Over 70% of marketers say webinars are highly effective but what separates a good webinar from a great webinar? Hosting a great webinar enables your finance brand to build strong connections with your target audience and deliver valuable content. While hosting a finance webinar can be a big task, it can also reap great rewards with the average webinar conversion rate being 55%. So, what’s the secret to hosting a great finance webinar?
The nuts and bolts of finance webinars
At the heart of it, a great finance webinar provides valuable content and information on a specific topic. Like with any other financial content marketing strategy, don’t try and speak about hundreds of different finance topics at one time. Determine your target audience, identify an area of interest, and deliver an engaging and informative finance webinar about that one topic.
Your finance brand should also identify a goal for your webinar. This could be converting leads into customers or retaining current ones. Identifying an overarching goal is key to ensuring your webinar delivers the right content, to the right audience, at the right time.
“ Over 70% of marketers say webinars are highly effective. ”
Webinars can be effective at all stages of the sales funnel, but the content must be tailored to each one. In fact, 47% of marketers state webinars are effective in the middle (consideration) stage of the sales funnel and 36% rated them as effective at the early (awareness and interest) stage. For example, if you’re targeting newbies, taking a 101 approach would be an effective approach.
Here are some helpful tips as to the best method of hosting a successful finance webinar:
- Duration – 60-minute webinars are the sweet spot and actually attract more attendees than 30-minute webinars.
- Email marketing – Recent surveys show that invites through email account for 73% of webinar signups and sending a reminder email on the day of the event increases attendance by 20%.
- Time of day – According to research by LiveWebinar, hosting a webinar after lunch is the best time of day. It’s also best to host a webinar during the week, with response rates only being around 1-2% on the weekend.
What consumers want from your finance webinar
At the end of the day, it’s critical your finance webinar addresses exactly what consumers are after. Providing valuable content that empowers consumers is the first step in hosting a great webinar. The other is making sure it’s engaging.
Here are the top four things consumers want from your finance webinar:
- Question and Answer: 92% of webinar attendees say they would like live question and answer sessions before the webinar ends.
- Customer-focused: 78% of buyers will be put off if your webinar is too ‘salesy’ or marketing-focused.
- Passion: 32% of attendees say they feel more engaged when the host is passionate
- Resources: 62% of webinar watchers find resources effective.
If you create a good finance webinar you not only can convert leads but also retain current customers. The community bank, CentreState, in Florida ranks finance webinars as the second most effective form of commercial content, with a 71% conversion rate and a 67% lead generation rate.
How finance webinars can fit in your finance brands content strategy
When done right, your finance webinar can be a core part of your financial content marketing strategy. You can repurpose your webinar content into other pieces of content, like social media posts, short videos and website videos, to extend its use. Not only does this mean you can expand your content strategy by sharing content in a new format, but your webinar can also continue to be accessed even after it’s completed.
Finance webinars are a highly effective content strategy and can benefit your finance brand long after it’s over. Listen to your audience and build a webinar around what they want and need.
