Webinars: Using Them To Advance Leads & Prospects

Webinars are a cost effective means of showcasing your company’ expertise and solutions, or are they? It is clear that they can play a role to plan in generating demand for your solutions by educating the marketplace, as well in generating, nurturing and progressing sales leads. However, they take more time and preparation than might be expected and unless they attract a quourum of attendees that investment could be a waste of time.

With that in mind here is a checklist to help you plan and deliver successful webinars, broken down under 3 heading - BEFORE, DURING and AFTER.

A. BEFORE - Planning for the success of your webinar(s)

1. What is the objective of the webinar? In addition to showcasing your company’s expertise and its solutions, what role will it play in the sales/marketing process for your company? Is it aimed at nudging a select group of sales prospects closer to a decision, building your relationship with existing customers, or generating additional sales leads?

2. What are your ambitions regarding the reach or scope of the event? Do you want it to appeal industry wide, or do you just want to invite existing customers, or sales prospects? If it is the former a lot more marketing and other preparation will be required and it may make sense to run it in conjunction with another organisation.

3. What is the desired audience of the webinar? Who do you want to attend? Make a target list from customers, partners and target companies. What companies, sectors and job titles do you want represented?

4. How is the webinar going to be promoted? Will you email, or write to customers about the event(s)? Will you promote it on your company’s web site, in its newsletter, as well as via partner, supplier and other industry websites listings and blogs? Can the event be promoted jointly to the membership of various industry and other bodies? What publicity opportunities are available via industry magazines and other publications?

5. Who should the speaker(s) be? Is the planned presenter sufficiently well-known, respected, expert and/or credible?

6. When is the ideal timing for the webinar?

• Make a list of possible dates and make sure they do not clash with other events.

• Pick dates that have a particular significance (e.g. in the lead up to the introduction of new legislation impacting on the industry, the anniversary of a key event, the announcement of a new product release, etc.).

• Integrate the event with your marketing programme.

• Give participants a choice of 2 dates, or times.

• Lunchtime can be a good time, but keep in mind different time zones.

• To maximise success, offer participants a series of dates and times to choose from.

Preparing for the success of the webinar

7. Have a clear structure and topic – a topic of real interest and timely relevance to the target audience. Maybe it is a problem faced by your industry, or an issue that is getting considerable attention in blogs, forums, or the press at the time.

8. Make your webinar interesting and relevant, not just at commercial for your company and its products. Make it more of a technical/professional briefing/update than a marketing pitch. Don’t over-plug your product, don’t bad mouth competitors, or make exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims.

9. In preparing your webinar content ask yourself what 3 things you want participants to remember when they leave the webinar. Then structure the material to deliver these key messages with impact. Tie your webinar’s content in with your marketing message, brand, product strategy and the unique selling points of your product/service. Make it specific to the audience,

10. Have a good title for the webinar, one that gets interest and attention:

• Frame the title in a way that clearly communicates to participants how they can benefit from participating in the webinar (e.g. The Implications of Recent Legislation for Your Business, Cutting Back-end Integration Projects Costs – new tools and techniques).

• In framing the topic you might focus on some controversial truism regarding your customer’s industry (e.g. Despite the claims most XYZs don’t deliver).

• Think of your webinar title in terms of a newspaper headline – does it get attention?

11. Set the right level in terms of how technical your webinar is going to be.

• Make it clear who your webinar is aimed at.

• You may deliver more than one webinar with different levels of technical complexity.

• Be careful to explain any technical terms used, or maybe provide a glossary to participants.

12. Rehearse the webinar with colleagues/others and get feedback. Time the trial webinar to ensure that you can comfortably stay within the promised time. Keep the webinar to 40 or 45 minutes. If it takes longer, explore how you can more effectively communicate your message, what material you can cut out, or plan a follow-on webinar.

13. Decide on a webinar tool, or service, such as Go to Webinar, or Bright Talk. Consider what dial-up number will you use (if any), making sure that a foreign access number will not put off some participants.

