Is hosting webinars really worth it for you and your client? Can’t they be a giant pain to arrange and then hardly anyone actually signs on so the actual lead count isn’t there? And then those few people who attend are “multi-tasking” aka ignoring the whole presentation, right?
Like with anything in life, there’s the good, the bad and ugly. We are here to tell you that sponsored webinars — that offer focused and valuable content — can be absolutely beautiful, audience-engaged, revenue streams!
You just have to know what you’re doing.
So we consulted sales trainer and motivational speaker Ryan Dohrn on how to keep your super-niched audience engaged and your advertisers thrilled with webinars:
You know the ins and outs of creating successful sponsored webinars. Any sponsor pitfalls to avoid?
“Webinars are a wonderful way to engage with your audience AND with your advertisers. But, one of the biggest pitfalls is pricing webinars based on leads generated. Or more specifically, basing how you get paid upon how many people signed up for a webinar. I would seriously consider not following this model.
I would also seriously consider not giving the email addresses of those that sign-up for a webinar to an advertiser. A better model is to control the emails being sent to your readers. After all, if we give all of our readers’ email addresses to our advertisers, then the advertisers really won’t need us anymore.”
What additional ways can publishers drive revenue with a sponsored webinar, besides the actual webinar itself?
“So for example, as a part of the TOTAL program, an advertiser would receive the ability to be a subject matter expert in the webinar, social media promotion, branding in email promotion, plus two follow-up e-mails that you send out on their behalf.
You can also offer the ability to have branding all over the sign-up landing page as well as all the archives that are available on the website after the live webinar has occurred.”
PS Ryan will be leading the “Niche Goes Native” sales workshop at the Super Niche Event in Louisville, March 5th-7th. Bring your team! It’s for media sales teams, editors and sales leadership who want to learn how to grow native advertising revenue, establish an efficient process for deal close and content production, plus manage advertiser expectations and ROI. (No machete required.)
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About Ryan: Ryan Dohrn is an award-winning ad sales training coach, a nationally recognized internet sales consultant and in international motivational speaker. He is the author of the best-selling ad sales book, Selling Backwards. Ryan is the President and founder of Brain Swell Media and 360 Ad Sales Training, a boutique ad sales training and sales coaching firm with a detailed focus on ad sales training, internet consulting and media revenue generation. Ryan is also the Publisher of Sales Training World.
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Niche Media has the best events, education, and training in media! Our super niched-out events & content give target-audience publishers in the B2C, hobbyist, B2B, city & regional, and association markets the tools they need to build revenue, audience, and more.
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