A webinar, otherwise called a web seminar, is an online event where you share your knowledge, teach users, and interact with a broad audience base. There are a significant number of benefits to using webinars as a marketing tool. For example, webinars generate more leads, increase customer loyalty, and increase conversion rates.

In 2021, there’s no doubt about whether you should be creating webinars – you should! Your competitors have webinars and are using them to great success, so you should be too. However, many companies still struggle to think of relevant and engaging content for their webinars. In an ideal world, you would first get an excellent idea that is best suited to the webinar format. However, many companies start the other way around. They look at the benefits they stand to gain from creating a webinar series, and they decide to start one. Only they are stuck for ideas. What should my webinar series be? What do my customers want to learn?

Today we’re going to be looking at why your support professionals should be an integral part of your webinar series. If you’re stuck for ideas, this guide should give you some new inspiration and keep your webinar growing from strength to strength.

The Benefits of Webinars – Why You Should Have a Webinar Series

According to reports into Webinars, 87% of online businesses currently use webinars as a marketing tool. Additionally, 83% of marketers say that webinars are an effective strategy for increasing ROI. Here are some other statistics you need to know in 2021, and why they’re important.

57% of marketers run 50 webinars annually.

With 50 webinars each year (roughly one webinar a week with a few weeks break), you have an increased opportunity to attract more leads and ultimately increase your revenue. However, this will only work if you create compelling webinar content.

A single webinar could get you over 1,000 leads.

This statistic doesn’t need much explaining. More leads mean more conversions and more income for your business. Having leads alone doesn’t necessarily increase your revenue but having high-quality leads does. The prospects listening to your webinars are high-quality leads because:

• They believe your business has high authority in the industry – Why would anyone choose to learn something from a company they don’t believe has high authority? Trust is an integral part of the process.
• They are taking considerable chunks out of their day to listen – They are demonstrating high interest in your product or brand. This likely means they are considering your product over others.
• Interactivity – Webinars are typically highly interactive. This means your webinar host can answer questions in real-time, accelerating the time to conversion. Through a webinar, you can push a prospect several steps up the sales ladder.
• According to one report, 60% of webinars are designed towards creating loyal customers. For prospects, this means they get exposed to your most loyal customers and see the benefits of your product with more clarity. Again, this can accelerate the purchasing decision.

Beyond the statistics, here are the top reasons to host webinars:

• They help you build your contact listen – Every listener is a new contact for your database.
• They establish you as an expert in your field.
• They allow you to address common doubts about your product, eliminating the concerns of wary prospective buyers.
• You can record your webinars. Once recorded, they become an additional form of marketing content you can share to drive more traffic to your website.
• The people who sign up are demonstrating interest in your product and become qualified leads. It’s easier to nurture and convert qualified leads than their unqualified counterparts. 
• Webinars are a great branding tool. With each webinar, you build your brand awareness and strengthen your brand voice.

Why Your Company Support Professionals Should Be an Integral Part Of Your Company Webinar Series

In this section, we’re going to look at the different types of webinars, and how your support professionals can get involved in each type. There should always be a primary goal or objective behind each webinar, and this is what we mean by type of webinar. Webinars are typically segmented by their purpose – what they hope to achieve. By doing this, you zero in on the results and focus more intently on how to achieve these results while designing your webinar.

Lead Nurturing Webinars

Lead nurturing webinars are typically educational in nature and are focused on growing the relationship between your brand and the listeners. These webinars are usually designed for prospects already in your database. The listeners already know what your product is and have a decent understanding of what you do.

Here are the three primary types of lead nurturing webinars and how you can include your support staff in them:

Live Workshop Webinars

These webinars are focused towards users of your product who are struggling with an issue. Typically, people who sign up are asked to submit their problem beforehand if they have one. This way, the host can design the webinar to address these problems.

There are three ways you can include your support staff in this type of webinar:

• Ask your tech support team or product support team to review all the issues before the webinar. They can tell the host the best way the user can overcome the product issue. It’s then for the host to articulate this in the best way.
• Someone from the tech support or product support team can host the webinar. These employees are experts in your product and will likely be better equipped than the host to answer questions on the fly.
• The third option is the in-between. The support team helps the host create the responses to questions before the webinar, but also joins the event to answer questions in real-time.

