Dan Stojadinovic asked:




A webinar is one of the best ways to provide information and also earn money while working on-line. Through a webinar, also known as online web conferencing or online conferencing, you conduct live meetings or presentations to people all over the country as well as the world. Similar to webcasting, a webinar is an event that allows for controlled interaction from the audience. When you run a webinar, you are in the driver’s seat. You can allow participants to type in a question, ask a question through voice or do none of the above.

Whether it is a business webinar or an education webinar this is an inexpensive and effective way of transmitting information. There are numerous practices, which you can consider worth implementing in a webinar. Making money with webinar requires a strategic effort and planning but with some training and thought, you can be successful at webinars.

Making money with webinars

The following are some tips, which will help you make money with a webinar;

First, decide on a topic on which you are going to conduct your online webinar. It is better to select a topic of which you have a thorough knowledge.

The next thing you need to do is to create the on-line presentation. Create a PowerPoint to show graphs, charts and even diagrams and photos. The presentation should be upbeat and include bullet points to help your audience stay engaged and on point.

Decide in advance, what you are going to say in the online webinar. Make a hard copy for yourself, outlining the points which match your visuals and will help you to not become confused. Staying focused with material you want to present to your audience, be sure to take some questions before the end of the webinar and finish up with either a sales pitch or other direction to motivate your audience to action.

Make use of webinar software to invite people to your online web conferencing. These programs are the best webinar technology and a good web conferencing solution. These systems will also provide you a report giving you the names and email addresses of everyone who registered and who attended your webinar. You can also use the help of a webinar company, or various webinar providers in conducting free webinars.

Decide what will be the outcome of the webinar. If you are training in the webinar and not attempting to sell anything at the end, you can charge for your webconfererence. The amount you will charge will depend upon the topic, your experience and also your audience’s threshold for paying for the information. Charging for webinars sounds great, but it doesn’t always work out that way so keep this in mind as you create your model.

You need to promote your webinar. Promoting your webinar to your list of current customers and prospects is the first thing to do. After that you can consider doing a blog post and utilizing Social Media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Always mention there is limited space in your online webinar, to encourage early sign-ups.

Promoting your webinar and reserving time for questions and answers, inviting guest speakers and rehearsing for the webinar are also some webinar best practices that will help you make money through your webinar. If you follow these tips, you can substantially enhance the effectiveness of your webinar, which in turn can bring you much higher returns.

Regina

Rangoo Srinivas asked:




Organizing a webinar is made easy with the web conferencing software that are available today. But the major problem of any webinar is to get targeted audience who are willing to watch and listen to the presentation and take appropriate action.

So what are the best ways to get traffic to webinars?

Here are some of the things you can do before, during and after the webinar.

1. Announce the webinar in advance

Before starting the webinar people have to mentally get prepared to sign up for it. They have to free up their precious time to attend the webinar that may go on for an hour or so. They will willingly do this if the topic being discussed is what they want to learn. they will do this if they know the person who is going to teach them is an expert on the subject. They will benefit more if they come mentally prepared to learn from the webinar.

All these points emphasize the fact that we should announce the webinar quite in advance. We should send one or two emails with a gap of two three days. In each email we should emphasize one aspect of the webinar.

It would be better to announce the webinar on a blog or news site. This will get people posting comments saying we are looking forward to the webinar. When are you going to announce the dates? If you get the participants to this level you can be sure they will not miss the webinar.

2. Announce a Webinar Gift

When it is nearer webinar date and when you send the email with the registration details of the webinar add the information that webinar participants will receive a special gift. There is no need to spell out what the gift is. It is good to keep them guessing rather than say too much and kill their enthusiasm. Some of the potential participants who were not sure whether to sign up or not will want to sign up for the sake of the gift. The gift could be a report, a free software, information about services that will help them speedup whatever is suggested during the webinar. Whatever is given during the webinar should have some relevance to the webinar topic. The topic discussed should be closely linked to the product being given away. This will add value to the webinar, get more traffic to the webinar and the participants will be ready to attend the next webinar without any hesitation.

3. Announce a Contest

The idea of free webinars may be to promote the sale of a product or service, to educate the company staff, to train participants of a membership site, and so on. Whether the webinars are conducted for religious purposes or internet marketing purposes, some of the basic responses of participants are common. Participants enthusiastically sign up for the webinar, at least 50% of them actively participate by asking questions and interacting with others. If the webinar had gone on well, they leave the webinar room with a lot of enthusiasm to get things done. Then they get back to their routines and 90% of the effort they have put in and the webinar organizer has put in is lost. To gain maximally from any webinar, the organizer should announce a contest at the end of the webinar. All the participants are automatically entered into the contest and a prize is announced for the winner.

This gives a valuable opportunity for the webinar expert to contact this group after the webinar is over. Again the contest and the pprize should be announced in blogs and webinar news sites. Announcing this in webinar forums is a great way to spread the message. The competition will go on for some time, then the prize will be announced and there can be a post from the prize winner about the webinar experience. This is a wonderful testimonial to the webinar that will get more people sign up for a similar webinar in future.

