How to convince your colleagues that webinars are the future

The reason that you are reading this, probably says enough. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Webinars are the future and webinars are here to stay. And just as with other visionaries, you need to convince the rest of your clear view on the future. Let WebinarGeek help you with that!

In this article, there are some misunderstandings that you might come across and some reasons to start with webinars now!

Webinars are just for events, right?

One of the biggest mistakes that your colleagues probably make, is thinking about webinars as a solution for one-time events. This is definitely not the case if you want to host successful events, because the audience demands consistency.

It is of course the dream that whenever your company organizes a one-time event, that your audience is already waiting with open arms to receive the invitations. That’s unfortunately not how it works.

When you want to get in touch with your audience, then they should know that you are there for them. Always. Or at least every month.

The key to success is to grow your audience and webinar skills step-by-step. The most successful presenters did not become successful by just hosting a webinar once a year.

The best way to create continuity in your events is to organize a brainstorm with your colleagues. What are the abstract, bigger subjects that you want to inform your audience(s) about? And while you are at it, which smaller subjects are connected to the bigger ones?

By doing this you create a lot of potential webinar subjects.

Webinars take a lot of time.

When you are not perceiving webinars as one-time events and you host shorter webinars more often, then it’s going to be part of the marketing and communication team’s job. Something that is a recurring project that comes back at least once a month.

Hosting that one big event in the year will even be easier than ever before since your team already has the talent and skill to organize webinars.

To make webinars a success in the organization that you are working for, I would like to end this part with one big tip when it comes to hosting webinars: Consistency is key

It’s much better to meet our audience face-to-face

Now that the world is step-by-step opening up again, it is possible to see business contacts face-to-face again. And even I must admit that I missed it a lot to meet colleagues and customers in real life instead.

But that doesn’t mean that we should all go back to how it was before. During the pandemic, a lot of companies discovered how much better a hybrid solution works. Where people are partially working remotely and partially at an office.

Cheaper than events

It also showed that reaching out to the audience can be done in a much more efficient way. Hosting a webinar is much cheaper than hosting an event. There is no cost for the catering, venue, transport of people and also lower cost to higher experts.

Easier for your audience

Some of us might not admit it, but let’s be honest. It was great to attend an online event in your PJ’s on your own comfortable sofa? And it was even better that you were already surrounded by your family the moment that you closed your laptop and that you did not need to sit in a car, train or plane for hours till you were home.

Participants even say that they like it that there is no way that they are messing up the webinar, by unmuting themselves accidentally or by turning the webcam on in uncomfortable situations.💩

Rooms become scalable

Back to the benefits for your organization. Let’s not forget to mention that besides the lower costs it’s also much more scalable to host webinars. In the situation where you have a physical event, you have a maximum number of attendees. When you reach that amount the venue is full and it would start to be uncomfortable to fit more people in. With WebinarGeek this is not a problem, you upgrade easily so that you have enough room for everyone and no one would feel squished in a room.

And let’s not forget that it also works great the other way around. When you are hiring a huge venue and no one shows up, then it for sure damages your reputation. No one likes to be the only guest at a physical event.

In WebinarGeek the presenter can see how many attendees there are, but the viewers don’t. So don’t worry if you don’t meet the expectations, the viewers have no clue.

Can’t we just use Zoom or Microsoft Teams?

Maybe the most difficult argument for you to answer whenever you consider starting with WebinarGeek. Because Zoom and/or Microsoft Teams are ‘free’ and maybe you already use Zoom or Microsoft Teams for your team calls. Well, dry your pretty tears because here are 9 tips why you should go for WebinarGeek.

1: Webinars fitting your corporate identity

A webinar is not a team meeting. Webinars are business cards that should make your potential customer’s faces go like: wow not bad*. You want a webinar that fits your corporate identity and whenever I am going to a Zoom or Microsoft teams meeting, the only thing I see is Zoom or Microsoft teams.

In WebinarGeek it is possible to implement your whole corporate identity so that it really becomes your own webinar!

* Image of your future customer seeing that you use your own brand during your webinars:

2: Higher quality

If your team does not consider doing webinars professionally, then please don’t even start. You are in it, to win it.

With WebinarGeek you can stream at the highest quality at 3,2 Mbps for amazing webinars. In plain English: super quality. It’s even possible to stream webinars with RTMP. In plain English: Television-like quality.

3: More attendees

If your team will consistently host webinars, then I can assure you that the number of viewers will increase for sure. And you know what would be annoying once you are into the webinar game? A limitation to the number of participants. In WebinarGeek it is possible to have up to 5000 viewers in a webinar. Microsoft Teams can’t handle more than 300 and if you go for the expensive add-ons from Zoom, then you will only have room for 1000.

4: Browser-based, without questions

When you bring up this argument, your colleagues might tell you that Zoom and Microsoft Teams are browser-based as well. But is it really? Because whenever you start a Zoom or Teams meeting it almost forces you to download their software, not so user friendly to your customers right?

5: No interruptions from the audience

“Can everyone please mute themselves? I can still hear someone's dog barking in the background” it just might be the most common sentence that a presenter has to say during the recording of your webinar. This means that someone just messed up the event that you have been preparing for the last couple of days. Great job, Steve.

6: All the webinars are automatically recorded.

Talking about recordings... Another great feature from WebinarGeek is that you don’t have to hit a recording button to record a webinar. This means that also the first 5 minutes of a webinar are included in the recording, not unlike Zoom where most recordings are being started when the webinar already started.

And you can automatically offer this recording to your audience, without them asking for it and without you mailing it to them. All automated, that's what you want. And do you prefer making the recording available as an on demand webinar? No problem, it’s done in one click!

7: Tons of integrations

When you start with webinars, then you’re probably already familiar with other marketing tools. Most of our users are well-trained and experienced marketers. That’s also the reason why we have lots of integrations ready so that you can take the maximum out of each webinar and automate as much as you can, just to make the workload lighter for the rest of the team.

8. Gathering data

When you plan to start with webinars, then you already have an idea of the gains of webinars. I can honestly say that gathering direct leads from webinars is something that you will achieve in the long run. One of the most important gains that you get after a first webinar is data. The data from your audience is super important and can be used in further communication with them.

With interactions, you can make the audience segment itself. When you know someone's preferences it will be easier to start a conversation with them that also feels genuine to them.

Besides the interaction data, there is much more that WebinarGeek offers. Interested? Read more about it in this blog

9. Looking more professional

The most general reason is that it is just much more professional to have your own identity, to stream in higher quality, not force your customers to download something for you and offer perfect recorded webinars to your audience.

And then I even forget to mention that WebinarGeek is 100% GDPR compliant. Want to know more about WebinarGeek’s Data Processor Agreement or privacy policy?

Read the following article

Blow them away with the facts

I hope that this article helps you to convince your colleagues that webinars are the future. Make sure that you don’t forget the three main reasons:

Your audience is ready to meet you online

People got used to webinars and found them very convenient. It’s easier for both parties and with WebinarGeek you can even get more data from your audience

Consistency accelerates optimization

Hosting a webinar once a year is fun, but will not give you the expected results. Keep on hosting webinars and make a webinar planning for next year. This way more people will gather for your webinars and hosting bigger events will become easier.

More gain, less pain

Hosting webinars is easier, cheaper, more accessible, efficient, and effective. What else are you waiting for?

PS. Do you want us to convince your colleagues? Book a meeting with one of my colleagues for a free 1-on-1 demo.

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