4 Reasons Why Your Audience is Demanding Webinars

Both small enterprises and large organizations are seeing a shift in how individuals consume online content. Cisco’s latest whitepaper on traffic forecasts predicts that consumer internet video traffic will rise by almost 25% by 2018. So as marketers, are you doing what it takes to keep up with the demand? Many have found that webinars are one of the more effective tools to generate leads, but more importantly, there are very good reasons to why people demand them. We have found four key reasons why attendees are always signing up for our live events:

1. Access to Keynote Speakers

Almost like having exclusive backstage passes to meet a celebrity, webinars offer audiences access to keynote speakers. Webinars offer attendees the opportunity to listen to industry leaders live, in an interactive environment where they are able to submit comments and questions along the way. Along with selecting a relevant speaker for your webinar, you are able to differentiate your content by presenting a depth of knowledge not available anywhere else. With webinars you are able to establish authority by presenting topics closely associated with your product or brand and in the format that is easily accessible for audiences to obtain.

According to a study by Content marketing institute (CMI), 85% of marketers strongly agree that webinars help build thought leadership and 78% agree that webinars create brand awareness and relationship building. While lead generation remains the most valuable aspect of running a webinar, thought leadership is a close second.

2. Access to New Information – Real Time Anywhere.

One main benefit that isn’t emphasized enough – webinars can be accessed from anywhere. A potential lead could be listening in 3,000 miles away in their home office while an employee might be learning from your webinar one floor down in your own building. Forget physical seminars and taking days away from the office; busy professionals are able to simply login to the same webinar anywhere in the world.

3. Access to Live Q&A

Many attendees would love to pick the brains of keynote speakers and the Q&A portion of a live webinar presents the best opportunity to do so. While the presentation portion of a webinar gives the presenter an opportunity to communicate their agenda, the Q&A session gives attendees an opportunity to find answers that are the most important to them. This gives attendees access to invaluable answers that are almost unobtainable anywhere else. Unlike a live presentation, audience members are able to submit their questions the moment it occurs to them, while questions can be held until after the main presentation.

4. Access to On-Demand Webinar Archives

Very similar to a physical library, (except nothing is ever on loan), potential customers who access a website are able to watch your webinar content even though they didn’t attend the live event. As standard practice, webinars are recorded and repackaged to be made as on-demand content – so you are always generating new registrants even after the live event. Imagine if you could do a three-part webinar series on a topic for a new product – that is almost three hours of content to educate and discuss services in great depth and detail. This recorded webinar content can passively sit on a website and actively generate quality leads or it can be actively promoted.

Webinars give the opportunity to present content differently live – a seminar with multiple speakers, a discussion on a particular topic or introduction of a new product. When it comes to adding value, webinars are still an under-utilized marketing tool. If your company is thinking about running a webinar with Xtalks, contact us, or check out our sponsorship opportunities.