This post was sponsored by BigMarker. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Looking for a marketing strategy that can truly:

• 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% of marketers say webinars are the top-of-the-funnel format that generates the most high-quality leads.

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

You’re about to get a crash course into one of the most successful avenues to high-quality lead generation.

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

Why You Should Use Webinars

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

• You can establish immediate trust and credibility with your audience. Through webinars, you can give your audience the information they need to decide whether to consider purchasing your product or service. You can position yourself as a trusted resource before your audience even needs to make a purchase — and do it at the scale you need to grow your business.
• You’ll be able to generate higher-quality leads. High-quality leads are individuals who are very interested in making a purchase. They are more likely to perform a long action, such as watching a webinar, before making a purchase, and you want that purchase to be with you. When they RSVP, you’ll have the ability to convert them into a sale quickly, increasing your marketing ROI.
• You get to increase conversions in real-time. Because webinars are interactive, audiences can easily communicate with you via chat, polls, and Q&A, and you can easily identify where each prospect lies in their buying journey.
• You can expand your brand to a global audience. Especially if you also publish them on-demand, webinars are more broadly accessible for people with time and/or geographic constraints, which widens your audience of potential leads.
• You get a scalable way to generate more content. Each successful webinar you finish can make at least 3 pieces of new content for your site. Simply convert its content into multiple blog posts, shareable content pieces, and videos.

By displaying your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness in a successful webinar, you’ll be able to capture hundreds of high-quality leads who will likely make a purchase from your business.

Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) isn’t just limited to Google SERPs.

How To Generate More Leads With Webinars

The key to a successful webinar that can attract high-quality leads and increase ROI is a thoughtful vision, a solid marketing plan, and an air-tight follow-up strategy.

1. Identify The Audience You Want To Reach

As you start planning your webinar, use surveys, online research, past buying behavior, and your registration list to gain a clearer understanding of your ideal buyers’ needs and concerns.

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 can tailor your webinar and your offer for their needs.

2. Clearly State Your Webinar’s Unique Solution

Ask yourself:

• What takeaways will your viewers get from this session?
• What answers or solutions will the viewer leave your webinar with?
• Will they learn how to do a specific process?
• Will your speaker give your audience insights they can’t find on their own?
• Will you give them any helpful 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 proof, testimonials, and speaker biographies.

3. Design A Compelling Landing Page

Your webinar’s landing page is the “front door” for your registration form.

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

Your landing page’s functionality can make or break the success of your event.

If its design is unclear or chaotic, or its copy doesn’t “sell” the value proposition of your event, potential registrants might lose interest in your webinar before registering.

As you create your landing page, ensure that:

• Its copy matches the messaging on your social media ads and email invitations. Having different copy can reduce RSVPs.
• Its design is as simple as possible with all relevant information appearing before the user has to scroll.
• It’s mobile-optimized and loads quickly on all types of devices.
• It includes biographies for each of your presenters.

4. Maximize Your Reach — Host With A Partner

Imagine that you could multiply 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 minimal extra labor.

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

Here’s how to do it:

1. Find a partner with a similar but not identical audience to your own. This way, you can speak to new people that are highly likely to be interested in your product. For example, if your core product is project management software, you might consider partnering with a workplace communication software company.
2. Create a promotional kit for your event partners to keep everyone on the same page. When pitching prospective partners, provide them with suggested copy, graphics, and social media posts promoting the webinar. This allows them to help market your event in a way that’s consistent with your brand — and also saves them time and effort.
3. Conduct a dry run of your webinar platform. Leading up to the webinar, schedule a practice session with your partner so that they know how to access and use the platform. We recommend having your partner use their camera and microphone, answer submitted questions via the platform’s chat function, and use any technical features they’ll use during the live session.

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

5. Include Engagement Features In Your Webinar

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

However, as we’ve all experienced in the past two years, it’s much harder to connect with people virtually than in “real life.”

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

1. Public chat: Make the session feel more like a conversation by encouraging attendees to provide questions and thoughts in the chatbox. (Pst: If activity starts to stall, have a moderator plant a question in the chatbox every 10-15 minutes.)
2. Q&A: Attendees can submit questions directly to presenters. Better yet, other guests can upvote questions they’d like answered, so presenters can address their audience’s most pressing questions first. (For an extra personalized touch, you can even have attendees pre-submit videos of themselves asking these questions.)
3. Polls: Use polls to gauge the audience’s prior experience with the topic, then tailor the presentation around those needs.

6. Incorporate In-Webinar Pop-Up Offers To Drive Traffic & Sales

During the RSVP process, you’ve collected your leads’ data to market to them later.

What if a lead is ready to be marketed to during your webinar?

Capture those impulse leads that want to buy or book a demo during the session by adding a popup offer inside of your webinar:

1. At 40 minutes into the session, add a brightly colored, centered pop-up offer inside your webinar room.
2. Create an offer around the most relevant next step, such as a demo or a specific product to purchase.
3. Set the pop-up to open in a new tab, so your lead can convert without leaving the webinar room.

Compared to other webinar features, pop-up offers are highly effective at generating business because they encourage your viewers to act on their interest immediately.

7. Make Sure Your Webinar Is Available On-Demand

Nearly half of all webinar attendees watch at a later date, so make sure you appeal to the convenience of watching content on-demand.

This feature not only makes your leads happy but also helps you create future content that helps interested registrants continue finding you weeks or months after the event ends.

You can create a constantly refreshing pipeline of new leads while giving yourself time to create the next webinar.

Want to host engaging webinars, virtual events, and hybrid events?

BigMarker is here to help: Schedule a demo to get started.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by BigMarker. Used with permission.