Your sales funnel will be successful if you devise creative ways like holding different types of webinars to push the customers from the funnel's top to bottom.
Webinars have become an essential cost-effective way to reach a wider audience for real-time communications, meetings, education, or training. They’ve also become an important instrument to push customers through the sales funnel.
Let’s discuss the nine types of webinars that will help you generate and nurture your leads.
Why Webinars?
A webinar is a form of a virtual conference where you communicate with the presenter and other attendees in real time. Webinars can help you expand your marketing reach and generate more quality leads.
Research on top content marketers' habits ranks webinar platforms among the top 5 technologies businesses use to manage their content marketing efforts. Also, a whopping 73% of sales and marketing leaders say webinars are one of the effective ways to generate quality leads.
More benefits of using webinars to nurture potential customers through the various buying stages include:
Develop meaningful relationships with your potential customers
Create awareness among potential customers about your products and services
Educate potential customers on the benefits of using your products or services
Nurture customer relationships to encourage customer loyalty
To build credibility in your niche among your customer base
Improve your customer onboarding process
Note: you will enjoy these benefits once you familiarize yourself with the different types of webinars, their purpose, and the goals they will enable you to achieve.
Define The Stages of a Customer Journey
Your customers undergo a series of stages before buying a product or service that best fits their needs. These steps are known as the buyer's journey. Now, let’s discuss these steps so you can understand them better.
The buyer's journey
The Awareness Stage
In the awareness stage, your potential customer realizes they have a problem and starts to find a solution. A customer in this stage knows their pain points but cannot clearly define their desired solution.
Therefore, the customer goes searching for possible solutions to their pain points. The customer discovers various products or services they could use to solve their problems.
The Consideration Stage
At this stage, customers are fully aware of their pain points and have various solutions to these challenges. So, the customer's main challenge is narrowing down these options to one.
The customer wants proof of which of these options works best. They are also looking for a brand that will give them a better deal on the solution they seek.
The Decision/ Purchase Stage
At this stage, a customer has already decided on which product or service to buy to solve their pain points. However, that does not mean the customer won't still walk away from the deal.
Remember, the customer has yet to make the purchase. So, they may change their mind if the price changes, complex purchase/checkout process, or lack of warranty for the product or service.
Customer Retention
The post-purchase phase is where the customer interacts with your product or services. Depending on their experience, they will become loyal customers and advocate for your products and services.
Your post-purchase relationship with the customer will determine whether they remain loyal to your brand. For example, your follow-up communications will improve their loyalty levels.
Now that you understand the various stages of a customer buyer journey, let's talk about the webinars you will host at every stage.
Webinars to Host at Awareness Stage
1. Educational Webinar
As we have established, customers in the awareness stage seek information on their pain points and possible solutions. Hosting educational webinars will place you in an ideal position to be a reliable source of information for potential customers at the awareness stage.
You will plan your educational webinar based on specific topics about the customer's pain points. But avoid using it to promote your brand or products.
You will not attract enough target audiences if potential customers realize the webinar is solely focused on promoting your products or brand.
That's why inviting external guest speakers to make presentations during the webinar is a smarter move. For example, invite an industry expert to discuss emerging customer needs in your niche.
2. Q&A Webinars
What better way to help the potential customer learn their pain point solutions than letting them ask their most pressing questions? That's the whole idea of an Ask Me Anything (AMA) webinar.
You offer potential customers the opportunity to ask questions about their needs. It is also an opportunity to learn how to customize your product and service offering to make them a better choice for the customers in the consideration stage.
Set up your Q&A webinar to have a panel of experts that will answer questions from your audience live. Every participant is allowed to ask or upvote a question asked by another audience.
The panelist can decide to make a discussion out of certain questions, or one of them can relay the answer to the audience directly. The promise of audience participation in the learning process will attract a larger target audience to your webinar.
3. Interview Webinar
An interview webinar creates awareness around various issues facing the customer or the industry. It is perfect for customers who want to avoid all the promotional noise during the awareness stage.
It is also a perfect opportunity to establish your credibility as an industry expert. The interview will cover various topics related to industry trends, news, and current events.
Also, collaborate with other industry stakeholders to form a panel. It will make your webinar a one-stop information hub for customers as they listen to various industry experts' opinions and insights on various issues.
Both Q&A and interview webinars create significant awareness as customers associate your brand with reliable information.
Webinars to Host at Consideration Stage
You have already captured the most leads from your awareness stage webinars. But you still have to nurture them to get them to decide to buy your products or services.
4. Case Study Webinars
The case study webinar is a live testimonial where you inform your products or services. Your case study webinar will help you continue informing while encouraging your prospective customers to choose your brand.
Your case study webinar will be more successful if you focus on topics or case studies related to customer pain points, needs, and challenges.
For example, create a webinar based on a case study of how a customer used your product to resolve pain points. Be sure to share the whole experience, including the results obtained by the customer.
5. Live Workshop Webinars
A live workshop webinar allows you to showcase how your products or services are best positioned to solve the challenges faced by your prospective customers. It is a form of a live product review.
The webinar is customer-centric, as you will only address the specific problems raised by your live audience. Your presentation will be on how your product or services enable the customer to solve the challenge they just described to you.
6. Research Summary Webinar
Market research allows you to gain valuable insights into your product performance. It also allows you to collect valuable experiences, opinions, feedback, and reviews from customers who have used the product or service.
A research summary webinar is your golden opportunity to share the results of this study with your target customers. This webinar aims to offer customers more reasons to trust your products and services in the consideration stage.
Types of Webinars to Host at the Decision Stage
Congratulations on finally convincing the customer to buy your product or service. However, you must still see the deal over the line to ensure the customer is fully satisfied with your products or services.
The following webinars will help you seal the deal.
7. Product Demo Webinars
The customer knows that your product is the best-suited option to solve their needs. But that doesn't mean they fully know how to use your product to solve their specific needs effectively.
That's what your product demo webinar comes in. You’ll make a presentation on how customers can derive value from using your product or services the right way.
Your presentation will describe the product features and how they solve customer needs. Also, include examples of benefits customers can enjoy from using your products or services.
Webinars to Host at Customer Retention Stage
It will cost you five to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Also, an existing customer is 50% more likely to try another of your new products.
Based on these stats, you need webinars to retain your existing customers.
8. Customer Onboarding Webinar
You have to host a customer onboarding webinar if you are in the service industry. It is your opportunity to officially set the tone for your relationship with the new customer.
You will thank the customer for choosing to work with you. Also, introduce and integrate the customer into your systems while offering them training.
9. New Feature Launches Webinars
You want the existing customers to remain loyal to your brand. As such, they should be among the first people you inform about any changes you make to your products or services.
Your new feature launches webinar will include a description of all the changes you have made to your product. Then, explain to the customers how these changes affect them and the benefits they will enjoy using your products with the new features.
Book Your Webinar Speaker Here
Book Marie today, an industry expert on system efficiency and entrepreneurial balance in your next webinar. Marie will help your customers understand how to optimize their systems for higher productivity and improved overall performance.