Creating awareness about your business and the products/services is the biggest challenge you face after the setup. We ourselves are aware of the problems and we are going to discuss few solutions that let’s you grow your leads through online events.
As a marketer we spend most of our time planning for strategies that can help us generate quality leads for our sales team. Some of the strategies are purely offline and some move around online practices but when we talk about Online Events it is something that has the charm of traditional approach blended with modern technology.
Online events can be conducted in various ways. You can inform people and try to cash in your potential customers via these. An online event could be a webinar, a secret sale, a product launch on youtube etc. Therefore, online events can become a part of constant traffic generation for your site.
6 Reasons Why Online Events Should Be Part of Your Lead Strategy:
1. Provides Flexibility: In these present times it might get a little difficult for a person to take out time especially for an offline event. This can be solved by providing the customer the flexibility of an online event. He can attend the online event at his ease of time. For eg, if it is a webinar or a launch event of some product or a presentation of your business, he can attend to it when he has time because the content would be still there online.
2. Low Competition: The competition is far too less than the competition in the offline events. There are very less people and companies that put in time and effort for an online event. This should be used to your own advantage and exploited to full potential. Lesser the competition easier it gets to pull attention of larger number of people.
3. Minimal Investment: The amount of investment that is required in managing an online event is very minimalistic. An online event can be created through internet on a single laptop in a single room. There is no need to run to different place for managing different things as it is in the case of an offline event.
4. Reusability: This in our opinion is one of the biggest advantage of an online event. Because once the event has finished its content can be used again for reference and awareness.
For e.g. you created a video demonstration of some product you are launching, it won’t be wasted after the launch is done. The video content can be used again as a post on social media. Or you might use the video on product pages to show specifications.
5. Builds Your Authority: Your prospects need a digital proof of people interacting and understanding from you! Digital events not only provide a place where people can see your business’s human side but also help you to establish yourself as a subject expert which c leads to repeat visits to your site for future references and updates.
6. Easy Sharing: From eating at restaurant to watching a movie people today share everything on social platforms, as a smart marketer you should try to leverage this habit. Since invitation of an online event is just a link its easier for attendees to share it on their social profiles which is highly likely to bring more lead opportunities.
Types of Online Events:
Webinar: A webinar is simply a kind of a seminar that is held online. A webinar has the flexibility of time and can be seen over and over again at one’s own wish with no limits. You can try Youtube Live Events For it.
Group Discussions: Group discussion on the product can be created. This event can mostly be utilized for queries about your product. You can use google hangouts to create discussion with upto 10 people including you.
Celebrity chats: Chats with celebrities about the product will pull in more people because of their huge fanbase. This would even help greatly in creating a buzz about the event.
Secret/Special Sale: A special or even a secret sale can be conducted. This would create curiosity and anticipation in people. It would encourage them to register for it so that they can get updates about it. In this manner they would become your consumers. Special sale can be done by selling a particular object just on your website. For eg, Flipkart recently launched Motorola mobiles which aren’t available anywhere else. This would create an inflow of people who want to inquire about it or to buy it.
How to promote an online event:
1. Use Social Media: For promoting an event the best place is social media.
On Facebook or Google +: Post regural updates on events by creating a event page.
On Linkedin: Promote it on your profile and relevant linkedin groups
On Twitter: Create a hashtag exclusively for your event and use it in your tweets.
2. On Website:
Use your website homepage for the promotion of your event and build anticipation about it.
3. Landing Page:
Create a landing page for event registrations. The links you share on the social media should be having a special dedicated page for the event itself on your official website. This would make it easier for the clients to acquire the information and straight away find what he wants to from the page.
4. Email Signature: Add the link to Event’s landing page to your email signatures and ask all the employees In your company to do so also send regular updates about the progress of the build-up of the event to your registered clients. This would make them feel connected and keep them updated too.
5. Find Influencers: Reach out to industry influencers and request them to share it in their community. Ask your alliances who are related to the same field but aren’t your competitors to share your information and links around to their clients. This would broader your clientage and increase your salesmen without any monetary input.
#Bonus Tip: Its good to maintain an excel of all the alliances or people who you can request to for a share. The key columns will include contact information such as their twitter handles, facebook url, email ids , phone no. along with last contact status.
6. Find Some Event Promotion Sites:
Use Sites Like Meetup & Explara to find audience for your events and build a community with them.
So what are you waiting for, Go and start with your first online event now.