14. How much advice notice are you going to give participants? Send a series of carefully worded reminders to potential participants, including on the day, or morning before

15. Make registration simple, while you will want to capture information on those participating balance this with the likelihood that the more information you request the more you are likely to put people off. Include a privacy statement where you request information and in particular email addresses.

16. Decide if you want attendees to be visible to each other online (i.e. participants can see who else is attending).

17. Record the webinar, so that those not able to attend can view it later from a link on your website, or in an email. This facility is available as a part of most webinar services.

B. DURING - Delivering the webinar

18. Offer participants the opportunity to interact, ask questions, etc. Let them know if you want questions at the end, or through-out. Most webinar services provide an instant message facility. This can be the best way to get feedback however beware messaging can break your concentration.

19. Make your webinar a multimedia presentation – include pictures as well as text and make full use of imagery to communicate your message. Video clips can be good too, they will allow the presenter to catch his or her breath and ensure they are on track.

20. Not too many slides, with not too much text. Ensure a consistent style or layout throughout your presentation (in line with your corporate branding).

21. Avoid the use of superlatives and overstretched adjectives regarding your product, or service. If you want to brag about your product, do so through customer stories, case studies and customer/expert testimonials.

22. Here are some general tips for presenting a successful webinar:

• Start by introducing yourself and giving an overview of the webinar.

• Steer a middle ground between being formal and informal.

• Vary your tone of voice, speak slowly and in a pronounced fashion, avoid slang, etc.

• Imagine the people were in the room with you.

• Smile while you are talking (it actually makes a difference).

• Have a second monitor so you are aware of any time delays, etc.

• Use as many real world examples as possible.

• Have a holding screen for those who log in before the webinar begins.

23. Include a survey at the end of the webinar, this will enable you to measure level of interest, any questions, future topics, etc. Polls during the webinar will allow you to tailor the content based on participant input.

24. Plan a series of webinars – a logical progression and notify participants before the close of the next event. Invite participants to recommend the webinar to colleagues and others.

C. AFTER - post the webinar

25. Follow-up after the webinar, so as to get reaction and establish the level of interest, or sales potential. Forward the presentation, or relevant white paper with a thank you email, or call (which ever is more appropriate).

26. Conduct a post webinar review.

27. Have a clear next step in mind for any participants who are sales prospects.

28. Integrate with ther rest of your sales and marketing activity. That may include writing a whitepaper on the topic covered, include it in your newsletter, or simply using the feedback, or polls from webinars in your sales presentations, customer discussions.

Some New Ways to Use Your Pdfs and PowerPoint Slides

Have you ever noticed that pdfs appear quite frequently in Google searches and that other people's power point presentations too?  Well, Google in its attempts to provide the user with the most useful information relevant seems often serves up these items ahead of traditional web pages.  

Now, I know that how Google calculates its rankings is as much a secret as the formula for Coca Cola, but as you have power point presentations and Pdf documents already created, it makes sense to find as wide an audience for them as possible.  The fact that this may increase the number of hits you get via the web, is an added advantage.  So, we have put together a list of some great places to put your Pdf files and presentations:

http://www.slideshare.net/ - 14 million unique monthly visitors

http://www.scribd.com/ - 60 million readers every month

http://base.google.com - new, but it is by Google so expect it to rank highly

http://www.keepandshare.com - more visitors than slideshare according to Alexa

http://www.4shared.com/ - ranked by Alexa as one of the top 100 sites

Here is a long list of others:

   www.Box.net
   www.esnips.com/
   www.filebox.com/
   www.fileden.com
   www.filefront.com
   www.Filehosting.org
   www.filesanywhere.com/
   www.Limaspace.com
   www.livedrive.com/
   www.mediafire.com/
   www.megaupload.com/
   www.Savefile.com
   www.Uploadingit.com
   www.yourfilelink.com/

Want To Become A World-Beating Blogger? Blogging Heroes Reveal Their Secrets.