There are many more ways to get traffic to webinars and this article has dicussed three important traffic tactics that can be implemented before, during and after the webinar.

Lillian

Geoff Zimpfer asked:




Mistake #1: SEX! Now that I have your attention…That was a dirty trick. Not to mention hokey. But since you’re reading this, I guess that old chestnut still works.

Remember the old sales adage – A.I.D. A. – Attention – Interest – Decision – Action

On the web or in person, to reach your intended outcome, you must first capture your target audiences Attention. Ideally, you capture Attention because you have a compelling offer that appeals to your target audience, arousing enough Interest and allowing them to make a Decision to accept your offer which leads them to take Action and attend your webinar.

Today, because of information overload, most of us have what I call “short attention span theatre.” We’re scanning only for the information on our personal radar that were interested in and the rest gets filtered out. Even if yours is the most compelling offer ever given for your target audience, you have to be sure you capture your prospects’ Attention, get them Interested enough make a Decision to sign up for your event, and take Action by actually following through and showing up.

Mistake #2: Not Using a Marketing Sequence to Build Your Attendance

Many people assume that just because they are putting on a webinar, and perhaps even offer it for free, that your target audience will drop everything their doing just to hear and see what you have to offer. You’re too smart for that and you know people are very busy. Today, people need constant reminders, repeated exposure and you must provide valid reasons why they should continually subject themselves to ongoing communication from you.

A well designed marketing sequence builds momentum and critical mass along each step, creating greater interest and anticipation for those who have already registered and those who haven’t yet but are likely too with enough emotional and logical triggers that resonate with them, where they are right now.

Mistake #3: Having Boring Presenters or Death By PowerPoint

In a virtual setting, having an engaging, energetic, well-spoken presenter is critical because your attendees can easily lose interest, get distracted or simply “click” a button and leave your session. In a live setting, that requires a few extra steps and is not quite as anonymous as in a webinar. Another good idea is to rehearse and review the content and do a few dry runs with someone to get your flow down and test out the mechanics of delivering a webinar -especially if you’re new to webinars.

Equally important is your presentation. Too many people use slides as a crutch, simply reading them verbatim on the screen, overloading people with data points, too much text and too many slides. Remember the KISS principle? Keep It Short and Sweet. You can liven up your presentations and keep attendees attention and interest at a high level by adding small doses of things like video, polling, guest speakers, Q&A and more when appropriate.

Mistake #4: Use the Wrong Provider for Your Webinar

Webinars, web conferencing, web collaboration and web meetings have been around for about ten years now. There are many providers all having some similarities and a few with some significant and important differences and features you should consider.

First of all, if all you’re concerned with is price, you’re approaching it backwards. Price is always a component of value but when you’re talking about using webinars as a strategic tool to grow your revenues, expand markets and better serve your customers, the real question is what’s it worth to you? Meaning, if successful, how much would using webinars, web meetings etc. save and or make your company? How much would you save on travel? How many more sales or new clients could you get because your sales cycle is now shorter using webinars? How important is it to make a good first impression with your webinar? How important is support and reliability?
Are features like multi-point video, recording, application sharing, VoIP, integrated audio etc,. a must or are they just nice to have? How else do you plan on leveraging your webinar for future sales, marketing, PR, etc?

Seems like a lot but there are many ways to make money from webinars beyond the event itself. You can record events for future playback, create a passive eCommerce income stream, license your sessions, use as Press Releases, redistribute on CD to your lists, etc. Are you getting the picture that webinars can go way beyond simply desktop sharing and PowerPoint? Choosing the right provider can mean the difference between a smashing success or crash and burn failure. By using the appropriate tools for your goals, you can promote interaction, participation, and ultimately, gain more sales.

Mistake #5: Not Using Direct Response Marketing

Most attempts at building attendees for your webinar make all of the mistakes pointed out in #1 above. Using proven direct response methods includes having benefit driven headlines within emails, websites and other media. Well-written copy that speaks your audiences language, compelling offers and a clear call to action with incentives, multiple ways to register, testimonials etc.

Mistake #6: Not Using Off-line Media To Build Attendance

What? You mean use things like letters, postcards, “lumpy-mail,” premiums, creative packaging, telephone, and the fax machine? Yup. Goes back to #1 and #2 above and for the plain fact that today, relying on email to successfully reach your audience is harder than ever. SPAM is pervasive, people mass delete in-boxes, junk folders steal correspondence even with your own customers…all the more reason to multiply your touch points for maximum exposure and boost your chances of scoring high on the A.I.D.A quotient.

Mistake #7: Failing to Design the Post-Webinar Marketing Plan

Too often people view a webinar as a one-time event. You’ll see a lot of work and money wasted on what I call the “front-end” and little time planning for the “back-end” where you can leverage off your event for additional sales, up-sells and other income opportunities.
Make sure the follow-up plan gets as much attention as the webinar itself. Each step in the process should be well mapped out from salespeople’s roles to post-event websites, materials, touch campaigns and more. There is a short window of opportunity for you to take advantage of all your hard work . . . if you recognize and can avoid these costly errors and if you have a proven system to help you get the results you want.

Michele