This In-depth guide will walk you through Webinars Definition, Why using webinars is one of the most valuable marketing strategies for your online & Offline Business and how to run a successful webinar in 5 simple steps.

Webinars Definition – What is Webinar?

A webinar is a live meeting over the internet. it can be a presentation, a discussion, a demonstration, maybe an instructional how-to session, any of these things that you can do over the internet in webinar format.

A webinar is a seminar conducted through the internet. Like traditional seminars, webinars would have: an organizer, a speaker and an audience….the only difference is the venue. While traditional seminars would need to have one physical venue in which everyone can interact, webinars aren’t limited by a physical space.

“The participants” they view documents, applications, maybe a live video feed on their computer and they use this incredible technology that nearly anyone can utilize.

The organizer, the speaker and every member of the audience can be located separately whether in another city, another province or another country connected only through the internet.

Webinars are generally live online events. A webinar audience will be able to hear the speaker, deliver his lecture, see his slides, communicate with him from voice or chat or even view or interact with any application that’s open on his computer all in real time.

Today webinars are being used to connect with audiences for marketing, training and educational purposes at lower costs and a potentially wider reach.

To attend a featured webinar you will only need the following:

• A computer(desktop or laptop)

• A fast and stable internet connection and

• A headset or a set of speakers connected to the computer you also have the option of using a microphone or a microphone headset in case you want to ask a question to the speaker using voice.

Why webinars are such a valuable marketing strategy for your home or small business?

Well webinars have the highest sales conversion rates of any marketing method on the Internet…better than sales letters, better than videos, better than email marketing campaigns, better than social media campaigns, they’re really only comparable to live stage presentations or you know live selling from a stage that’s how powerful it is.

Well there are four reasons why webinars are such a powerful and effective marketing strategy:

[+] One is it’s a scheduled event:

• People set aside their time, they put it in their calendar….it’s not interruption marketing like TV ad or pop-ups on websites or even you know posts and videos on Facebook, Google+ or other social media.

[+] Number two it gives the viewer a heightened attention:

• You’re gonna get a heightened attention from the viewer of the webinar. Your info is all that’s going to matter to them and you can build this up through the emails leading up to the webinar.
  

• Obviously you have to do something: give them some sense of what value you’re going to provide to put them in a state that they want to hear, what you have to say and they’re gonna stick around and listen to the whole thing so you have to make sure it’s valuable and you will get that heightened attention.

[+] Number three they become a captive audience:

• Again you’re keeping their attention to the end because you have a valuable presentation, training, demonstration that you’re going to give them and it’s gonna put them into a state of buying.
  

• You know they’re gonna want what you have to offer alright they came looking for exactly what you’re offering so if you have something that is congruent with the basis or the topic of your webinar that you can sell at the end of your webinar, then they’re going to be in a state of buying for whatever that product is.

[+] Number four webinars elevate you as an authority:

• They really create an authority figure out of whoever’s doing the webinar. You become an authority on the content you present and you can really become an authority in the industry in which your product or service is aligned with.

So again there’s four really powerful reasons why this is so effective: it’s a scheduled event, it gives a heightened attention to its viewers, you have a captive audience and it elevates you as an authority figure in your niche or in your industry.

Now if you can provide any type of valuable content or training in a webinar format, then you will most certainly see increases in your sales.

If you make it congruent with whatever business you have whether you’re a home business or a small business, you can really hit a homerun by providing a valuable presentation or webinar two-year viewers.

Run A Successful Webinar In 5 Steps:

The five steps to running a successful webinar:

let’s just dive straight into this because I personally love giving webinars, I love attending webinars and I love having guests along to do webinars for my community and a reason for that is I think you can really personally connect with people even though they’re out there somewhere on the other side of the screen listening in to you….it’s the point that you feel like you’re just having a one-on-one conversation with people.

And the other great thing about webinars is you can make them very visually appealing and you can also have a whole lot of chat going on, but you’re actually getting feedback from people who are listening and telling you if you’re doing a great job.

The other reason why I love them as I personally love to give a ton of value and I feel that it is my way of being able to share as much knowledge as I can for free in the space of like an hour.

So there are five steps that I said I’m going to cover today on how to run a rave webinar:

=> Step one is all about the psychology of webinars:

• Now you have probably been to several before and ones that I find incredibly boring when people just have screens and screens of text on their boring PowerPoint slide chairs and it’s just the most frustrating thing to look at so, first of all fill your webinar with beautiful visuals, lots of big text and just put the main points up.

