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Grow Your Business Using Webinars to Reach Your Target Audience
Webinars are online seminars or presentations used to provide information about a subject you want to teach about. They can be interactive or not, and they can be presented live and then placed in archives for others to view later.
They might even use a well-known traffic expert to present the webinar for them. The target audience will get hooked on the subject and will be more willing to buy the eBook to find out more inside secrets.
They're more commonly used for training others on how to do something, but they can also be used to reach your target audience and help you increase sales of services or products. Some Internet marketers use them to help teach potential customers about the products they're touting.
The webinar can be considered a pre-sell strategy. You're warming up the customer to inform them and help them understand how the product works. For example, an author who may be selling an eBook about traffic techniques can present a webinar and provide a few of those techniques to the public for free.
Knowing that most Internet users are more willing to view a webinar about a subject than to just read about it; Internet marketers can use them as teasers or bait to help convert prospects. Providing different formats for your customers adds value to your product line.
Webinars aren't just for online entrepreneurs, either. Any small business owner, corporate buyer or consultant can benefit by using a webinar in their marketing strategy.
It gives you a portal to provide information in a way that helps you build branding, image, and customer loyalty.
Many companies are using webinars to connect employees who live too far to fly or drive in for an in-house meeting.
Watch "A Webinar Marketing Success Story"
Internet strategist John Lawlor interviews Lisa Schwartz on this 60 minute webinar episode from the AMA (American Marketing Association) South Florida chapter webinar series - "Tested Internet Marketing Methods."
watch webinar marketing success webinar
Cheers,
John Lawlor, Internet strategist, trainer
now available - webinar training workshops from WebinarAcademy
Blog on webinars - www.WebinarMatters
Recent entries include:
"Internet usage has shifted from communications to content"
"IBM Survey Shows Decline of TV as Primary Media Device"
www.WebinarMatters.com
"Getting Started With Webinars" - an ongoing virtual workshop series
WebinarAcademy launches virtual workshop on September 17th. Registration is now open.
Testimonials for "Getting Started With Webinars"
John:
I just wanted to first of all thank you for the wonderful webinar series on how to put together a Webinar and my goal in participating in the first place was to be able to take that information and actually get my own series of webinars going, and all I can say is mission accomplished. I absolutely feel like I got all of the information that I do need to get something going as soon as October, and considering that we didn't finish the sessions until early September, that actually exceeds my expectations.
I thought there would be probably a longer time lag in there. But you were great about covering all the basics from the mechanics of software and hardware to also the planning and how to actually execute and not forgetting the back end of how to follow up, measure your success and all of those things.
Again, all I can say is that's exactly what I was looking for. It was done in a very professional and concise manner, such that in four sessions of 90 minutes, that we were able to cover a tremendous amount of information.
The only negative I would say is boy there's a lot of information and at moments it was a little overwhelming, but the archive process is spectacular and will allow me to go back in and revisit anything that I need to and I couldn't ask for anything more.
So thank you.
This is Julie Thompson and my company is Environmental Resources Network and I'm based out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Recommended Tool:
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Try it free!
Multi-Media at Your Fingertips with Webinar Technology
Usually when you think of a presentation that's done online, you think about audio clips or Internet podcasts where people will present their information through speech and sometimes interaction with a guest.These are fine formats to use, but when you're using them to sell a product or promote your business, a webinar provides you with more features you can use to grab their attention and keep it.
Webinars provide you with audio, but you can also use visual formats to go along with it. The viewers can see a video presentation related to the subject. They can see the product at work, like a software program.
Viewers are more likely to stay interested if you're stimulating more than one of their senses.
PowerPoint presentations can also be used, which are very popular office formats. This way, the viewer can see graphs, pictures or slides of information about the webinar subject while you're giving the verbal storyline in the background.If the webinar host is talking about sales percentages, the slides showing text information about the percentages could be displayed as he or she is talking. By stimulating a viewer's visual as well as audio senses, you can increase your webinar success rate.
