I was on a call with a client recently and she told me that she was thinking about hosting a webinar, but wasn’t sure if it was the right strategy, so we started talking it out and I wanted to share some of that with you today.
Webinars are a great way to reach your audience, but there are some things that you have to take into consideration before you make your final decision.
Here are the pros and cons of hosting a webinar to build your list and sell your product or service.
Pros of Webinars
They’re proven to work
The first benefit of webinars are that they are absolutely 100% proven to work.
With any tried and true marketing strategy, there are heaps of data to back up the fact that hosting webinars are a great way to sell your product or service. People have made millions of dollars with just using a webinar strategy and the process is replicable.
Learn the steps and processes that go into hosting a webinar and you have a proven strategy to work with.
They make it easy to teach a large subject
The second reason I like using webinars is that they allow you to teach more in-depth subjects and provide a TON of value to your audience.
Webinars are usually between 60 and 90 minutes, which gives you the opportunity to deliver a lot of value and really make an impact, a big change for the better, on your audience’s life.
It also helps you build your know, like, and trust factor much faster than other types of opt-ins. Your audience gets to see you and hear you speak instead of only read your words, which is much more impactful and speeds up the know, like, and trust factor growth that you need in order to have anyone purchase from you.
They position you as an expert
In addition to allowing you to teach a deeper subject, webinars also perfectly position you as the expert on your topic.
With webinars being such a tried and true strategy, when people see them, they automatically make the connection that you must be an expert because you’re hosting this webinar. And when they show up and see you speak, if you do it right, that connection will be cemented in their mind.
Then going forward, you will always be who they think of in regards to your topic, because you’re the expert that facilitated the amazing results they had from your webinar.
Cons of Webinars
They’re time consuming
They’re not only time consuming for you, but for your audience too.
I don’t know about you, but getting a solid 60-90 minute block of time to sit and focus on one thing can be difficult. It might be information that I desperately need to hear, but I just don’t have the time to focus on a training for a solid hour and a half.
And this is how a lot of people feel about sitting on long webinars, which can either make them a hard sell or keep people who sign up from actually showing up.
They’re decreasing in popularity
A few years ago you would see ads for webinars every time you logged into Facebook or opened your email. Now, not so much.
The truth is webinars have been decreasing in popularity. With the rise of multi-day challenges and interactive workshops, webinars have lost some of their appeal with consumers.
But this doesn’t mean that webinars are gone for good. They certainly aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but we have to consider all of the options that we have for engaging with our audience.
They’re more complicated than people think
The final webinar con is that they’re much more complicated than people think when they begin. It’s okay if you’re prepared for it, but a lot of the time people don’t realize how much behind the scenes work goes into one.
The first part of that is the stats. Not only do you have to pay attention to the page and email stats, but you also have the added videos stats.
Where do people drop off? How many people saw the offer? How many people stay to the end? How many people have purchased? Is there something we need to change in the presentation? Do we have to change the pitch?
Then there are the added complications with the emails. With webinars, the email replies should be much more personal and based on if they watched the webinar.
How can you send emails to the people who missed the webinar? What about people who dropped off before the offer? And the people who dropped off after the offer? Where are they going to go next? How are you going to coordinate all of this?
When you really get into the details of a hosting a webinar you realize that it’s a lot of work and it can get complicated. You need to know this before you jump into creating one.
Should you host a webinar?
Now that you know the pros and cons, weigh your options so you can make an informed decision, and choose the strategy that feels best to you.
If webinars resonate with you and you feel like you’re being called to do a webinar, the do the webinar. If you’re thinking that you HAVE to do a webinar, but aren’t really excited about it, pick a different strategy.
It’s all about what is going to resonate with your audience and the energy that you put behind it. If you’re excited about hosting a webinar, your audience is probably going to be excited about attending it (so long as your topic is on point 😉).
Speak soon,
