How Webinars Benefit Your Online Marketing Efforts

When looking at online marketing efforts that include digital elements, webinars are becoming a very popular interactive tools that allow Marketers to engage their customers, while increasing their visibility at the same time. We polled a variety of online marketing groups asking if webinars should be considered a vital part of online marketing programs. Many agreed that they should be. “At Acquia…We run webinars as part of our marketing strategy, both for prospects and product centric ones for current customers. Its very effective for us.” says Lynne Capozzi, VP of Marketing at Acquia.com.

Webinars provide a comfortable, no pressure sales situation in which the prospect can learn about a product without feeling the need to buy something immediately after.  They give your company public visibility and allow your prospects to interact with you. The key to leveraging webinars, and their easily created content, is the marketing. James Bishop of GlobalSpec says, “Our Marketing department does an outstanding job promoting them and filling the seats. As a result, our sales teams have ‘warm’ calls with pre-educated prospects.” Putting the webinar out there is just one part of the strategy; you have to take the time to think about your marketing plan just as you would with any other type of product promotion. When prospects are already coming to your sales team with the information they got from the webinar, it makes the sales cycle that much easier and the webinar that much more valuable.

Webinars are also easily archived as recordings for future prospects to watch on their own time. This feature can save the company money (no need to hold future webinars with the same content) and time, which is always vital in an integrated marketing campaign. It also gives you the ability to index your webinars into search engines for more search visibility. “After the webinar is completed, we post them on an e-learning website we have produced called Redemption University. This helps to build credibility as an industry thought leader and the webinars can be viewed on demand 24/7.” says James Kort, Marketing Director of RedemptionPlus. The more content your company can put out there, the better.

We didn’t get any responses that said Webinars should not be used as part of online marketing efforts. They continue to prove to be valuable tools for most product and service marketing. Do you feel the same? Should Webinars be a part of online marketing efforts? Or are traditional forms of digital media marketing sufficient to create interaction and visibility?

Photo Credit: Train for Top Dollar |  Lake Forest Graduate School