportunity to display products and services as well as their benefits and selling points. Without any interruptions, you can share the most important information with the target audience.
The more potential clients know about your product, the more chances you have at establishing loyalty. With loyalty being an integral component of brand awareness, an online event can go a long way.
2. Simplified Access
As long as clients have an internet connection and a computer, tablet or smartphone, they can access a webinar. With over 5 billion people owning a mobile device today, you have a pretty good shot at reaching a big chunk of your target audience.
If someone can’t attend or has to leave midway, you can offer the recording of the webinar for later use. You can also use these recordings for further promotional efforts (embedding in emails, sharing on social media).
3. Cost-Effectiveness
To host a webinar, all you need is a computer/mobile device, good internet connection, communication hardware (microphone, webcam), and professional video conferencing software. The cost of such an online event is incomparable to the price tag of a live seminar.
By saving money on live event arrangements, you can channel your budget into further brand awareness and marketing efforts.
4. Infinite Possibilities
When you arrange a webinar, you aren’t limited by the capacity of a venue or location. You don’t need to worry about physical circumstances like bad weather and traffic jams.
You can share your information with as many people as possible without leaving the comfort of your home or office.
5. Sharing Potential
People who are ready to dedicate their time to listen to your webinar are likely to become your clients. Meanwhile, they can use the recording of the webinar to share information about your brand with others.
Webinars are an excellent foundation for word-of-mouth marketing, which in turn boosts brand awareness tremendously.
A Quick Guide to Arranging Your First Webinars
While webinars aren’t as tough to arrange as live events, they still require certain preparations. Let’s look at the basic steps to organize a webinar for brand awareness.
1. Plan the Webinar
Plan the structure of the webinar.
- Choose a topic
- Settle on time and date
- Choose the agenda
2. Design a Landing Page
You need to create a high-quality landing page dedicated to the webinar on your website. You should also have a registration form available. Add a description of your webinar, but don’t make it too long. Keep the headline “crisp”.
3. Promote Your Webinar
You need to come up with a strategy to promote your webinar. Try to reach as much of your potential audience is possible through:
- Emails (in body and/or signature)
- Social media
- Blogs
- Website pop-ups
- Teaser videos
4. Create the Content
Write and shape the content to ensure the highest quality of your webinar. It must be valuable to the listener and have the potential to be shared with others.
Depending on the length of your program/content, we don’t recommend running a virtual event for longer than two hours. After two hours, you will start to see a drop in attendees.
5. Come up with Questions
To keep your audience engaged, ask related questions during the webinar. Don’t count on them being answered. Be ready to take a pause and answer these questions yourself. Either way, they will be valuable and keep the interest piqued.
6. Create a Q&A Section
After the webinar is over, leave time for questions. Such interaction can make the audience feel connected to the host.
7. Conduct a Survey
Once the webinar is over, you can conduct a survey or run a poll to get feedback from the audience. It can be highly valuable for your further marketing efforts. You can also conduct surveys and polls during the webinar and via mobile applications.
8. Archive the Webinar
Always keep the recording of your webinar. You can use it for further marketing efforts. Put it on your YouTube channel for wider access.
If the original webinar audience wants to share the recording with others, it should be readily available.
9. Send a Follow-Up Email
Always send a follow-up email with the link to the webinar’s recording and an invitation to new sessions. This can make the audience feel welcome while offering an opportunity to forward the webinar to others.
Smart Brand Awareness Webinar Tricks
To ensure your webinar has the highest possible brand awareness potential, you need to know several origanisational tricks.
- Webinars aimed at brand awareness should last between 60 and 90 minutes. Otherwise, you risk losing the audience’s attention.
- The best days to invite people to a webinar are Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
- The best days to host a webinar are Wednesdays and Thursdays.
- Expect your potential clients to commit to not more than one webinar a week.
- Hold the webinar in the morning or early afternoon for the highest attendance rate.
- Start promoting the webinar three weeks before the run date.
- Create a promotional banner on your website to market the webinar.
Generating Brand Awareness by Hosting Online Events
Online events are gaining popularity by the minute. Webinars are only a small part of them. Others include workshops, online courses, virtual conferences, summits, and more.
To take full advantage of these powerful brand awareness weapons, you can download our full Guide to Generating Brand Awareness through Virtual Events or book a consultation.
For more information about arranging online events, please contact our Dubai event agency today.
