The Ultimate Guide to Hosting Webinars for Nutrition Business Owners
While your basic digital marketing efforts can help you introduce your practice and services to the target audience, they are not enough to make them understand the importance of your services. They sometimes fall short of delivering the value proposition of your services.
However, your marketing efforts are not at fault because what is lacking in your target audience to see the value of your services is knowledge. They are often unaware of the gravity of the healthcare problems that you are dealing with and need to be educated.
So, how can you efficiently educate your audience? The answer is WEBINARS.
A webinar is an amazing and powerful tool of online marketing which allows you to directly interact with the audience and provide them with the necessary information to create a necessity for your services. Not only that, it can help you build your brand and establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry.
Here are a few factors why hosting a webinar is beneficial for your nutrition business.
Benefits of hosting webinars
Expands your reach
Webinars allow you to reach a wider audience and conduct valuable conversations with them. You can pull in people from across the globe and share your insights with them to make them interested in your services.
Allow you to interact directly with your audience
This is one of the most beneficial aspects of hosting webinars. It allows you to interact directly with your audience and address their needs and queries firsthand. It also gives your audience plenty of time to evaluate your prowess in the field and determine if you are the right person for their problems.
Lead Generation
Attracting a good audience with your webinar also helps get in touch with new potential clients and allows you to perform more direct marketing to them. You can nurture such an audience into becoming leads and eventually turn them into paying clients.
Establishes you as a credible expert in your industry
When you provide your target audience with valuable information, they start to revere you and increase their trust in your services. And repetitively throwing such webinars can help you become a credible expert in your field.
Steps to host a webinar
Understand the requirements of your target audience
To make your webinar seem valuable to your target audience, you need to understand what they are looking for and provide them with a webinar that can help them find it. The objective of hosting a webinar is to offer your audience valuable information, which can subsequently promote your practice and present you are an expert in your field.
If you are a PCOS dietitian, your target audience might be looking for lifestyle tips that can help them control cyst development. If you are a plant-based nutritionist, your target audience is looking for vegan alternatives to everyday recipes.
Similarly, you need to do some research on which particular need or question of your target audience you are going to cater to with your webinar.
Select a topic for your webinar
Once you’ve figured out what kind of information your target audience is looking for, all you have to do is pick a specific topic and create the theme of your webinar around it.
Now, when you are narrowing down on a topic, you need to make sure that it is specific and provides an immediate solution to their problems.
For example, it would be vague if the title of your webinar read ‘Ways to improve your lifestyle’. People are constantly bombarded with general healthcare tips and they are exhausted by it. However, if your title read ‘How to manage your diet to reduce your cholesterol levels, it will be more appealing to people and provide an immediate solution to a long-debated question.
There are various ways in which you can figure out the exact topic for your webinar. You could:
- Use Google Analytics to find out which web pages are performing well and generating good traffic.
- Use Google trends to find out keywords & topics that are most popular amongst your target audience.
- Ask your audience through interactive posts and online polls to determine what kind of a webinar do they want
- Look at your competitors and analyze their webinars to see which kind of topics work best
- Go through your FAQs and provide an answer to the most asked questions
Create a presentation for your webinar
Now that you have picked your niche and selected a topic for your webinar, the next step of the process is to create a presentation that you will need while delivering your webinar.
But to create your presentation, you first need to decide on the format of your webinar. There is 5 kind of webinar formats that you can choose from:
- Panel discussions
- Single expert presenter
- Dual presenters
- Interviews
- Q&A sessions
Pick the format that you feel will be best for your particular topic.
Conduct thorough research on your topic and try to justify your answers with crisp examples.
Choose the right platform to host your webinar
If you have made this far, a major (and important) portion of your work is done.
Next step: choosing a platform where you can host your webinar. While conducting a virtual conference is a straightforward thing, each platform has distinct features and pricing models that need to be considered before selecting any one of them.
