I’ve been doing some webinars of my own recently, so I thought now is a good time to give an overview of what I teach there. Webinars let you share information broadly, and they have the advantage of being interactive. You get all the benefits of having an actual meeting while saving on travel expenses, presentation space and giveaways. Your time and energy are used quite a bit more efficiently. That’s why webinars are a great way to market your business–and create passive income.
Interacting in a New Way
You have the expertise, but you don’t have a way of getting the message out. Yes, you can write a book, but you also want to share your expertise in person so you can interact with your audience. Because that’s how knowledge is shared and new ideas are developed. Unlike webcasts that are one-way presentations, webinars are (if you want them to be!) fully interactive. You can present and take questions with a larger group. Or set up a smaller weekly meeting with just a few people. And it doesn’t matter where your attendees are or how they found you. Webinars let you bring together the right mix of people that want to learn what you have to teach.
Increasing Exposure, Decreasing Costs
Whether you’re promoting what you teach when you speak or in your books, the virtual component of webinars removes the constraints of time and space from your information sharing. You can have as many or as few participants as you’d like. Not having to worry about physical space means your message reaches a much larger audience all at once. Your business has access to more people in more places to make more sales while saving on event and administrative costs.
In-person seminars, workshops and talks absolutely have their place. I would never recommend not holding events. To stay in tune with your audience, and to be open to opportunity, you do need to connect in person. But with the modern tools we have at our disposal, you can certainly increase the contact and exposure you have with your target niche through webinars.
Marketing Your Business with Webinars
There are five steps to using webinars to strategically market your business: Prepare, promote, present, automate and advanced training. (I go over these steps in the webinars module in Expert Catapult.) Tools like Webinar Jam and GoToWebinar help you organize and host your webinars and craft professional, custom invitations. Get the word out using social media, your website, whatever advertising works for your audience. And work up enough quality content to make attendance feel worthwhile…but not so much that you’re going too long. (You’ll lose their interest quickly!) Promote on your website and social media, and let users know that to skip your webinar is to miss out on something great. And remember, if you record your webinar, you can sell seats every day with no additional input from you!
With a little work up front, you’ll reach more potential customers at a lower cost. So what’s stopping you?
Get off your duff!
Sean
image credit: Bigstock/Melpomene