Product Demo Webinar

According to one report, 67% of consumers start their buying journey digitally. These consumers browse the internet for options, and if they’re interested in your product, might join your webinar to get more information. When it comes to more expensive products or complex software products, webinars are a great way to feel out the product before buying. These webinars are primarily focused around buyer information. The host shouldn’t assume the user has prior knowledge of the product – they are coming in as a beginner.

These are the ways you should include your support teams in this type of webinar:

• Your support teams understand better than anyone in the business the kinds of common problems people encounter when using your product. They are intimately aware of what stumbling blocks your customers face. They should pass this information on to the host since these questions are bound to come up.
• Customer support teams know what your customers love and don’t love about your product. When demonstrating how your product works, it’s a good idea to lead with the best features. It’s also vital to understand the difference between what you think are the best features, and what your customers think are the best features.

Customer Onboarding Webinar

Customer onboarding webinars set the tone of your relationship with the customer. For many buyers, the onboarding stage is crucial in how they see the company going forward. You may have already convinced these customers to buy, but if the onboarding process goes badly, they might never buy from you again. If you run a SaaS business, a poor customer onboarding experience can devastate your long term prospects. At its core, customer onboarding is customer experience. Customer experience is a top 3 priority for businesses in 2021 because of its vast potential to increase customer loyalty and revenue.

Your customer service team should be an integral part of your customer onboarding webinar. They understand the teething problems your customers have when they first become a customer. For example, they know how many users struggle to understand the tutorials, struggle to sign up to the loyalty program, and so on.

8 Tips For Creating Excellent Webinars

1. Go hard on visuals – Webinars are a visual format, so you need to ace this aspect. Visuals help keep the viewers focused on your content and stop their minds wandering. Use lots of slides, graphs, images, and animations.
2. Highlight – if you want to draw the users attention to something, then highlight it on the screen. Most webinar software will have built-in drawing tools, so make sure to use them. By drawing and highlighting, you make the webinar more interactive. It feels less like a presentation aimed at everyone and more like a one on one seminar personally tailored towards your current participants.
3. Have a questions slide – Whether it’s at the end of the webinar or someplace in the middle, you’ll likely be taking questions at some point. It’s a good idea to have a dedicated “questions” slide. The slide can be something simple like “Any questions?”. This slide’s purpose is to ensure you’re not stuck on some slide that isn’t relevant to the current discussion. If you stop randomly on one slide and then ask for questions, it can break the webinar’s flow and make it look less professional.
4. Offer copies of the slides – Participants might want to refer back to the webinar in the future to revisit some content for help. For example, if they forget what a specific part of your product does or get stuck using a feature. They might not want to sit through the entire recording again, so it’s a good idea to offer a digital copy of all the slides so they can flick through and find what they need.
5. Remove distractions before going live – Turn off your phone so it doesn’t ding during the webinar. Put your dog in the next room. Put a note on your door saying not to ring the bell. It looks unprofessional if you get disturbed during the webinar. Distractions also make it harder for you to get back into the flow.
6. Have another colleague ask questions – Typically, webinars shouldn’t be solo affairs. It’s a good idea to bring in other colleagues, and especially support professionals who have a deep understanding of your customers. If you have to flick between screens to get the questions from Twitter or an IM chat, this can distract and cause a lag in the flow. Instead, ask one of your colleagues to take control of monitoring questions and dictating them to you.
7. Tell stories – Stories are a great way to get your message across engagingly and compellingly. Stories of customer’s overcoming challenges through your product help bring your product, and it’s benefits to life in a manner other modes of delivery can’t.
8. Get your branding right – Remember, webinars are a great way to increase brand awareness and strengthen your brand voice. Your webinar should aesthetic should closely follow your website regarding colors, fonts, logos, and style of images and animations. The same is true for your voice – use language that your brand uses on your website and social media.