If you're using a webinar to generate leads, then the multi-media facet this technology offers you can help humanize the communication you have with your prospects. Suddenly, you've gone from cold calling marketer to trusted advisor and expert in your niche.
Webinars Provide a Higher Level of Interactivity
Webinars are an excellent way to impart information, but they can be used even more effectively by employing interactivity with your audience.You can grab their attention through audio and visual formats, but to really get them interested, you can get them involved in the webinar for hands-on involvement that lets them feel they can steer the online seminar in a direction that best suits their needs.
Provide polls or surveys with your webinar. The audience will be more apt to stay with a webinar if they feel that their opinion matters or holds some weight in the webinar's subject matter. In the meantime, you can collect information about what the viewers are looking for in a product and use that to your advantage in the marketplace.
This could give you an edge over your competition.Provide some time for questions and feedback. The audience will be more interested in staying until the end if they know that they have a chance to ask their question and get it answered right away.
Not too many viewers like to continue with a webinar if they find themselves confused with no way of asking questions to gain further understanding. If you lose a viewer, you lose a customer!
Tips for Successful Webinar Promotion
Put a notice and link on your blog or website and try to get others to share the announcement through strategic bookmarking techniques. Connect with others in your niche or industry and get a word of mouth campaign going to help news of the webinar spread virally.
Try using an online press release to announce the event. If you can start promoting at least two weeks before the event, you can build a viewer's anticipation by revealing bits of information about the webinar little by little over several autoresponder emails that pique their curiosity. A WebinarMan Poll
Blog Posts from Google about Webinars
Webinars, according to Wikipedia
Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings or presentations via the Internet.
In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendees' computers or a web-based application where the attendees may enter a URL (website address) to enter the conference.
A webinar is a neologism to describe a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, while pointing out information being presented onscreen, and the audience can respond over their own telephones, speaker phones allowing the greatest comfort and convenience. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a completely web-based communication. Depending upon the provider, webinars may provide hidden or anonymous participant functionality, making participants unaware of other participants in the same meeting.
In the early years of the Internet, the terms "web conferencing" was often used to describe a group discussion in a message board and therefore not live. The term has evolved to refer specifically to live or "synchronous" meetings.
Need Help With Webinars?
Let me help you grow your business by assisting you in learning how to hold online seminars and webcasts to develop and expose your brand and build your business!
sdcwebbiz wrote...
Hi John. This is a great lens on webinars! Thanks for all the useful information. This is definitely something I will be looking into as a marketing tool.
http://www.squidoo.com/multi-level-marketing-leads/
Posted September 07, 2007
JoAnna Brandi wrote
John - Thanks for all the tips in this lens. I know there are webinars in my future.
Posted September 03, 2007
Color_Expert wrote...
John, thanks for such great information on webinars. This is very helpful. Kate
Posted August 27, 2007
ronpass wrote...
Great lens on an emerging area - this is something I will have to look into. Thanks for joining the Squidoo Marketing Group.
Ron Passfield
Squidoo Marketing
Posted August 27, 2007
sdfds wrote
Hi, WebinarMan Great lens ? I have also created a lens in same niche . Here's a brief intro:
You can't launch a website without web hosting so you need to make sure
you get it right first time. This is even more important for small business web hosting accounts where any problems can seriously impact your business.
In this article we're going to take a look at how your web hosting can affect your business - both directly and indirectly - and how to protect yourself and your income from any such situations.For more details , visit:
CLICK HERE
Posted August 25, 2007
Things You Can Do With Webinars
Open your mind to a variety of webinar uses
1) In-house usage: develop webinars as a dynamic company newsletter targeted at employees
- Create an webinar to highlight recent pricing and policy changes.
- recognize employees that have provided long service, are new or have won awards
- highlight volunteer work done by the employees and supported by the company
- announce new client acquisitions
-display testimonials
-discuss results of recent legislation and the impact on your products and company
by WebinarMan
Greetings -- I'm John Lawlor - CEO & Founder of WebinarAcademy, the premiere provider of webinar training and video information training and produ...
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