Your Action Guide: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating and Delivering a Winning Webinar Series
What are the key steps to creating and delivering a winning Webinar series? Here are the top ones.
Note: Knowing these steps or information will not be good enough to
improve your series or make it successful. You must apply them on an
ongoing basis.
Refine Your Webinar Series Summaries
Start by understanding the summary of your Webinar series to help promote it (those few words or sentences that describe the theme, benefits, and overview of your events). By summaries, we mean a version for internal audiences in your company, as well as a version of what a prospect would learn by attending all of
your events as part of the series. For external audiences, this is sometimes referred to as a marketing abstract.
Expand Your Webinar Marketing Plan
Generally, the wider your reach and marketing plan, the more registrants you will get for an event or series. And remember, people usually sign up for individual events first and foremost, so having a wide marketing plan and big Webinar early in the series will lead to more attendees for the entire series.
Reaching more potential attendees is, however, just one part of your marketing. Drive up email opens and click-throughs on your invitations with hot topics for your audience, winning subjects and headlines, and copy which calls your target audience to action by getting them to REGISTER NOW!
Create Better, Unique Content at Your Next Webinar
A simple way of making your marketing better is to increase the conversion rate – when your target audience sees your marketing ad or invitation and decides to sign up. Think of your content as your draw. In individual sports like golf, boxing, and tennis, if the top stars are playing that day, it is easier to get those who see your invitation and advertising to come to the event.
So remember, as discussed above, the Webinar topic and the supporting content are the biggest factors in driving attendance once a prospect sees the invitation. Ideally, you should offer timely, valuable, and interesting “must-see” content as judged by your audience and make sure to promote that in your marketing.
Manage Each Webinar to Be Successful on Its Own
Many Webinar series producers think if a series of weak events are strung together they can be a success by wrapping a theme around them and calling them a series. Readers of this eGuide will avoid this mistake. Simply manage each Webinar event to be successful on its own, and after a series of successful events, you will have a smashingly successful series.
Build on Success by Recombining Successful Components
With a Webinar series, there are a lot of critical parts, like the marketing plan, invitation copy, speakers, topics, content. and follow-up plan. A series offers you the opportunity to eliminate risk in future events through re-using proven elements.
For example, many producers will think a very successful marketing list or speaker cannot be repeated within a series. We find, however, the opposite is true, and those who use their creativity to find ways of re-using parts for upcoming Webinars will see their series thrive. Leveraging effective elements and recombining the mixture of successful components will put you on a path to a successful series.
Convert Registrants to Results
Just hitting your goals of garnering large registration numbers is not enough to make a Webinar series successful. Remember to turn registrants into attendees and attendees into customers. And to do so, these numbers should be managed and measured. In addition, a Webinar series is never created in a vacuum. Leverage the attention and interest you have among your attendees and viewers and convert them to sales opportunities or customers with a multi-step (automated) follow-up program.
The best Webinar series are judged by the business results they achieve outside of just number of registrants and attendees. Have one or more ways of measuring Webinar success, (such as qualified leads, sales opportunities, sales, satisfied customers, trained users, etc.), and use your post-Webinar follow-up to help ensure these business results.
Creating a Learning Loop for Continuous Improvement
Webinars by their very nature allow for monitoring, collecting data and feedback, iteration, and improvement. Whether you have just completed your pilot Webinar or your 25th, recognize you can learn from what went right and wrong from each event.
Once you complete each Webinar, evaluate what worked, what did not, and why. And take this valuable learning into your next Webinar or promotion. It is in this way that you will “climb the learning curve” and begin to tap the massive potential power of a Webinar series for your organization. After all, especially with a Webinar series, “It is not where you start, but where you finish that counts.”
Summary
Yes, a simple Webinar series can be a strategic weapon in your marketing
arsenal and can even create competitive advantage. Those who take advantage of the potential power of a Webinar series will position their organizations ahead of the competition, generate many more sales leads, and increase their customer profit and lifetime value. Use the Webinar series tips, strategies, and techniques shared here to help accomplish your marketing and business objectives, and don’t forget to “take the credit” for your outstanding results.
© 2010 Quantum Leap Marketing, Inc.