• You should know your stuff well enough that you’re actually not putting all the notes up there that’s the thing as keep it mysterious and talk to the visual so have something that really conjures up and resonates with a beautiful image or representation of what you’re talking about less text, more visuals.

• Another thing around the psychology of webinars is that you need to keep positive yourself so you need to keep your voice….I’m kind of energetic, you need to keep it rolling, you need to tell people what they can expect next, as I said a bit of an element of surprise or what’s coming up so that they stay on the line with you because remember people are busy and their attention spans are short.

• And the final piece on that as you can have actually up to around 100 slides per webinar. Some of you may be going “oh my god that’s a crapload of slides”, but it’s actually really important to keep flicking through.
  

• Think about when you go to the movies and you’re constantly seeing these changes and scenes because that keeps you interested, that keeps you engaged, that pulls you into the story so please don’t sit on a slide for five minutes talking about it….keep people entertained, keep the images coming, take them on a journey with you.

=> Step two is have your structure of your webinar in place:

• Now I know for example “Clay Collins” one of the Masters of online marketing spends months sometimes planning the content of this webinar… it’s not something you just threw together at the last minute sometimes I may do that myself that’s my kind of style, but the people who have seen so successful actually have content in place and they really know what they’re going to talk about so they’ve prepared well in advance, they have the calls to action, they have their psychological triggers and they really know what the purpose of the webinar is so plan…plan…plan and rehearse your webinar.
  

• You want to get really good at this if you look at something like “Lois House and Shawn malarkey” they’ve done over 500 webinars between them and they constantly rehearse and get better so every single time you do a webinar think about what you liked about it and listen to the feedback that you get from people and then make it better visuals, better text, better story, better flow.

=> Step 3 is know your webinar best practice: 

• What I mean by that is there are certain times, days and weeks when it’s best to run a webinar. From research that has been done generally, “these Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday”.

• Monday is just not a good day for anybody….remember it’s the day they come off the weekend, if they’re in a job or if they’re working, the busiest a day….yeah Friday is not bad, people are a bit more relaxed, but they’re also sort of taking off into the weekend already so Tuesday To Thursday are great days to capture people’s attention.

• It’s also well known that 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. wherever you are in the world are pretty decent times because during dinner or any evening when people can kind of relax and actually switch off and totally tune in…now for anyone with a global audience, 1 p.m.

• Pacific time is the best time because it is afternoon for the u.s, it is evening for most of Europe and it is morning for South Pacific so it kind of almost gets my international audience almost there’s never really one time perfect…do think about the times when you’re most likely to tune in to a webinar yourself.

• Secondly along with that point about the structure of what you’re doing and your promotional plan is you need to email people to tell them what’s happening now…a lot of people get this wrong and I’ll just send out one email saying “hey I’m having this webinar in a few days come along” no…no…probably need about two or three emails people who do it really really well.
  

• Somebody one of my friends actually has five emails spread out so about a week before the webinar starts “hey building credibility who is Danny, what he is he going to talk about, why is this important, register now” a few days before once again “recapping on the webinar, some different points and some giveaways or templates or PDFs that he might be giving out”….day off the webinar an hour before “you’re going to join us in an hour, please come along, here’s why it’s good, register here, call to action” follow up after the webinar to say “here’s the recording or the live replay” and then follow up after the webinar.

=> Step four is to have somebody there to support you:

• Now I know a lot of us are solopreneurs, but it’s great to have a team member or even a friend or your business partner who can be there as well.
  

• If you were doing actual presenting, you just want to focus on giving the best delivery of your life, going through the webinar slides and visuals it’s lovely to have somebody there monitoring the chat, making sure it’s all recording and handling, any kind of tech stuff behind the scenes.
  

• If you can’t have that, you can always hire a VA for a day or as I said just get a really good friend to come and do it for you or if you have two monitors, feel that kind of lucky person who has a beautiful set up that also helps and just being able to concentrate on your screen and concentrate on the backend.

=> So the fifth step that I mentioned in some of those emails is you have to follow up:

• This is where I see other people go wrong as they will do all this great stuff beforehand, they’ll run a great webinar and then forget like you just to have nothing from them: you never hear from them, you never get the replay, they don’t communicate with you, they don’t answer your questions, they maybe put out on social media, don’t engage with feedback in the chat or the comments and they don’t follow up with the webinar recording and the next call to action.

So those are my five steps to run a really successful webinar, but most of all: make it engaging, make it fun and make it valuable content and then just keep getting better at it.