Last week I talked about the benefits of marketing content with webinars and white papers. Webinars are such a powerful tool that the marketing strategy merits a little specialized attention.

If you’re not on board with webinars yet, know that they’re easily shared opportunities to boast about your company’s knowledge and specialties. They also set you up as an authority in your field, and allow you to remotely attract a pool of curious-minded folks that can convert into customers at best and loyal brand followers if nothing else.

Webinars also let you hone your own skill by tailoring your message. What do you do? How do you do it best? And what are key points that get people’s attention? These are all easily lengthy answers that you have to present in concise points once you decide to host a webinar.

If you’re already established with a following, webinars become another way to cash in on your business know how. It’s not rare to offer freebie mini webinars and then charge a bit more for bigger more in depth ones (that are normally paired with some post presentation notes).

But forum dialogues hit the nail on the head. One marketing forum member from MarketingProfs said:

“Webinars can be very effective. I have seen them used usually for products/services that require a lot of convincing for someone to buy, like enterprise software. What the selling company usually tries to do is get a current customer to take part in the webinar. The customer provides information about why they chose the product, what was involved with installing it, and any learning from it. Prospects love to hear this, as it really helps them understand from a customer’s point of view about the product.”

When it comes to marketing your webinar, you can (and should) take the traditional routes such as social media, such as Facebook (and creating Facebook events for them) and Twitter. You can also use email newsletters and plug a teaser on your website. But there are other solutions worth considering.

Bulldog Solutions

The buzz seems to be about Bulldog Solutions. They excel in a number of areas but are one of the few that offer webinar services. Bulldog considers webinars a “go-to” solution for lead generation, and offer a webinar format that “establish(es) and re-enforc(es) thought leadership and reach(es) your audience with credible information.”

Bulldog also boasts the ability to foster deeper engagements, collect valuable data on your potential clients and ultimately increase your return on investment. Any successful webinar requires the planning, execution and support that Bulldog promises.

Their former client, Experian’s Director of Marketing Sheila Sheley, attests to this. She says, “Bulldog’s project management capabilities, from planning through implementation to reporting, made it easy for our team to execute a successful lead-generation Webinar. We could not have delivered our first Webinar so professionally without Bulldog’s expertise.”

WebEx

I mentioned this company before, but in the buzz mill, WebEx was popping up high for user approval. Cisco’s WebEx is a web conferencing tool that also offers remote support. If you’re wondering where to host your webinar, WebEx is definitely worth checking out. The more you can have under one roof, in terms of platform, support, follow up, the better. This makes it a lot easier to plan and execute your webinar…plus you’re not having to marketing 2 – 3 different platforms, which communicates a sketchy and unreliable business image.

When it comes to webinars, WebEx Event Center lets you share content such as slides, websites, video and more; it lets you interact with attendees through a live Q&A session, and it lets you record your event to extend the life of your presentation (which means you can more easily market a piece to people who weren’t there at your event.)

I can attest to the difficulty of hosting and marketing a successful webinar. My own first joint webinar with another professional took place last year. The thing took a month to plan, a test run and rather intensive “event” marketing to make sure we had an attendance. What would be worse than no attendees is anything less than 10 attendees – which only makes you look like an unimportant small fish.