Webinars, webcasts, or web conferences have disrupted the digital marketing world.

Webinars are live virtual meetings (one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many) where attendees can share their audio, video, and screens. Typically, a webinar includes a presentation deck followed by a Q&A session.

Webinars can be recorded and played on-demand. They can be planned in advance using solid webcasting tools. Since webinars are online, they can help you take your business global.

Webinar marketing is big these days. 

Still not convinced?

Webinars were among the top five most-widely used content marketing formats in 2019. 57% of B2B marketers and 27% of B2C marketers used them, out of which 16% leveraged webinars for securing and converting leads.

If you are intrigued about webinars and want to know how you can use them for your business, this post is perfect for you.

Let’s get started.

How Can Webcasting Benefit Businesses?

Whatever be the scope and scale of your brand, webcasting can amplify your reach, sales, and authority in a number of ways. Take a look at the ways webcasting helps brands scale their marketing and sales efforts.

They Build Your Content Repository

In order to host webinars that mobilize a lot of interest and viewership, you will have to create high-quality content. With webinars, you can build a rich content library, which can be used by your marketing and sales team, customer care agents, and other employees.

What else?

Sophisticated webcasting platforms like FLOW auto-record your webinars from start to finish. You can later repurpose these recordings into different content types, such as FAQs, blog posts, and videos. You can publish these on your website, social pages, and emails. 

Without much additional effort, webinars help you create new and engaging digital content to help you market your brand.

They Help Establish Domain Authority

If you invite acclaimed personalities in your niche to your webinars, you get a chance to leverage their expertise and market reach to build your brand. By piggybacking on their reputation, you can attract new investors, prospective clients, and customers. 

FOSSA hosted a three-member panel discussion via a webinar to discuss the biggest challenges enterprises are expected to face in 2020.

Image via FOSSA

By inviting reputable industry experts, FOSSA ensured that the webinar will be a worthy event for people to join. They also conveyed their commitment to excellence and customer service by focusing on a burning problem in their industry.

However, to begin with, you should use your own resources to create content for your webinars. It’s not only easier but also helps establish your domain authority. It gives your brand a competitive advantage, which is essential for it to survive and thrive. 

Creating and sharing insightful webinars with the world can help you become a thought leader in your domain. Take a look at how your brand will benefit if you ace thought leadership marketing:

• Attract talent
• Improve your brand value
• Boost your public relations
• Discover business opportunities
• Increase sales
• Optimize marketing budgets

They Reduce Your Overheads

The most significant benefit of webinars that brands enjoy is their cost-effectiveness. 

Traditionally, businesses had to spend a lot of money to arrange in-person meetings with investors, customers, remote workers, and potential clients. This translated into huge travel overheads for companies, especially if your brand is international.

Webinars, on the other hand, are conducted virtually. If you have the right tech stack and a reliable internet connection, you can reach a global audience in minutes. You can cut down on travel overhead and invest the savings in creating webinars at scale.

If you make your webinars shareable, your content and brand will get even more reach.

Want to know a secret?

Once your webinars get a decent viewership and fanbase, you can monetize them by making the entry chargeable. This is a great method to make money online without much investment.

They Keep Audience Engaged 

Webinars are a great way to hold the attention of your audience and keep them glued to your content until the end. 

How?

Since webinars are live events, participants can interact with you and the other presenters only if they stay online with you. Although they can watch webinar replays later on, they won’t be able to ask impromptu questions if they leave the webinar mid-way. 

So, webinars are a fantastic way to keep your audience engaged with your brand. That’s why webinars are used extensively for training purposes.

If you plan to use webinars to make your remote teams more efficient, make your sessions super-interactive. Include polls, brainstorming, Q&A, breakout rooms, and group activities to keep participants on their toes.  

They are Effective for Branding

You can white label your webinars to put your brand in front of the audience. White labeling means adding your brand logo and other branding elements to the content, for making it proprietary. 

Naturally, if your logo, tagline, and brand colors are flashed time and again in a span of 30-60 minutes (standard duration of webinars), it creates a sustaining impression on the audience. 

They Produce Qualified Sales Leads

Through attendee registration, you can capture contact details and generate leads. Since people who are actually interested in your brand and webinar content are likely to register, the leads that you get are more qualified than random ones.

Image via Kissmetrics

Since your website visitors and email contacts also have an affinity for your brand, you can send them webinar registration forms. Using robust form builder tools, you can hyper-segment your contacts and tailor the form copy to match each contact’s needs. 

By personalizing your campaign in this way, you can get more engaged audiences to your webinars and make it a success.   

Is that all?

Not even close. You can strengthen the bond further by encouraging attendees to submit their questions and requests via email. In this way, you start growing your relationships with them, which can bloom into fruitful conversions.

They Foster Trust for Your Brand

Webinars are a great way to humanize your brand. Your brand gets a face and an identity which makes it more relatable to audiences.

You demonstrate domain expertise, experience, and presentation skills which help the audience trust you. 

You can interact with attendees on a one-to-one basis. Most webinar platforms have a built-in chat feature that lets you talk discreetly with attendees. You can send them information that they are looking for, without disrupting the meeting flow. 

You can lend a personal touch to your conversations which will help nurture trust with your audience.

They Help Showcase Your Brand Properly

Unlike the 30-second window you get to introduce your brand at traditional conferences, webinars allow you to expand at length about your product, brand, and topic of discussion. 

You don’t have to share the stage with tons of competitors. If your webinar content is engaging enough, you get the undivided attention of your audience. 

The meeting duration is decided solely by the host. This gives you ample opportunity to portray your brand and your services/products in the best possible light.

For instance, EventMobi ran a product awareness webinar called, “Get to Know EvetMobi.” The aim was to introduce their brand to potential customers.

Image via EventMobi

They targeted event organizers to show them how their platform can simplify their work. EventMobi was able to present their case in a solid way and likely gather a lot of leads through the event.

They Help Draw Insights About Your Audience

Since you get to interact at length with your webinar attendees, you get to learn a lot about them. Through polls, surveys, and Q&As, you will discover facets of your audience that no amount of marketing research could reveal.

How can that help you?

In many ways. Using those customer insights, you can build more tailored products and content. You can realign your marketing and product strategy. If you allow your audience to brainstorm freely, you will be able to source new product ideas. 

Is Your Brand Leveraging Webcasting?

As you can see, webinars have multiple benefits for brands. While earlier, webinars were out of reach for small- and mid-sized companies, they are now more feasible because of the advent of affordable webcasting platforms.

Do you need more information about webinars, such as best practices and optimization tips? Write your questions in the comments below. I’ll be happy to answer.

About the author: Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant for 15 years with an emphasis on Influencer Marketing in the last 5 years. He is specialized in sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, Influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.