Is a Webinar a Channel?
April 27, 2015   Dave Lewis

Webinars work for us, so we’ll call it one. A webinar is one of those neither fish-nor-fowl kind of things that exists in the realm of marketing. We’re all about marketing here at SnailWorks, and we try to share our greatest successes with our users – current and future. Webinars are not for every business, but if you sell services, particularly in a B-to-B environment, they can be very helpful.  They can help establish your organization as a thought leader, and can give you the opportunity to present your value proposition to a more or less captive audience, with “more or less” being the operative phrase. If you do not provide valuable content your audience will evaporate. The Mechanics of a Webinar Putting on a webinar is a process, like any other presentation. There are 4 elements to think about:

• Developing a presentation;
• Creating and hosting;
• Marketing the webinar;
• Following up.

Developing the presentation may be the easiest part. Presumably if you are planning on addressing a group of people you have something worthwhile to say. Most of the webinar hosting services will support any display format you have, but be sure to use something you are comfortable with. For our webinars, we generally use a PowerPoint presentation along with a live website demonstration. Be aware that even the best hosting services have some time lag, so there may be a delay from when you click a web page. Similarly, on videos the sound may not synch precisely with the visual, which can be distracting for both presenter and attendee. Creating and hosting a webinar is generally best handled by a hosting service such as GoToWebinar, the service we use. They make the process almost as easy as hosting an online meeting. Still, be sure to take the time to practice and make sure you know how to work the system before you go live with your webinar. Marketing the webinar is our favorite part at SnailWorks. This is probably one of the few arenas where direct mail is not a preferred channel. Email marketing and social media are going to be your best channels. Make sure you allow enough time to reply and plan, but we don’t see good results marketing too soon. We generally start about two weeks out, and send at least three email efforts as well as reminders. Just because someone has signed up doesn’t mean they will attend. Of course you can use SnailWorks to manage your landing page and sign-ups. Following up may be the most overlooked aspect of most webinars. If someone is willing to stay through your webinar (you’ll know) by all means give them an opportunity to buy your service or product. If they don’t stay, or don’t even show up, remember they were interested enough to sign up. Make sure you give them an opportunity to ask any questions and to see a recording of the webinar. And of course put them at the top of the list for your future webinars! So, are webinars a channel? We’re not sure what to call them, but we always like an opportunity to have 60 or 70 customers and prospects listen to us for an hour. It’s one of the ways we have built our business. If they haven’t been a part of your marketing maybe you should give one a try. Need some guidance?  We’re happy to help.  We don’t host webinars (at least not yet) but we can help you organize and market for one.

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