Webinars 101:
Low-Cost, Accessible and Sticky
Webinars are growing in popularity as more and more site owners recognize the advantages of these “web broadcasts” in reaching prospective buyers, keeping the site fresh and creating stickiness – those sweet repeat visitors who most often become customers.
If you haven’t considered a webinar, give it some thought. You can do it on the cheap, it lives forever in your archive and, if you know your subject, it can be an on-going, passive income money maker – if you know your subject.
What’s a webinar?
A seminar online. There are webinars on everything from how to cable stitch to how to market anything and everything you can imagine (and some you couldn’t possibly imagine, too).
The medium is compressed digital video (DV) and you can keep it simple or produce something worthy of a
Webinars are different from web casts in a few ways. First, web casts are one way communications. The broadcaster speaks, the audience listens. No give and take. Webinars usually employ web-based communications to allow speaker and listeners to communicate during the presentation. This isn’t always the case but it is the norm.
Webinars are also scheduled events. Web casts are usually available any time a visitor clicks on the web cast link. Webinars are scheduled for a specific time. Invitees or paying subscribers are given the scheduled time of broadcast along with an access code.
Finally, webinars are primarily instructional or educational. That’s one reason they’ve become so popular with big corporations. Employees don’t have to travel to hear the expert. They can log on in the office, interact with the expert, ask questions and learn. No travel expenses incurred.
How do I crate a webinar?
You need a digital video camera with decent resolution. This will create your source material so the higher resolution of the source the better looking the final image that appears on screen for your viewers.
Now, if your webinar is long (anything over 20 minutes) or it includes detailed facts, figures and other dense information, graphs and charts are important. If you just lock down the camera and talk for an hour ( a talking head), at least some of your audience is going to dose off. Wouldn’t you?
Have an agenda, a list of topics to cover in the hour but don’t script the webinar. There’s nothing more boring than listening to someone read for an hour. Webinars are intended to foster discussion. Often, you can start by asking a provocative question and allow the participants to express themselves. This is an excellent icebreaker, especially for listeners unfamiliar with the format.
Have something to say! It can not be said enough. 90% of current webinars are weak on useful content, long on sales hype. In order to create a successful webinar, one you can monetize, you need new information, a new perspective, a new procedure – something of value to the listener. Encourage visitors to email questions for more detailed answers.
During the post-production phase, add intro and outro music, a title frame, add text to emphasize key points, use bulleted lists to make information clearer and remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Let’s say your webinar is about buying properties in the wine country of
Marketing Your Webinar
You’ll need to start promoting your webinar well in advance of the intended broadcast date. Blogs are good, free sources of announcements. So are websites dedicated to the topic of your webinar – especially if the website owners receive a portion of the proceeds for their efforts.
Syndicated content sites are also a good way to go with an announcement of broadcst times. And be sure to point out that, even if a subscriber is unavailable for broadcast, the full webinar is contained in the site’s archives for viewing at the individual’s convenience. The only thing missing is the give and take you get as an attendee of the live webinar.
Monetizing Your Webinars
Obviously you’re not going to all of this trouble for the fun of it. You need to recoup production expenses and pay the rent. So, how do you generate revenue from your webinar?
Lots of ways. The fact is content development is pricey. A good copywriter can earn $8,000 for writing a four-page sales letter. (Of course, the writer is a proven professional and the letter draws $100,000 in net earnings.) Good deal. The key to content development costs is to find as many uses for the same content as possible.
1. Prepare and promote a series of learning modules – a seven week, online webinar on managing prospective clients, closing sales and other genuinely useful information on the topic of your expertise.
This way, you’ll end up with seven, one-hour learning modules and that’s a lot of content.
Visitors pay a lower subscription rate. One seminar = $100. All seven seminars = $500. You only need 5 or six subscribers to cover production expenses. Everything after that is passive income. Advertise the modules and their broadcast dates and sign up a few viewers. The more, obviously, the better.
2. Keep the webinars on your site for a while with subscriber, PIN access. This way, you’ll still generate income from work that was completed six months earlier. Over the months, you’ll see fewer and fewer subscribers because everybody willing to pay to see and hear what you have to say has seen and heard what you have to say. 12 months is the max you should leave any webinar online. And if the webinar is highly topical, i.e. the outlook for natural gas in the next 12 months, the webinar has an even shorter shelf life.
This is also a great way to create site stickiness. Subscribers will come back weekly for the next webinar.
3. Package the webinar as a series of downloads. Customers receive one weekly automatically. This allows the subscriber to watch, stop, watch some more and control the flow of information from his or her system. Plus, they now own the webinar. It’s on their hard drives.
4. Convert your webinar series into a series of DVDs. Seven webinars, seven DVDs. These are especially useful in school environments where teachers can start the webinar and project it to a large classroom. It’s also a good tool (depending on topic of course) for corporations, associations and even individuals who want to show what you have to say to more than one person at a time, e.g. service clubs, scout groups or similar organizations that have a regular schedule of meetings.
5. Create ancillary materials. Workbooks, copy masters, charts and graphs, directions, activities that demonstrate your points – these are all low cost items that can be printed cheaply. However, they increase the value equation in the buyer’s mind. These materials should be sold as part of the entire package.
6. Go global. Hire a translation company to convert your webinars into Spanish, French, German, Japanese – languages of affluent countries in which employees, professionals, moms and dads and others can access your webinar package, now repurposed as a DVD kit with ancillary materials.
Webinars are a great revenue source once you’ve invested in their production. Use them live, use them for online subscription revenue and as a hard copy DVD for use in front of large groups.
The popularity of webinars – good ones, spread by word of mouth. One HR professional sees it and recommends it to another in a different division. Do it right and webinars will generate nice profits. Waste people’s time or bore them to tears and you’ll lose your investment in the production.
