A webinar is a live-streamed web seminar that encompasses running a conference or presentation online. Just like a physical in-person seminar, most webinars are real-time allowing interaction between the participants. Live Streaming success is a prerequisite to a successful webinar unless you plan to do an evergreen webinar which we will get to later. A webinar in Kenya presents great opportunities for your business whether B2B or B2C.
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Why should you do a webinar?
Now that you know what Webinars are, why do you need them?Here are some 6 key reasons you should do a webinar:
- It helps you build your prospects and leads database –
Physical events are one way that organizations build their leads list from and Live events are no different. You might have a following on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube but, have they officially given you their contact information for you to directly promote your message, products, or services to them? Everyone who registers for your webinar in Kenya officially gives you their contact information which you can add to your database of warm prospects/leads for your offering. - Positions you as an expert in your niche –
Webinars allow you to share your expertise with your Target Audience and personally give solutions to their problems. Additionally, interacting with them in person creates trust and you can clear their doubts in regards to any of your offerings. Ultimately, you will come off as a credible source of information in your niche. - It is easier for you to convert your audience –
When your audience registers for your webinar, they are expressing interest in your offering. It is thus easier to nurture and eventually convert them seeing that they are already qualified leads. - Branding opportunities-
Webinars have countless branding opportunities that will enable your brand to stay top of mind in your audience’s minds. - Promotions –
After you have positioned yourself as an expert in your niche and your audiences trust you and accord you a “tribe” / “cult” like following, you can present your newest products or services to them and they will take them up readily. - Advocacy –
Sometimes your loyal customer base may have questions regarding your offering and a webinar in Kenya is a great platform to address them because these are the customers who become your brand evangelists.
Secondly, is to involve them in the solution creation process. Your customers are highly likely to give you insights on how you can improve your current offering to meet their nuanced needs.
How to attract an audience for your webinar?
One of the key success metrics of a webinar in Kenya is how many attendees one can attract to attend. Here are 7 Pro – tips for how to attract an audience for your webinar:
- Pick topics relevant to your target audience –
At the end of the day, people have pain points that they need to be addressed and if your topic is not specific enough and accurate enough in calling out these pain points and promising a solution then people are unlikely to invest their time.
- Hook attendees with something special –
What does your audience care about or value? You can hook them with that. It can be offering them a special and valuable freebie once they register. Perhaps a book, case study, report, ticket, or any resource that would have cost them some extra resources to acquire but is free for all webinar attendees.
- Pick the right date and time –
Attendance numbers can be negatively affected if the date and time for the webinar unfavorable for your audience. Having studied your audience, you are highly likely to know what date and time work for them. Alternatively, you can send out a survey to find out.
- Communicate your content and offers –
People are highly distracted and you need to ensure that you communicate what your webinar will be about for immediate commitment. A tip to concisely communicate your content and offer is to ask the 5 “W”s: Who? What? When? Where? Why?. This will be a good way to get your webinar in Kenya in the right direction.
- Market and Promote your Webinar –
This is extremely key in attracting attendees to your webinar. You can do this in various ways including but not limited to social media marketing, email marketing, and a myriad of other channels. If your target audience does not know it is happening, then it is as good as it never happened.
- Upon attendee registration, send a thank you message, and registration confirmation – This may sound obvious, yet it is imperative. It will affirm to your attendees that you acknowledge them and their seat is reserved. Subconsciously they will commit to attending. You can even go further and add a call to action to the message asking them to put the event on their calendar as a commitment device.
- Send reminders as the webinar date approaches –
Things come up and people forget. Reminders are a good way of keeping your webinar top of mind in your Audience’s mind irrespective of their daily distractions. You can go ahead and also remind them of the value that they will be getting to keep them eager.
How to monetize a webinar in Kenya?
Now that we know that you know how to attract an audience to your webinar, how do you monetize the webinar? There are many ways to monetize webinars in Kenya and here are some 5 methods you can immediately employ:
- Charge a registration fee –
This is perhaps one of the more obvious ways and it is very effective for a webinar in Kenya. Attendees can pay and share with you their payment confirmation details before you share with them an access link to the webinar. This method is however prone to errors of omission and some solutions like integrating zoom with m-pesa have come up in the Kenyan market.
Integrating Zoom meetings or Zoom webinars with Mpesa allows attendees to register for your webinar, they will be redirected to Mpesa to complete payment after which they will receive webinar joining details unique to them.
- Selling your offering –
Webinars are effective for launching a product or service, educating your audience about an existing product or service or simply popularizing any of your offerings. If your webinar is value-laden, not forgetting both entertaining and educational, people will purchase from you. Be bold enough to include a call to action at the end of the webinar in Kenya prompting your attendees to purchase your offering.
- Upsells –
If people paid to attend your webinar and they loved it, you can upsell them by asking them to take a look at any of your other more expensive webinars in their areas of interest that will give them even more value.
- Sell evergreen webinar content –
There will be a bonus tip at the end of this article expounding on evergreen content. It is a great way to monetize your webinar. You can record your live webinar, edit it a little and create a series of automatic webinars that attendees that don’t make it to your live event can watch later at their own time at a small fee. One way is uploading your recordings on platforms with pay per view capabilities like Vimeo so that you can enjoy some steady passive income. - Affiliate Marketing –
This is the promotion of other people’s products and services during your live event and making some commissions out of the sales made. Of course, the products and services will have to be offerings that add value to your audience and also things that you endorse and are okay being associated with. This will enrich the value of your webinar in Kenya as well as generate revenue for you.
