Webinars provide the opportunity to share your unique perspective on the most important topics in your market, with access to a massive audience. Better still, the interactive nature of a live webinar can offer the same personal touch of face-to-face interaction with the convenience of broadcasting from anywhere in the world.
Looking to host webinars of your own? We scoured the web – and referred to our experience hosting our own webinars – to find five musts of a good webinar.
Promote your webinar with the right messaging, on the right channels
Before your first webinar even begins, it’s essential that you promote it strategically. Once you determine the primary topic of your webinar, put some thought into its title. This article on Medium provides a great overview of how to think of a catchy, descriptive, marketable title. Then, leverage your existing social media, email and print initiatives you’re already engaging for lead generation efforts to promote registration as well.
Pro Tip: You can use a free service like bit.ly to convert your long webinar registration URL to a short one to make it easier to copy down when used in post cards or other print advertisements.
For more insights into leveraging social media to reach the right audience, check out these resources: 5 Ways to Increase Your Social Media Leads | How Should Real Estate Agents Use Social Media? | 5 Ways Social Media Can Grow Your Real Estate Business
Show your work
Prospective clients want a real estate agent who can demonstrate extensive knowledge of their market’s current conditions and insight into trends that could play a role in their home buying or selling decision. This is where a webinar really allows you to shine. But it’s not enough to merely tell viewers about the market. To offer a truly engaging, credible webinar presentation, show the facts that are informing your analysis utilizing the latest market statistics.
Incorporate time to respond to viewer questions
No matter how compelling the prepared portion of your presentation happens to be, to host a truly engaging webinar, you’ll want to allow viewers the opportunity to ask questions during the proceedings. Most webinar services, like GoToWebinar or Adobe Connect, give viewers easy access to a space to type any questions that come to mind. All you must do is decide at which point(s) you want to respond to the questions.
While you can offer to respond to answers individually offline, if you feel comfortable giving the answer live, it’s to your benefit – and that of your viewers – to do so. Don’t know the answer? Don’t be shy about acknowledging that you’ll need to research the question but that you’ll be sure to get back to the viewer. Then, share the answer along with any post-webinar follow-up you do. Your viewers will appreciate your honesty and your commitment to personal service.
Have a schedule
Once you host your first webinar, you’ll want to develop a rough schedule for future presentations. Doing this will help you get into a routine, encouraging you to develop a stable of topics to cover. Hosting regular webinars is also a good habit to develop for the sake of your audience, who will come to expect your valuable insight on a consistent basis and as a result be more likely to recommend it to others. You don’t have to feel burdened by maintaining an aggressive schedule: even a recurring quarterly webinar will give you the opportunity to address prospects with current, relevant information that’s useful to them.
Accommodate those who can’t attend live
Being able to engage with viewers during a webinar is a huge advantage of hosting it live. But, no matter when in the day you hold your webinar, it’s inevitable that some of your intended audience will be unable to attend live. Thankfully, most webinar technology providers give you the option to offer recordings of your presentation. As a bonus, you can incorporate webinar recordings into your lead generation strategy, sharing excerpts on social media and within email campaigns.
Webinars can be powerful tools for developing your brand and generating new leads. If it helps, feel free to check out some recordings of ShowingTime webinars on our Resources page.
No matter your role or business needs, ShowingTime offers solutions that can help you simplify your workflow. Reach out to our sales team to discuss how ShowingTime can help improve your operational efficiency and further your business.
