Conducting impactful webinars with Zoho One

Whether you call it a webinar or an online seminar or a virtual event, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, you have the same goal: more customers.

So how can you go about creating your perfect webinar and keeping it from getting lost in the sea of internet content while also focusing all your efforts to generate more leads? Two things lead to a great webinar: 1) Useful and relevant content and 2) having access to the right tools to make your webinar reach the ideal audience. Fortunately, you have Zoho One at your disposal, which means you're already halfway to success. Let's look at why.

Structuring the webinar series

Always structure your webinar as a series instead of a standalone session, unless you're Apple's WWDC.

Running a webinar series highlights your subject matter expertise and instills in your attendees a sense of continuity and anticipation. Zoho Sites, with its drag-and-drop-builder, can help you come up with a quick landing page that gives an overview of your series. Meanwhile, Zoho Backstage can help you easily come up with an eye-catching micro-website featuring session details such as its name, date and time, speakers, and more.

Why have a separate micro-page when you already have a main page? When promoting a webinar, your users don't want to be overwhelmed with everything you offer. First you serve them the appetizer, then the entree, and then dessert. Not all at the same time.

With Zoho BackStage, you can promote individual sessions with clarity and attention to details without distracting from your other offerings. This also makes tracking registrations all the more easy and efficient. The smooth payment and ticketing system inside Backstage can even enable you to run a paid webinar/event as well.

What should your webinar be about?

Content can make or break a webinar. Understand what kind of content will help your customers and begin with something that helps them address specific challenges they face. Everyone likes to have some solutions handy. If you're unsure what your audience would like to hear from you, ask them! Yes, you can easily put a small pop-up on your web page using Zoho PageSense to learn what would they like you to talk about. Customers love it when they are heard.

How can you spread the word?

These days, you can probably count the number of people who aren't active on social media on one hand. So why not begin there? The Analytics Module inside Zoho Social can help identify specific social platforms that are working well for you. The Smart Scheduler inside Social can also help get your posts the best traction possible.

Alright, let's get real—the registration count of your first session might disappoint you. That's okay. (Although this doesn't mean you should save the best content for the next one in the series.) Your first webinar is crucial as it sets a standard for the next ones in the series. Plus, you can promote the recording of your first session to give potential attendees a clearer idea on what you offer.

Think about it, how often have come across interesting webinar topics but didn't register because you were doubtful about the quality of their content? Post-webinar promotions are a great way to turn your skeptics around.

Make it feel personal

Today, with presentation tools like Zoho ShowTime (which is integrated inside Backstage), you can run a perfect webinar/seminar/event online. In ShowTime, both the speaker and your slides are contextually highlighted, making the webinar experience more personal. You can chat with your audience non-intrusively during the session and run polls to understand them better, which could potentially help shape the topics of your upcoming sessions.

Good design means a great show!

You're not a designer? Fret not. Zoho Show comes with ready-made templates so you can pick and choose from styles that match the theme of your slide deck. If you'd like to customize or create your own theme, you can do so by choosing color schemes, fonts, layout, and more. If you're co-creating the webinar with your team, you also collaborate in real time by making edits and leaving comments, @mentions, and so on. You can also jazz up your slides by exploring different shapes and chart options.

How do you generate leads?

Everything we've discussed above ultimately exists to answer this question. This is actually quite easy, especially with the right tools in place.

Let's go back to earlier—Zoho Backstage. The registrations from Zoho Backstage can be pushed to Zoho CRM as a separate list.

These entries can sync up with your mailing list in Zoho Campaigns, helping you incrementally build your audience base. You can set up email workflows to remind audiences about the upcoming sessions. As you are done with, say, three of your webinar sessions, look for repeat registrations, the ones who registered for more than one of your episodes—they are your hot prospects. You can also initiate conversations with people who interact with your social media promotions and add them as leads to your CRM directly from Zoho Social.

But what if they still don't become your customers?

Add them to a separate mailing list of "not-convinced." Every once in a while, remind them you exist. When they have a pressing need, your name will be the first they'll remember.

Yes, webinars are great for lead generation and conversion, but they are also excellent tools for customer retention. Since COVID-19 spread, more people have been staying indoors. Webinars are a great way to maintain a relationship with them that feels close to having an in-person conversation. So go ahead and launch your webinar series and get closer to your target audience.

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