If like me you are keen to maximize the potential of blogging to build your profile and attract new customers to you business, then you will be interested in the advice that the world’s leading bloggers have to offer.

Blogging Heroes written by Michael Banks, is a collection of interviews with 30 of the world’s most widely read bloggers. Each page is full of encouragement and advice, but because you are short on time I have summarized some of the key points below.

Why blog? The reasons the best bloggers suggest are to find your voice, develop your thoughts and build your expertise. Most blogging heroes started blogging not for money, but because they had something useful to say and a great desire to say it.

The main advice offered is to be authentic and different. You have to be enthusiastic so pick an area you are passionate it will come across through your wri

ting and is essential to engaging readers. Picking a topic that gets you excited is also essential if you are going to keep the initiative going.

If you are going to write a lot then you must read a lot. So set up some R.S.S. feeds to some carefully chosen blogs. Most blogging heroes read between 40 and 200s feeds per day. Follow other people’s blogs quoting them where you use any of their thoughts and putting comments on their posts. Writers are starved of comments so if you comment regularly and add value you can ask for a link to your blog in return.

How to get started? Well the advice is to jump straight in. That is the best way to find your style, to refine your message and so on. Start with a reasonably high volume of posts. Blogging does not have to be perfect, in fact if you strive for perfection you may never get it going properly. So, think of blogging as a work in progress.

Give yourself time to find your voice, and to perfect your style. While differences vary as regards how correct the language, grammar and spelling should be, the blogging heroes do agree on one thing – the need for quality in terms of the content, or information provided. However, it is much different to writing for a magazine, or book, a blog is more of a conversation with the reader.

Most heroes are less concerned with search engine optimisation than you might expect, pointing to good content is the number one key success factor in getting readers for your post. However, they highlight basics such as tags, headings, deeper linking within posts and readable post names as important.

Pretty much all of the bloggers suggest that great content beats search engine optimization and frown on gimmickry. In this way they suggest that blogging is the perfect meritocracy. The advice is to blog for readers, not to get readers. Then when you hit on the right topic your site will go viral.

Write consistently, some of the heros blogged for 40 mins per day, others write all day every day. However, ensuring fresh content every time the visitor visits is important – with most blogging platforms allowing posts to be written in groups and then time delayed for release.

Quality content is the best way to build readers. It sounds a little like ‘write it and they will come’ message, but no matter what way you look at it good content is key. So, don’t just write about what you want to sell, write about what you know and what is useful for other people to read. We are also advised to remember the importance of a good heading, sometimes it is often all that the readers will see before deciding to click on the feed.

Great posts plant a seed in the mind of the reader. Encourage people to comment – ask people to suggest topics – thank people for their comments and always reply. Several blogging heroes suggest that anonymous posts and comments is the source of the web, so make sure to use your identity. And a word of caution about welcoming comments, don’t take anything that might be said personally.

A blog is not just a blog, it is a community, a forum, a online shop front, etc. It does not have to look like a blog and is not just limited to opinion. A blog is a content vehicle, capable of handing your delivering your message faster and in a less formal manner to a wider audience.

The blogging heroes point to the importance of finding the right topic (sometimes this is a matter of experimentation) and of creating original work. The source of inspiration is the dozens of feeds that bloggers read from other blogs and webpages.

Finally don’t exclusively rely on text, always use images and don’t be afraid to experiment with audio and video, etc.

Click here to buy Blogging Heroes

Don’t forget to book your space on twitter, facebook, etc.

Business web sites have started to talk back, reaching out in the hope of building a community from among your customers and prospects. 

Well, that is the aspiration of the next generation of web marketing - web 2.0.  How quickly it will be achieved and how soon all this will have an impact on your revenue figures is open to debate. 

However, take care not to be left behind.  We were aghast today when a luddite like marketing consultant exclaimed ‘I don’t believe in all this blogging and stuff’. 

That is a mistake you don’t want to make which means you have to do some homework to get familiar with the new arsenal of online marketing tools.

Our advice is to do this sooner, rather than later, making sure that you stamp your mark Wordpress / Blogger, Linked-in, Wiki, Facebook and Twitter. 

