5 Expert Tips for Creating Webinars that Generate Sales Leads

If you've ever trained to run a marathon or competed in a triathlon, you undoubtedly sought out training tips and words of wisdom. At first, it’s challenging, but after you cross the finish line, it gets easier each time. You know what works and what doesn’t. But during those first few training sessions, you relied heavily on those tips to get you to the finish line.

Developing and promoting webinars to generate sales leads is no different from training for an endurance event. It’s much easier when you get a few tips from experts that have made the mistakes so you don’t have to.

In this blog post, you'll find easy-to-follow tips to keep in mind when preparing for your next webinar. These tips will keep you focused on providing value to your target audience, provide a great experience for your webinar attendees, and help develop a compelling presentation that generates additional interest in your products or services and nurtures your leads towards becoming loyal customers. 

Webinars for Lead Generation

Webinars are a tried and true marketing tactic, proven to garner sales leads when well-executed. Hosting a webinar establishes brand trust and authority, supplements your content marketing, and pulls in more qualified leads. In fact, 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders say a webinar is the best way to generate high-quality leads. Why?:

• They're engaging

• They work throughout the entire sales process

• Each webinar registrant is more willing to give up their information

We know the value that webinars bring to the table, but the problem is that many marketers create webinars without a defined strategy. 

5 Tips for Generating Leads with Webinars

1. Connect Your Prospects' Challenges to Your Solution

Align your target audience’s needs and desires with your need to generate leads for a specific product line or service helps you focus on the most effective topics. These topics will benefit both your target persona and your lead generation efforts.

This is the most important tip for generating qualified leads for your business. If you can create a story that ties together your prospects' challenges and how your product or service can solve that challenge, it’s a win-win for everyone. Make sure that your webinar addresses a specific need that your prospects have.

2. Focus on Education, Value, and Persuasion

As much as this is a sales presentation and you are trying to sell something, DON’T SELL SOMETHING! Focus on being educational and persuasive, not on selling. Follow-up emails, calls, and your offer are where you do your selling.

As simple as this tip seems for those who have been involved in content or inbound marketing for some time, this is a new concept for those who are not used to this "inbound methodology” that focuses on providing educational information instead of “always be closing” or pitching something.

Webinars are a great way to provide additional information to webinar attendees and shouldn’t be focused too heavily on selling something during the webinar. Tell a story and make it a compelling one—don’t use the webinar to sell… that’s what follow-up emails and your special offer are for.

3.  Relate Your Special Offer to the Webinar

The special offer should somehow relate to your main point or the case that you are stating during your presentation. A special offer will be better received by your webinar attendees if it applies to what you have been discussing.

If you're going to offer something special to webinar participants, such as an eBook, make sure that it’s related to something you discussed during the webinar. This can help to provide additional value to your webinar attendees and creates a better user experience.

4. Use Visuals

Use graphics that tell your story rather than relying on a lot of text on the screen. Even if you plan on using a script with your notes, which we recommend, nothing is more boring than a PowerPoint with bullet points and lots of text that the presenter is reading.

Most presenters struggle with putting too much text on the screen and not relying enough on graphics to tell the story. Spending a little more time choosing graphics that can tell your story can help keep your presentation interesting and stimulating for attendees.

5. Continue Providing Value

After the webinar is over, continue to provide value to your webinar attendees and those who signed up but couldn’t attend. When sending your follow-up email, include a link to a landing page with both the recorded version of the webinar and the entire presentation. This enables those who couldn’t attend the ability to view the webinar and hear your message.

Another benefit of using a landing page to host the webinar recording (and possibly a SlideShare) is that you are driving traffic back to your own website (rather than YouTube or Vimeo) and have a contact form that can be filled out after someone watches the webinar.

It’s extremely important that you send very thorough recaps of the webinar to both those that attended and to those that did not. One additional advantage to sending a thorough recap is that it creates an additional touch-point, and can reinforce your message and provide another call-to-action for your offer mentioned in the webinar.