How To Use Webinars For Successful Online Promotion
Chances are you have heard about webinars. You have probably even attended a few. That’s because webinars are extremely popular right now. All of the big name gurus, big and small brands are using them to take their businesses to new levels.
However, what exactly is a webinar and how can you use it to promote your products and services online?
What Is A Webinar?
Let’s start by defining what a webinar is. A webinar is simply a web based seminar where you can share valuable information with a target audience. Notice the word target, this is one of the most important benefits of webinars.
Since the audience has to register to attend a webinar, they are already pre-sold on the topics that will be discussed and so they are highly targeted and convert better than other types of traffic.
One of the magical aspects of webinars that makes them so effective is a one on one connection with the audience. Besides being able to demonstrate a product, service or idea, your voice can engage with your leads and your personality and credibility can keep them around for a lifetime.
Now as you can imagine, there are many different ways you can use webinars to serve business needs, here are three of the most important ones.
#1 – Build Brand Awareness
One of the best ways to build brand awareness online is by offering a webinar to your prospective clients and customers. The webinar can be either free or paid, this really depends on the goals that you wish to achieve.
The main goal of the webinar should be to provide value. You want people to leave the webinar thinking you are an expert and the one they should seek out when they need help.
The more webinars you have the more brand awareness you will be able to build and the more you will become the “go to” brand in your niche.
#2 – To Promote A New Product
The reason that webinars are so useful for product launches is because the Webinar platform offers various media that can be used to present ideas, media that is much more powerful than a simple text sales page.
There are videos, images, desktop sharing, Powerpoint slides and a lot more. For this reason, product launches and webinars seem to go hand and hand these days. This is because webinars are a sure way to increase sales and reduce refund rates.
If you have a new product coming out people will want to know what it’s about before they invest in it. A webinar allows you to educate your audience and actually show them how your product can help them and solve their problems. Along with the great media options there is also the power of your voice that can be used to sway and convert those in the audience who maybe on the fence.
During the webinar be sure to allow for a live question and answer session. This gives potential customers the opportunity to have their questions immediately answered.
You can also offer the product at a special discounted price for all who stayed until the end of the webinar. This is a great way to get sales coming in quickly and build a wide customer base.
#3 – To Sell Affiliate Products
Not only can you sell your own products with a webinar, but, you can also make money by promoting affiliate products as well.
A good way to do this is to interview the creator of the affiliate product you are promoting. Ask them a serious of questions. Try to keep the interview to around 60 minutes. That’s the perfect time for a webinar.
Another way to promote affiliate products through webinars is show them in action, such as the case with a software or service that can be demonstrated within the webinar.
Be sure to add your affiliate link to the buy now button so you will get paid for every sale.
Archives
Place archives for all the webinars you have done on your website so they may continue to serve your goals for an unlimited amount of time by engaging new traffic and leads.
What Content Ranks Best In Today’s Fussy Google SERPS
I am often amazed when people ask what type of content ranks best in today’s search engine. The answer is and will always be the same, Google wants one thing, and that is quality content. Google strives to provide its users with the best possible results.
There are several reasons why some sites rank at the top and others rank at the very bottom.
Two of the main ones are:
- Delivering high quality original content that is both legitimate and credible
- Updating the site with fresh content on a regular basis
So first and foremost, stop trying to game the search engines with black hat techniques. Yes, they may work for a short while, but eventually the search engines will catch up and put your site in the sandbox.
Once in the sandbox Google won’t send you any more traffic. Instead of spending hours trying to find a way to trick the search engines why not spend an hour or two writing a valuable piece of content the search engines and people will love?
There are two main things Google looks at to determine if content is of good quality.
Engaging Users
The first one is engagement. How engaging is your content? Are people actually reading the entire article or are they hitting the back button as soon as they see it? This is how Google measures engagement. They want to know how long people are sticking around to read your content. If they stick around for several minutes, they know you are providing value. This metric is measured by what is called Bounce Rate, and lower bounce rates can help rankings.
If users typically click back, and your site has consistently high bounce rates, this can affect rankings in Google.
Backlinks
The second thing they look at is linking patterns. Google and other search engines learned very early on that people link to content they consider valuable. Content that is considered useful almost always is shared by users. Content that is considered useless doesn’t.
In addition, while linking algorithms have advanced quite a bit over the last several years, the basic principles of this concept still hold true. So if you want your content to rank make sure it’s valuable. Make sure it helps the end user. That’s the key to getting your content ranked. There are no magic methods or solutions.