12 best practices of running successful webinars in Kenya
The 12 main things that will ensure your webinar live events are a success are :
- Knowing your target audience –
Who are you trying to appeal to? This is very important. Your target audience will determine what platforms, what content, which speakers, and what dates and times will be relevant to them in regards to your webinar. Knowing your Target audience can save you a lot of time, money and effort. There many ways to do this and you can have a professional market research partner to help you clearly define your target audience. - Picking a relevant topic –
If your webinar topic does not inform and engage your audience then you will be wasting your time and their time. Your audience wants to know if your webinar will be relevant to their needs and pain points. You should communicate this through your chosen topic. You can do this by using some of the most common questions they pose around your offering via social media, calls to your customer support lines, email queries, and other relevant channels. - Deciding on your webinar format
Will you be presenting yourself? Will you be presenting as a panel? Will you be presenting as dual presenters? Will it be a Q&A webinar? Will it be a product demonstration or launch? Will it be an interview where you will invite experts who are popular and credible to enlighten your audience on specific matters? The format is entirely dependent on what you plan to accomplish and it should offer the most value to your attendees. - Finding relevant speakers – Depending on the format, you may be inviting guests to the Webinar and it will be crucial to find speakers who will be relevant to your target audience. The key is ensuring that the speaker has knowledge and experience in what they will be sharing with your audience. Additionally, they should be well known for their expertise in their niche to ride on their credibility and pull more numbers to the webinar.
- Setting an appropriate date and time- Depending on your geographical location and the culture that pertains therein, setting an appropriate date and time for your webinar is key because this will make it easier for your attendees to commit due to their availability.
- Getting expert help –
An expert who understands webinar software and equipment is invaluable as a partner. This is because you are likely to go crazy trying to do everything yourself. You can focus on the content, guests, and attendees and they can focus on the technicalities of the live event. This will ensure everything unfolds seamlessly from planning to execution and monitoring. - Doing the dry run- Things will go wrong. This is a given. To ensure that your guests, your technical team, and yourself are aligned and on top of the game, rehearsing is important. Furthermore, you need to ensure that all your tools and equipment are working properly. You do not want to find out that your slides are not in order and your sound is terrible on the day of the webinar.
- Marketing and promoting your webinar
Okay, you have a great event coming up but, who cares if they do not know?
You have to think about your marketing and promotion. On one hand, you do not want to waste time and money communicating your webinar to the wrong audience, and on the other hand, you do not want to miss communicating about it to the right audience. You should have a professional marketing and communications team planning and executing your marketing and promotion. It will save you a lot of time and money. - Planning time for interaction during the webinar
Your webinar will happen so fast that if you do not allocate time purposefully for interaction with the audience this opportunity will be missed. After listening to a speaker for 30 minutes or more your audience may get distracted or bored. Encouraging them to participate through scheduled challenges, poll questions, discussions and other tactics will ensure their attention till the end of the webinar. - Offering a Call to action after the webinar
What is the next step that you want your audience to take? You have to communicate this. A call to action can include but is not limited to joining the next webinar, starting a free trial for your offering, making a purchase of your product or service, requesting a quote/consultation, and so forth. - Tracking and monitoring results
How many people attended your webinar against those who registered? Where did they hear about the webinar from? Did some drop off during the webinar or did all stay on till the end? How many answered the call to action? These and many other metrics are important in understanding how best to optimize your future webinar experience for your audience. Ensure that you know what metrics will be important for you to track beforehand. - Asking for feedback- Do you want to improve moving forward? Ask for feedback! A simple survey after the webinar will do the job. Knowing if your attendees loved or hated your event and what they think could be improved will allow you to make informed future decisions.
Bonus tip: Running an evergreen webinar
An evergreen webinar is also known as an automated webinar. It is a recorded and automated webinar instead of it being live. The content of evergreen webinars should ideally focus on principles or foundational practices of a niche that will never be affected by the changing trends or fads. Here are some advantages to setting up an evergreen webinar series:
- Nurturing new subscribers –
While the session will not be live, an evergreen webinar will allow your subscribers to get to the person behind the business(which is you) more even in your real-time absence. They will grow to trust you more as they keep learning and getting value from you through the webinar. - Passive income –
If you include a registration fee to get access to your webinar and also promote your other products or services within your webinar, you will be making money in your sleep, or while on vacation. Evergreen Webinars are a great way of making passive income because they are AUTOMATED which leads us to the next benefit… - Low maintenance-
The initial work in setting up an evergreen webinar will be equivalent, if not more, to a live webinar however, once that is done it runs on autopilot! You will be required to check in occasionally to ensure everything is running as expected. - Great for positioning yourself as an authority in your niche –
If you have a lot of value to offer your audience around your niche why not do it 24/7 and 365 days a year? With evergreen content, your automated webinars will be interacting with your audience and building your credibility in your absence.
Now that you have an exhaustive understanding of running a successful webinar in Kenya you probably want to get started right away. If you have determined that you will need expert help from someone who understands the technical aspects of running a successful webinar/live streaming in Kenya, including and not limited to webinar software, equipment, and also the crucial marketing and promotion then feel free to reach out to us on 0721314242 or email [email protected]