Just as in the case of a .com domain, set up an account on each of these to make sure that your company’s name or ideal keywords are not lost to somebody else.  Once they are gone, you may not have a change to get them back.

Time to Start Blogging?

Why should you blog?

• To drive traffic to our website and improve our search engine ranking on the web

• To promote our company and its products

• To raise profile and to be seen as industry experts, or though leaders

• To tell our story and educate the marketplace in turn

• To become part of the community within our industry, market, or segment

What objectives should you have?

• Extent our reach in terms of market coverage

• Stickiness - interact with people more often and for longer

• Number of comments, subscribers, references to post and links to post (referral quality)

What tips should you follow?

• Don’t’ say anything unless you have something interesting to say… we want to feed the conversation

• Avoid profanity

• Always link to others….Create a voice and a sense of humor

• “Don’t diss” – most influential bloggers “practice an almost parliamentary civility” Paul Gillin pg. 22…. balance being timely and opinionated and being controversial

• Be transparent – don’t revise posts. unless you label update Posts Means we need to think carefully before we post

• Comment on other blogs (it invites direct interaction with that blogger)

• Before commenting make sure we have read the blogs posted over a three day period. Make sure we understand what motivates the blogger and what he/she likes to talk about…. Don’t just jump in

• Keep the blogs concise (ensure they have meaning). Length depends on topic

• Be responsive and track responses to posts and comments (comment tracking is important as posters are likely waiting a response – how this is managed later will depend on the number of comments)

• Point to other players who maybe competitors – history shows people will come back to us (need to include those with opinions on the topic)

• Tie RSS into our blogs (looking to tie separate RSS for each topic)

• Use content sharing tools: (e.g. tie in Social bookmarks to your posts)

• Register blogs with indexers

• Post tips and alerts we have set-up (acts like a FAQ and ‘How-to’. Also makes for a good blog post)

• Recognise other peoples alerts (this will be very important for us – need to acknowledge those who have put effort into their alerts)

• Write the posts so they don’t draw a conclusion…. Feed the conversation don’t kill it!

• Write with skimming in mind

  • Short sentences

  • Hook readers

  • Headings and bold where you want to draw in reader (Top-x headings do well. Lists make great posts)

• Use keywords so Google can get the context of blog content 

• Find the blog carnival that covers topics of interest

  
  

Generating more enquiries from the web – the rest of the steps to follow

How well your web site performs in terms of generating leads and enquiries for your business is largely in your own hands.  In the 2nd of two posts, here are steps 6 – 12 for optimizing your web site (if you missed steps 1-5 just click here).

1.      6. Restructure your site and rewrite your website 's text to reflect the key words you have chosen.  That means renaming pages to correspond with the keywords, changing headings in the body and writing copy itself that includes them.

2.       7. Add links to your site from sites of similar content and request back links to your site from others.  To do this you could add your name to various internet directories, join a links exchange.  However, it is the popularity or quality of links to your site that matters not the quantity.

3.       8. Add content that is interesting, relevant and fresh.  Transform your site from an online ad, or brochure, to a source of valuable information for potential visitors.  Use this content to contribute to blogs and other sites. Put articles, opinion pieces and whitepapers on to various portals and sites.

4.       9. Register your site with Google and other search engines and keep registering it on a regular basis.  Submit a site map.

5.       10. Add a blog or forum, again packed with the right keywords and back links and actively submit to 3^rd party forums adding back links to your own pages. 

6.      11. Add more stuff.  Use a newsletter with links to your site.  Add a u tube video and see how quickly it will appear in a search under your company.  You can do this by taking your company's sales presentation and adding a voice over.   Add your company to Wikipedia, linked-in and so on.  Also adding FAQs to your site can be effective.

7.       12. Experiment with buying a certain number of clicks, or visitors to your site.  When you buy from Google Adwords and others you need only pay for visitors to your site, as opposed to for the showing of your ad, so it can be well worth doing.

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