Everybody’s Doing Them (Webinars), So Why Not Take Some Good Advice?
Webinars have quickly become a standard part of the specialized information industry. A quick tour of some SIPA member sites shows Best Practices in Sales coming up for Modern Distribution Management, HR Under Attack: How to Survive Washington’s Aggressive New Compliance Crackdown playing next week for Business Management Daily and Everything You Always Wanted To Know About DLOM But Were Too Afraid to Ask being shown by Business Valuation Resources. (I just found out that DLOM stands for discounts for lack of marketability.)
Obviously, in this space, we can’t give you everything you always wanted to know about Webinars, but we can give you some good tips and encourage you to ask a question on the SIPA Marketing Forum if you have one or come to the Marketing Conference in Miami for more discussions. In fact, most of these tips come from sessions from the SIPA 2010 Conference. There are a lot of sharp people doing Webinars now, learning by trial and error what works. And many of those are members of SIPA.
From James Culp:
You have to tell the world, or at least your customers, about your webinars—and you must do it multiple times if you want to get the orders to make it worthwhile. How tolerant will your mailing list be of this? Do you have alternative channels (blogs, Google AdWords, print ads, telemarketing, etc.) to get that message out?
Order confirmations. Speaker handling. Handout and slide deck distribution. Call management. Surveys. Following up with “cheaters.” There is more than one way to do all of these things—just be prepared for these and dozens of other little things, and know how you want to handle them.
From Adam P. Goldstein, Business Management Daily:
Re-broadcast taped webinars. If a speaker complains that they’re too busy to present for the pittance you’re paying them (if anything), tell him or her that you’ll replay their last webinar, and have them come in for 10 minutes at the end for Q&A. (You can then pay them ¼ of their usual fee). Listen to the CD beforehand to edit mentions of “this blustery November day,” etc.
Repurpose your webinar content. Some people learn best by reading, others by seeing, still others by hearing. Integrate video into your webinars, at the least via a PowerPoint slide show available on-demand. Transcribe your popular events into executive summaries. Of course, sell CDs post-event, and as part of a combo offer (ditto with video and transcripts). Use CDs and summaries as newsletter premiums. Cover your webinars as news events in your newsletters and e-zines.
From Tamie Klumpyan, PaperClip Communications:
Recycle and Reuse. Identify topics you have the market on. Build relationships with presenters who will come back for live webinars. If audience continues to be large, schedule again. Successful seconds (e.g. FERPA, Vets, GI Bill).
Lucretia Lyons of BVR talks proudly of their Training PassportTM that allows members to have unlimited access to all BVR Webinars all year long. You become automatically pre-registered and receive the audio recording, transcript and ancillary materials for each session. This may appeal to companies that are building their own research library.
From Jeffrey Greenberg of J.G. Communications Inc., on putting on free webinars:
Concept: Offer a free scheduled online webinar event. Conduct a 45-minute online seminar with the top editor. Sell the hosting newsletter. Sell the high-priced newsletter versus the one-shot seminar—increases asset value and repeats renewal income.
Send daily sign-up email invitations 1-2 weeks prior to event to all in-house paid, expired and free newsletter subscribers, as well as to external lists. Copy should include: letter from the paid/free newsletter editor; exclusivity, advance registration; date and name of event; why current topic is important today; two important solutions/opportunities; direct to sign-up page.
Put on a 30-to-45-minute show. Publisher or other editor introduces editor (name of publication) and states that the editor will reveal the two specific solutions/opportunities promised in their invitation a little later in the seminar.
And lastly, from James Culp again, get the most out of webinars—after. If you do webinars right, they can make you significant money after they’ve run—what residuals and after-the-fact promotional vehicles are you considering?
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