Five Tips to Ensure Webinar Success

Webinars are an excellent way to engage with your target audience and get your brand noticed. It is for this reason that the number of companies offering webinars is on the rise. After all, who wouldn’t want to get in on the success of this extremely effective marketing tactic?

Unfortunately, many companies fail to do the hard work that is necessary to hold a truly productive webinar. This is a huge mistake since participants who feel that they are wasting their time on a webinar will usually disconnect before it is over. Even if they do sit through until the end, they are sure to walk away with a negative impression of the host company.

If you are considering holding a webinar, here are some tips that will help to ensure its success.

Tip #1: Ditch the Sales Pitch
Nothing will turn off webinar participants faster than feeling like they are sitting through a sales presentation. Remember, webinars are about building relationships, not making sales.

Tip #2: Make it Visually Appealing
Just as you wouldn’t go into a client meeting wearing a sloppy t-shirt, your webinar must look professional, as well. This includes everything down to the background. Has the connection been tested? Have you rehearsed your presentation? No detail is too small!

Tip #3: Don’t be a Bore.
Make sure you engage participants with interesting stories and anecdotes remembering that no one wants to sit through a boring lecture. You also should work hard to interact with your audience so it feels less like you are talking at them and more like you are talking with them.

Tip #4: Get the Timing Right.
Most professionals do not have time to sit through a two-hour webinar. Anything less than an hour is ideal. When scheduling your webinar, make sure you begin advertising it about a month in advance and include language that entices people to sign up right away, for example, “limited number of participants.”

Tip #5: Practice Makes Perfect.
Even the most seasoned webinar professionals would be hard pressed to host a webinar cold. If you are new to the webinar game you must practice. And then practice some more. Consider giving your presentation in front of co-workers and get their feedback. Tape your trial runs and watch to see if you think it sounds professional and engaging. It also is important to remember that you are not giving a speech, make sure your voice has plenty of inflections and that you sound natural. You don’t want it to seem as if you are reading from a script.

Webinars are big business today because they work. However, if you aren’t willing to do the work, you can count on your webinar falling flat.

Optimizing for Mobile More Important than Ever

Internet searches are now more likely to take place on a mobile device than on a desktop and this trend shows no signs of slowing. While experts have long predicted mobile would eclipse desktop usage, many small businesses are understandably unsure about their mobile SEO strategy.

The popularity of mobile is no reason for businesses to panic but they do need to face the fact that more than half of all internet searches are now taking place on mobile devices. They also need to make sure that their SEO efforts are optimized for mobile or they are going to lose out on a lot of traffic.

The fact is, most businesses understand the importance of SEO. Now they need to understand how to use that knowledge and apply it to mobile. What follows are a list of tips to get started on the path to successful SEO for mobile:

  1. Compose Compelling, Concise Headlines. Since mobile screens are smaller, it is important that headlines are short and to the point. Creativity is the key here. Headlines cannot be too wordy and they must quickly grab the attention of the reader.
  2. Clip Content. Posting an important article or blog in its entirety is fine but include some snippets of information at the top of the story so readers know if they want to commit to reading the whole article.
  3. Test on Different Devices. Many businesses only test their website on one type of device, but this is a mistake. Test to see that your website fits devices of all sizes so that your website is accessible to all. Likewise, website designs and features that work well on desktop screens don’t always translate to mobile. Test to find out if yours does. If it doesn’t, go for a simpler, cleaner look for mobile.
  4. Mind Your Load Times. Loading speeds are important to users who are in a hurry and also to search engines. If it takes too long for your website to load, both will bail out on you.
  5. Don’t Forget Social Media. Optimizing your website for mobile is critical but don’t forget to do the same for social media.

Finally, while mobile optimization is getting a lot of attention these days, remember that just less than half of visitors to your website will be doing so from their desktop. This means that while you should make sure your website is optimized for mobile, it should not be at the expensive of visitors using desktops.

How to Tailor an Email Marketing Campaign to Existing Customers

Email marketing is a great way to reach new customers. And while landing new customers is an outstanding reason to use email marketing, it isn’t the only one.

Customer loyalty is another reason to employ email marketing. After all, customer loyalty is essential to the success of any business. Further, it is much more expensive to obtain a new customer than it is to retain a current one. And according to a recent study, email marketing did more to promote customer loyalty than social media.

Of course, using email to attract new customers and using it to retain current ones require slightly different tactics. Therefore, it’s important to know how to implement an email campaign that specifically targets your existing customers. What follows are some tips that will help make sure that you are engaging current customers with your email efforts.