Make Content For Users Not Search Engines
I am sure you have heard this said before and it’s true. When one creates a web page for search engines their focus is keywords, making sure the Google bot understands what keywords the page should rank for, and overstuffing the content with such to the point that it may become unreadable to the human eye.
However, these types of black hat tactics rarely work, and if they do, it’s only for a short while and then the site is hit with a big fat penalty and ends up in the black hole of SERPS.
Make every effort to provide useful content. It’s sort of a merry go around:
Useful content leads to happy users and a low bounce rate, happy users link back and/or spread the word about the content through social media, which leads to more traffic, which leads to better rankings in Google.
Therefore, it’s all about useful content. That’s what Google wants and that’s what your potential customers want.
Anytime someone uses Google to make a search, they have an intent. They want to either find out about something, learn about something, solve a problem, buy something or treat something.
Google is going to provide users with information that fulfills that intent.
So do your research and find out what type of content your target audience is searching for.
Make it a point to construct your content around their wants and needs. This will not only increase your rankings, but it will also increase your conversions and sales.
The one thing to keep in mind is people read content, not the search engines. Do away with the keyword stuffing and anything else that is designed to manipulate the search engines. Write good content that people will love to read and your content will be ranked.
Is Your Content Worthy Of A Like Or A Plus?
Content marketing has become extremely effective, and is a major component of a well-rounded marketing strategy. The method is particularly powerful on social media site like Facebook and Google+ due to the potential of great content going viral and helping amass followers and potential consumers of your brand and products very quickly.
But just posting content alone isn’t enough to harness the full power of social media. In order to gain followers, likes, and have your content and brand shared, your content must stand out and speak above all the other the noise the socially savvy online audience is surrounded by daily.
Here are some ways to make sure your content is worthy of a like or plus on social media.
Boast Your Brand
Social media is an excellent venue to saturate with your brand. Making sure that your company profiles and pages all have consistent brand names, logos, and design incorporated is a great way to obtain recognition of your market position and services. You can do this by using your branding or logo in the profile and cover photo fields of your profiles.
It’s also a great idea to make sure that your content always reflects your company missions, and any original content you’re creating and posting should have the same look and feel as your website and other marketing materials. This helps people more quickly recognize you, and if you’re spending the time to write and distribute excellent content, you want to make sure people associate it to your company.
Post Interesting, Interactive Content
Before you begin your content creation or procurement phase, take the time to do some research on the habits of your audience on social media. By learning and understanding what they’re interested in, liking, and sharing, you can customize your content to align with what they want and will consume hungrily.
Once you have a good understanding of what your ideal social consumer likes, create content around that desire. Take it up a level, and make sure it is compelling, interesting, and engaging. A great way to accomplish this is to make your content posts interactive by encouraging comments, and rewarding behavior you want to see such as post sharing or commenting.
Use Diverse Media
Text, images, and video are all options in posting on social media sites. Images stand out and capture audience attention. This is proven by the tremendous success of Pinterest for business with these impressive stats:
- 85% of Internet users on Pinterest are female
- 100 million users are on Pinterest
- 47% of Pinterest users purchased a product based on pins
- $58.95 is the average sales order value for visitors referred by Pinterest
- 67% Of Pinned Content Is From A Business Site
- 82% Of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity
Impressed? You should be.
Video is known to increase sales page conversions by 50%. There are more than 1 billion YouTube, which equates to 1/3 of all people on the Internet who watch hundreds of millions of hours on of video daily generating billions of views.
Video is key in any marketing plan, and in social media, it can be used to really entice and impress your target audience earning you those likes and shares that you need to propel your marketing campaign.
Make Sure You’re Present, And Active
Posting engaging and interactive content is vital to successful social media marketing, but alone, it isn’t quite enough. You need to be present on your page, posting often, and adding color and expertise in the comments as well. This creates a two-way dialogue with you and your followers, and shows them that you’re listening and care enough to respond.
Know When To Post
As you monitor your posts, and the attention each receives, pay attention to any trends or patterns in when your audience is most responsive and active on your page and posts. As you understand, better when people are online and most engaged with your posts, you could plan your future content during a time that most people will be likely to see it and have the chance to absorb it and take action.
Ask Questions
Asking a question along with your content you post will generate much more response, and you can use it to get a better read on what people think about what you’re posting, and adjust future content if needed. You can also be strategic in what you’re asking to subtly pitch your products or services. Think about the struggle or pain points your audience experiences, and ask a question that will generate a lot of commentary. After comments start coming in, you can position your offerings as the solution to the problem you posed in the form of a question.
By paying attention to these things, you can ensure that your content is like-worthy, and delight your consumers as well.
