Webinars and Workshops: A Marketing Tool to Nurture Relationships

Customer and consumer connection is a vital part of any marketer’s business strategy. When creating a marketing strategy, it is essential to look at all touchpoints to capture the customer’s attention including opportunities for in-person or virtual event engagement, such as webinars or workshops. These platforms provide a chance to educate, create new connections, and strengthen existing ones.

Webinars produce lead generation, customer education, and brand recognition, to name a few. Ninety-five percent of marketers agree that event marketing is crucial to achieving goals because it develops trust through direct interactions with the consumer. Despite these events being a one-time occurrence, it opens the doors for deeper connections and opportunities to learn more about your consumers. According to research done by ON24, year over year, there has been a 25% increase in average interactions per webinar attendee. This is clear evidence that audiences want educational opportunities and the ability to engage directly with a brand. Here, we’ll dive into why consumers attend brand workshops, offer tips to ensure a successful event, and how to continue to build relationships after it’s completed.

Reasons for Attending a Brand Event

What would make someone attend a webinar or workshop? Every attendee may have a different motivation, including some of the following:

• Connect with people they already know or build new connections
• Learn from experts
• Get a hands-on experience
• Gain knowledge in a topic that is of interest

How to Choose Relevant Topics for Your Event

Deciding what topic to discuss depends on your brand’s goals and the target audience’s needs. A brand should select a topic that matters to the audience and may fill a knowledge void. Here are a few steps to choosing a webinar topic:

• Identify Goals and Objectives: What does your brand hope to accomplish? Common reasons include educating employees and consumers, supporting sales and marketing efforts, and creating a touchpoint with consumers after purchasing the brand.
• Define Your Target Audience: Who do you want to connect with in your brand community, and what do they want to know or need? For example, your brand may see a gap in interactions with recent customers after they’ve purchased your product. You may want to host a webinar on the benefits or ways to use your product to ensure first-time customers know the many ways to utilize your product after purchase. This approach allows your brand to be specific with what is being presented and fulfill the audience’s desired outcome from attending the event.
• Finalize Your Webinar Topic: Understanding common challenges or questions around your brand can help to define your topic and ensure audience engagement. Gather data from your customer support teams, retail partners, social listening, and other front-line sources to help formulate topics. Alternatively, holidays and other occasion-based strategies can educate consumers on how they can use your brand or product in ways that they may not have considered.

Examples of Topics:

• How-to-Webinars
• Productivity Hacks
• Advice and Improvement
• Business Development Strategies
• Product Launches
• Skill Enhancements
• Current Industry Topics

Ways to Build Anticipation and Drive Attendance

Now that you have chosen your topic, it’s time to excite your audience and give them one of many reasons, as stated previously, to come to your event. Researchers found that 96% of attendees look for information about the event online before attending, so catching their eye with content is crucial. Brands can build anticipation to drive attendance using some of these tactics:

• Create buzz with social media: Brands can utilize organic engagement or push out paid posts to target audiences to increase exposure. Through various forms of media, including photos, videos, and live streams, brands can increase the anticipation leading up to the event. Utilizing a hashtag for the event also encourages attendees to post on their socials, increasing word-of-mouth promotion. Social Media also provides a channel for more personal connections between a brand and consumer through the ability to answer direct messages, comments, and shares.
• Giveaways: Giveaways can encourage engagement leading up to the event to thank those attending. Contests are a fun way to help you extend your reach to others who were not previously exposed to your brand but in a cost-effective manner. Nearly 95% of users will share the giveaway promotion immediately after registering, and Instagram contests get 5 times as many likes and 64 times more comments on average than regular posts.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing can be one of the most influential touchpoints before and after an event. Consumers join email lists because they are interested in your brand and will likely be interested in the events you host. Creating eye-catching subject lines and teasers in your emails will increase your open rate and inform audience expectations for the webinar or workshop.

Industries That Can Utilize Webinars to Grow Their Business

Webinars can help businesses across different sectors. Here are a few industries that can enhance their connections with consumers through webinars:

• Marketing and Sales: Companies can host product demos, expert panels explaining offerings, and interactive Q&A sessions for both customers and consumers.
• Healthcare: This industry can utilize webinars for patient education, training, and virtual conferences. These webinars allow medical professionals and those in the network to share medical advancements, knowledge, and critical information.
• Technology: Tech companies can take advantage of showcasing their products, training others on the technology, and educating about new features. Tech webinars can provide experts with the platform to provide their audience with industry trends, best practices, and innovations.
• Non-profit Organizations: For non-profits, webinars are a cost-effective way to raise awareness about the cause, fundraise, and connect with the community. Leaders can share stories and educational content during these events and grow their connections. Enthuse Marketing’s non-profit, the Enthuse Foundation, takes advantage of hosting webinars to support women-owned businesses through education and support their business pitches.

Post-Event Engagement: Turn Attendees into Long-Term Connections

Post-event engagement is necessary to maintain relationships with attendees after the event. Using communication to continue to engage them will help develop long-term relationships with consumers and your brand, even after the curtain closes. Here are some ways your brand can continue to be top-of-mind of attendees after the webinar:

• Post-Event Promotion: Communication after the event allows businesses to highlight the event and share key takeaways. It also emphasizes its importance to the present viewers and reaches out to those who cannot attend but would like to view it. Reminding attendees of the critical takeaways reminds them to apply what they’ve learned professionally.
• Post-Event Content: Creating content for socials can extend your reach to wider audiences, even beyond the original attendees. Marketers can utilize blogs, video recaps, event recordings, photos, and infographics to drive users to their social channels and traffic to your website. Marketers should also tap into sharing any user-generated content attendees create to show authentic engagement with your brand. Sharing UGC establishes a platform to build a community around the brand and encourage networking.
• Personalized Communications and Exclusive Offers: Consumers want personalized interactions to feel valued by your brand. When your communication touches upon what is important to them, it creates the outcome that consumers will feel like an exclusive customer. Providing attendees early access to future events, discounts, and valuable information will build brand loyalty among consumers. If consumers can take the time to come to your event, sending a thank you email for attending adds a personal touch.
• Post-Event Surveys: These insights are valuable for marketers when hosting future events and learning more about the brand’s consumers. Through surveys, brands can collect data and understand the value of their webinar or workshop. It is essential to create targeted surveys, ask questions regarding the overall experience, customer suggestions, likes, and dislikes, and include qualitative and quantitative data.

By hosting webinars or workshops, brands not only develop stronger consumer and industry relationships, but they may also see an increase in revenue, new leads, and increased brand awareness. Brands must connect post-event for consumers to stay informed and anticipate future events your business will host. The goal is to inform and educate to continue building brand loyalty, and this tool is a cost-effective way to personally connect with your brand’s customers.

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