Webinars are not only just an economical alternative to hosting an actual event but they also provide a lot of other benefits such as building brand awareness, generating leads, and creating content that can be repurposed later for various uses for brands all over the world.
In this blog, we’re going to take a look at the best webinar services and understand the various nuances in the world of webinars and live streaming in general.
Webinars: An Overview
The term “webinar” is basically a combination of two words – web and seminar. Naturally, as the word suggests, it refers to a seminar that is conducted over the internet as opposed to a seminar that takes place in real life.
Live video webinar was a concept that was developed alongside live streaming. Most brands and companies realized the power of webinars really early and capitalized on it. These days, there are a lot of dedicated webinar technology providers that concern themselves only with webinar solutions.
These days even social media live streaming is also becoming more mainstream with almost every major social media platform investing in their own live-streaming platforms that integrate with the social media platforms natively allowing brands to reach their online audiences in a much more direct manner.
Online webinar platforms these days come with great features that provide a scalable solution so anyone from a single person to a huge multinational company can use webinars to create value for their audiences.
The cost of webinar service providers has also become more affordable as the underlying technologies behind the solutions became more cost-effective to implement. With low cost and even free live video webinar solutions, webinars have become even more common now.
Why Use Webinars?
There are a lot of benefits that come with hosting an on demand webinar for all types of companies. Here are some of the benefits of hosting webinars for most companies:
1. Webinars can help in generating leads.
A live video webinar is one of the best marketing tools available today. As you can host a large number of people on a single webinar, you will have the opportunity to collect a lot of leads.
Attendees of a webinar are already interested in your product which means most of the leads you would extract from a webinar will already be qualified to some extent.
2. Webinars build brand value cumulatively.
Most companies that host webinars use the engagement features of online webinar platforms to the full extent and ensure that every attendee of the webinar interacts with your brand tens or hundreds of time depending on the software you use.
By hosting webinars regularly and using the best webinar services, you build up the value of your brand over time to a very targeted audience.
3. Webinars are very cost-effective.
The best thing about a webinar is that they are an extremely cost-effective method of hosting a seminar to a large audience. Even though webinar technology providers offer sophisticated and expensive solutions, the initial cost of hosting a webinar can just be a good microphone and camera.
Essentially, webinars are a really affordable tool for generating leads and marketing to a large audience at the same time.
How to Host a Webinar?
Hosting an on demand webinar used to be a pretty costly and time-intensive process but there are a lot of great webinar services these days which make hosting a webinar a hassle-free process.
Online webinar platforms make it really simple for almost everyone to host a webinar these days and connect with audiences all over the world.
A simple step by step guide to hosting a webinar:
- The first step to create webinar live video streaming content is to get all the necessary equipment. At the very least, you would need a decent camera and a decent microphone in order to capture the video and audio for the webinar.
- You also need to set up your networking so you have access to a fast internet connection as hosting a webinar requires a really fast and stable internet connection in order to ensure that the viewers of the stream do not suffer from any glitches or lag.
- Unlike a live stream, creating the content for a webinar takes a long time and must be done carefully and with a proper thought process behind it. All the best webinar services allow you to present slides and ensuring the content of the slides for the webinar is good is vital if you’re serious about webinars.
- Most professional companies use dedicated live streaming companies in order to get the best output when it comes to their webinars. By using the services of a dedicated live streaming company like Dreamcast, the brands only need to worry about what’s important – the content of the webinar.
Webinars and Live Streaming Strategies for Corporates
The biggest users of webinars are corporates as they stand to gain the most out of webinars. Naturally, webinars are a prominent feature of most live streaming strategies for most brands and are used by most brands to establish themselves as a thought leader in their niche.
By using webinars as part of their live streaming strategy, most corporates achieve not only indirect benefits such as a better brand presence but also direct benefits such as better leads and returns.
Conclusion
Webinars are one of the best ways to reach a wide audience at a very low cost. They are used by brands all over the world for various marketing purposes. In fact, if you’re serious about video marketing and not focusing on webinars, you’re already behind the curve.
The challenge for webinars these days lies in creating more engaging content and higher quality content that can later be repurposed for other purposes which makes webinars something that keeps giving cumulative returns over the years.