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When the landscape of business communication underwent a seismic shift, businesses needed to find a way to adapt their marketing solutions. Why? Because instantly, all in-person meetings, presentations, and interactions came to a standstill. For customer acquisition, marketers now had to find a way to reach leads exclusively from their homes. One of the most popular ways marketers achieved this was by using webinar marketing for lead generation.
Customer acquisition shifted towards virtual platforms, businesses embraced webinars as a versatile tool for capturing leads, fostering connections, and driving sales. However, even when the business world started to feel normal and dinner seminars had resumed, the popularity of using webinar marketing for lead generation continued to rise. Why? It’s all due to the accessibility, comfort, and knowledge generated from webinars that both leads and business owners love.
Want to see if hosting webinars is the right marketing strategy for your business? Keep reading to learn the ultimate list of webinar pros and cons!
What are Webinars?
For a quick refresher, webinars are live, online educational events where participating viewers can submit questions. The purpose of webinar marketing for lead generation is to educate and engage your audience. This education and engagement could be in the form of events, video presentations, workshops, training sessions, or lectures. In the end, webinars can help your company educate your audience about your business, build authority in your industry, demonstrate your product to customers, and generate new leads for your business.
Pros of Webinars
So, let’s get into what makes webinars successful. Here are some insightful pros to why your business should use webinars in its marketing strategy:
Convenience
For most attendees, the best part of webinars is the convenience. Seminars and conferences can be stressful, with the burden of traveling and staying in an unfamiliar place, all while preparing for a professional event. Obviously, this can cause stress on any professional. Luckily, webinars allow you to stay in the comfort of your own home, a familiar and comforting setting. Not only that, but it also eliminates the stress of having to plan a travel itinerary. This convenience could save you and your company time and money!
Groups of Any Size
One of the best parts of webinar marketing is hosting as many or as few attendees as you want. Whether presenting to a small group or a group of over 100+ attendees, webinars work in both scenarios! Webinars also can connect you with leads from all over the country and, in some situations, all over the globe. Additionally, this flexibility alleviates the burden of limiting the number of attendees due to budgets or venue size. By utilizing webinar marketing for lead generation, you have the opportunity to connect with as many or as few leads as you want, all from the comfort of your own office or home!
Cost-Effective
Dinner seminars can be expensive. From preparing ads and finding attendees to booking a venue, hotels, and a catering company, dinner seminars are not cheap. This might not be the right marketing strategy for newer or independent businesses. Instead, your company can save money by hosting a webinar. Skip the burden of booking a venue and create an interactive, encaptivating webinar experience. The best part? Your very own webinar can be recorded and played over and over again. Referred to as the value of ongoing webinars, your firm can make recurring profits off just ONE webinar! Sounds prosperous, right?
Easily Shareable
Imagine having the ability to record a webinar and play it again and again. But each time, for new, motivated consumers with the same questions as previous leads. Well, as stated previously, webinars can be recorded once and then replayed repeatedly at several events. Ongoing webinars are highly successful by allowing your company to save time and money. You can easily create a shareable link to your ongoing webinar for disseminating purposes. Feel the benefits of ongoing webinars and get to sharing!
Time-Saving
Seminars, conferences, and dinner events are time-consuming. Not only do these events take a long time to plan and organize, but they also cost travel time. Some leads may need to drive – or even fly – to reach their destination at your business event. What if there was a more accessible and more effective way to reach leads to share your message? Well, there is! Save time by not having to plan an event or travel to one. Instead, host your webinar virtually, and let you connect with leads directly from their home or anywhere.
Cons of Webinars
Although webinars are very prosperous, they do have their flaws. Here are some cons on why webinars might not be the right marketing strategy for your business:
Limited Interaction
Meeting with leads face-to-face at dinner seminars is an irreplaceable opportunity. It allows you to make eye contact, shake hands, and provide your full and undivided attention to your leads. Also, meeting in person makes it easier to chat with leads one-on-one and answer questions privately (or publicly).
If your company decides to use webinar marketing for lead generation, you might experience less interaction. This opportunity to form a strong connection is lost when hosting a webinar. With the awkward zoom silences, muted mics, and turned-off cameras, webinars create a gray area where making direct connections and building trust can be challenging. So, find a way to ensure your leads feel valued! Provide a Q&A section and utilize breakout rooms to have one-on-one conversations. This will allow you to build strong connections with leads virtually.
Technical Difficulties
We all know the awkward feeling of seeing a presentation not go as planned. Technical difficulties could distract leads or weaken your credibility and brand image. If you are hosting a lot of attendees (100+ or more), ensure the program you are hosting can handle it. Webinar mistakes and technical difficulties mostly go unplanned, so make sure to do a couple of test runs of your webinar before going live. And don’t forget to mind your virtual etiquette before you make unplanned mistakes!
Distractions Happen
Despite the convenience and location of webinars, surroundings and environment at home could be distracting for leads. We all know how easy it is to look out a window and see a car drive by or spare some attention to your loving pet. And even during professional events, these distractions can get the best of us, no matter how hard we try. Hosting a webinar makes you bear the risk that leads will miss valuable information. So, create a webinar that is engaging and encaptivating. Create something leads will not want to miss!
So, Are Webinars the Right Choice for You?
Are you looking to develop a new marketing strategy for your company? Webinars might be the perfect solution! Our webinar solution, WebinarConnect, provides the same level of online interaction you expect from traditional workshops and seminars. Schedule digital events from anywhere, anytime, and host them directly from your web browser. By using WebinarConnect, you’ll see higher attendance rates guaranteed. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
