As business communications have shifted online, using the proper tools is essential to get your message across effectively. Options such voice calls and online chat have given way to sophisticated communications modalities as web conferencing, audio conferencing, videoconferences, and webinars. More and more businesses are relying on webinars for marketing, to provide insights into complicated matters, and communicate with clients and customers. Webinar content can be saved and neatly documented for future reference with the help of a digital transcription service. When to comes to getting complex messages across, webinars are the ideal option.
Webopedia defines a webinar or web-based seminar as a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the web using video conferencing software. Though both webinars and web conferences fall in the category of web meetings, they differ in terms of their goals and the way they conducted. Web conferencing software is designed for online meetings, trainings, content sharing, and private video chats. On the other hand, webinars are basically one-way interactions such as seminars, lectures, workshops or product and service demos. Viewers can access webinars in real time. Webinars are also flexible in format, in that the content can be recorded, transcribed, and shared or repurposed in a variety of formats. The main features of webinars are as follows:
- Involve presentations by multiple speakers to large audiences
- Allow presenters to share ideas and experiences and present engaging topics
- Are typically one-way events with a limited audience interaction
- Involve a live audience and may integrate polling to allow for remote participation
- Allow for delivery of relevant content for promoting products and services to targeted prospects and customers
GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting, DimDim, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting are popular webinar platforms. Webinar software allows speakers to share audio, documents and applications with attendees. Other capabilities of webinar software include
- Options to prerecord video or audio
- Chat filters to connect viewers and presenters with social media accounts
- Live Q&A tools, polls and feedback forms
- Options to save presentation or streaming capabilities
- Calendar scheduling and invites
- Options to integrate the webinar software with business apps and email marketing tools
- Analytics and reporting
- Custom invitations
- Engagement dashboard to keep an eye on the audience
With features like screen sharing, whiteboard and polls and surveys, webinars are an ideal tool to communicate complex topics, according to Click Meeting.
- Marketers can use webinars to explain complex ideas and business solutions and convince the management and their teams about their approach.
- Sales personnel can use webinars to make product presentations and display new features of the product. A webinar would be especially useful to get the message across if the product is a machine or software with complex features. You can show them how the machine or product works via your screen.
- Webinars allow the audience to interact via Q&A or chat if they need clarifications about the product or service.
- A webinar allows you to analyze client needs and plan accordingly to provide the necessary information.
Proper preparation, quality content, and timing are three essentials for successful webinars. Designing content to educate and train your audience on what is important to them is crucial to attract more attendees.
According to webinar expert Daniel Waas, including opportunities for the audience to interact is an essential feature of good webinars, and cites the example set by digital services provider Kainos. Kainos makes use of polls to drive audience participation in their webinar and also employs short, interesting video clips to vary the content and build audience engagement.
The popularity for webinars is growing, and marketers who take advantage of this rising demand can benefit from this top marketing strategy, especially during these challenging times. Business transcription services are available to document the content for reference and also improve webinar marketing with transcripts that can be edited, searched, re-purposed, and published.
