Online Marketing Insights: Automated Webinars & Audience Engagement

The latest online marketing news indicates that webinars are a great tool, as they fuel audience engagement and generate extra revenue for businesses. In spite of their marketing power, however, they can take your focus away from the other aspects of your business since producing live webinars is energy- and time-consuming. Additional drawbacks include technical glitches, conflicts in schedule, as well as the lack of opportunity to polish content for a flawless delivery.

So, if you see webinars as promising marketing tools but don’t like the downsides of doing them on the spot, then automated webinars are for you. Simply put, you record the webinar ahead of time, upload it to your chosen webinar service, set streaming time and registration processes—and voila! Customers and subscribers worldwide can access it at any time of the day and view them multiple times at their own pace. Since a company or marketing expert can get paid over and over again for one webinar video, automated webinars have become a widely favored income model among the big names in online marketing.

Automated webinars allow for multiple revisions to make your final product perfect. It can be used for FAQs to debunk consumer apprehensions and get them into your sales funnel at the same time. Analytics and split-testing features let you determine on an ongoing basis whether your webinars are faring well and which may need to be rehashed.

One of the biggest issues, however, is the credibility factor. People may feel cheated when you present them with a “fake” live webinar. About.com (@aboutdotcom), reminds entrepreneurs that they can’t assume only “hungry” prospects would be attending, so to avoid criticisms, don’t imply liveness in your sales pitches.

Presenting before live audiences for your original webinar can help make your fully automated versions more natural-sounding. By allowing audiences to ask questions, you get to gather more ideas for your automated content. Some webinar systems do offer an integrated live chat option, though, to give the webinar a more realistic feel.

When choosing a topic for your webinar, make sure that it will remain relevant to your future viewers, Entrepreneur.com (@Entrepreneur) advises. Also, you should craft your title more carefully. For instance, if the information is good for until next year, yet you use “Top 25 SEO Tactics for 2015” as the title, you’ll have to eventually redo the vid.

Automating webinars allows you to create meaningful connections with your audience. It gives your prospects the benefit of scheduling flexibility while you become more productive in other areas of your business. Just avoid sounding “robotic” and always aim to keep viewers hooked. Browse online resources like Marketing Digest for more online marketing insights and news.

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Megan Pearson

Community Manager at Marketing Digest

Megan Pearson is a hard-core online marketing consultant and evangelist. She is also passionate about design and fashion. Being part of Marketing Digest allows her to keep track of developments and innovation in the industry.