  1. Get personal. A person’s name in the subject line is proven to increase open rates and increase spending! One study showed that transaction rates were more than 20 percent higher when an email was personalized in this manner.
  2. Remember that content is still king. Content that connects, educates and inspires is particularly important when targeting existing customers. If an individual is your customer, chances are that you have earned their trust. Continuing to provide them with quality content will take it a step further. They will come to see you as a thought leader in your industry and will be more likely to make purchases based on your recommendations.
  3. Segment your lists. Just as your target audience of prospects is segmented, your target audience of current customers should be, as well. A good way to make sure that your emails are being read is to tailor those emails to a particular demographic. Research shows that segmented email campaigns have an almost 15 percent greater open rate and get almost 60 percent more clicks than those that are not segmented. The best part is that since these are your customers, you have the data necessary to segment your list. Choose demographics such as age, gender, income, locale, purchase history and more.
  4. Don’t forget the call-to-action. Of course, there is one important thing that all emails-whether they target existing customers or prospects-must contain. A well-written, easy to see call-to-action is critical to getting customers and prospects to take the next step.

Email marketing is a tremendous way to attract and retain customers. The key is to tailor each campaign for the individuals you are targeting.

How to Better Leverage Customer Data

Ask anyone in the marketing industry today and they will tell you that big data is where it is at. Unfortunately, despite all we know about the importance of using big data to target customer and prospects, few companies are leveraging that data to its full extent.

The fact is, most businesses see big data as simply a way to figure out what a customer will purchase next. And while this is certainly an important piece of information, that is all it is-just one piece. Big data should also be used for a more sustainable competitive edge, namely harnessing that information to create long-term loyalty. After all, if all of your customers are one-and done-buyers, you won’t be in business very long.

So instead of asking what will compel a customer to buy, companies need to ask what will compel a customer to remain loyal to their brand in the long term. For example, if a competitor offers a lower price, what will prevent them from switching to that competitor?

In other words, big data needs to be used to help businesses understand what they can do for their customers instead of the other way around. Doing this involves asking a few questions:

  1. How can I use data to reduce my customers or prospects costs or risks? Testimonials and reviews are increasingly important to consumers. That’s because people want to know what others in their situation gained from going with a particular vendor, be it a hotel chain, a dry cleaner or a daycare provider. If I can provide those cost- or risk-cutting measure that people are looking for, then I would be providing value that other companies are not.
  2. Is there something people are looking for that is not currently available? Think of companies that have been widely successful doing something we all feel we should have thought of. No matter what you sell, there is undoubtedly a better way to sell it. One example would be insurance companies that began selling their products online. Is there a better way to give the people what they want? Your customer data will likely offer many clues.
  3. No matter how different my customers or prospects may seem from each other, is there something that they all have in common?
    Collecting information from a wide-range of customers or prospects can allow you to pinpoint specific traits of a particular customer.

What Can a Tweet Do for Your Business? More Than It Used to Do!

If your business uses Twitter to connect with customers and prospects, you probably know that you can now use 280 characters per tweet. What you may not know is what exactly that means for your Twitter marketing strategy.

Many businesses are under the mistaken impression that more characters simply allow them to say more of the same thing. The truth is, these extra characters, when used correctly, can boost engagement. The key is to know how to use them to your advantage. What follows are some simple ways to make every extra character count:

  1. Include additional information. The 140-character limit usually meant you had a choice to inform or to make an offer. Now you can do both. This makes your tweets twice as valuable to customers.
  2. Express yourself. Let’s face it, there is only so much you can say in 140 characters so your use of the language was pretty limited. The higher character count allows you to be more expressive and creative, making your tweets more compelling to readers because you are able to appeal to their emotions.
  3. Increase readability. Line and sentence breaks were once considered a waste of valuable Twitter characters, making tweets difficult to read. Now you can write in a manner that is easier to understand and one that would make your high school English teacher proud!

While you will be writing more content per tweet, you will likely find that these tweets will actually take less time to compose. That’s because trying to fit what you wanted to say in 140 characters took a lot of editing and re-editing. Longer tweets allow you to say what you want to say without forcing you to spend valuable time deciding what you needed to leave out in order to come in under the character count.

Finally, when you customers and prospects connect with you via Twitter, you can actually engage with them in a more impactful way. Since so many people use Twitter to comment on customer service these extra characters will go a long way toward allowing you to get your point across when you reply.

Longer tweets mean more visibility and visibility is what social media is all about. Twitter’s increased character limits, when used to their full advantage, will help your brand be better seen and heard by customers and prospects.