The most popular choice that nutrition professionals often go with is Zoom. It has a seamless and easy to manage interface, that allows you a wide range of features. Plus, you can organize your webinars for free. Although it is only limited to a strength of 100 members and can be hosted for only 40 minutes, you can upgrade it by choosing a paid plan.
Apart from Zoom, there are other platforms like GoToWebinar, Demio, WebinarNinja, and many others. To pick the right one for your webinar, ask these questions to yourself:
- Does the platform fit your budget?
- How many attendees can you allow?
- Does it allow you to record your webinar?
- Does it have the necessary features that you need?
- Does it allow engagement tracking?
Select a date and time for your webinar
Even though this seems like a menial task, the date and time of your webinar can leave a significant impact on how much traffic you will be able to generate.
According to GoToWebinars, Thursdays and Wednesdays are the days when people prefer to attend a webinar. The most engagement that you will receive from your audience is between 11 A.M. and 2 P.M.
Decide whether to charge a fee or keep it free
How you price your webinar or don’t, can have a major impact on what kind of an outcome you will be able to achieve. If your aim is just to build an email list and attempt to pull in more traffic to your website, keeping it free can be most beneficial.
However, if you are confident in the value proposition of your webinar, you can also charge a fee for your attendees. While it can be a great source of some extra income, it can at least help you meet the expenses of hosting a good webinar.
But before you put a price on it, remember to do thorough research and wait until you are certain that your target audience is willing to pay.
Create a landing page for your webinar
It is safe to say that, by this point, your webinar is ready. Now all you have to do is let people know about it. And for that, you need a landing page.
A landing page is a standalone web page that is specifically created for advertising or marketing campaigns. It allows a viewer to enter a particular section of the website; or in this case, the webinar. You can use it to draw people’s attention to your webinar and create a single point of reference for all your webinar-related content.
The way you might put up a flyer on a notice board, a landing page is equivalent to the digital platforms.
An ideal landing page should have:
- A brief introduction to the topic of the webinar
- The value proposition of the webinar
- Registration information
- Link to the webinar
To create a landing page, you can choose a landing page template from any web developing application. If you are already using WordPress or any other tool for your website, you can very well create a landing page on the same tool. This will help you maintain a visual harmony of your landing page and blend it easily with the website.
If you don’t, some tools can help you. Hubspot has proven to be a very versatile and easy-to-use tool that you can use. Apart from that, Leadpages is another web development tool that has a great landing page developer and can also help you track your lead generation.
Market your webinar’s landing page
We have methodically crafted the webinar and created the landing page for it. All that’s left is to let people know about it. The final step in your preparation for the webinar is to create a strong marketing campaign that will help you send out the word and bring in the desired audience.
First are foremost…
Create a hashtag for your webinar
As we have talked about earlier, hashtags are one of the major weapons in your arsenal when it comes to digital marketing. Not only does it make your event get more visibility, but it also increases the retention value of your posts. People can easily tag their posts about your webinar by using those hashtags and further expand your reach.
Advertise on all digital platforms
Hosting a webinar is a major thing when it comes to digital marketing. Hence, you should not shy away from investing a little in it. You should take advantage of paid advertisements and ensure that a wider range of people gets to know about your event. Post the ads on all your digital platforms, namely websites, social media platforms, online forums, blog sites, and virtual closed networks.
Launch an email marketing campaign
If you already have an email list of subscribers or followers to whom you send your blog updates, you can very well use that list to market your webinar. If you don’t, then now is the right time as any to start it.
Create a good template for your email with valuable information, the same information that you mentioned on the landing page. You can use online tools, like MailChimp, to design a good template for your email.
Tip: Try to create the name of your campaign that is related to the hashtag of the webinar, or vice versa. This way you can further improve the retention level of the event.
Create a blog about your webinar
You’ve conducted a lot of research and found out why you need to educate people about the very topic of your webinar. So, why not put it to words and explain that necessity to your audience?
You should create an intriguing blog that makes your audience curious about finding their answers through your webinar. This will help you motivate them to signup for your webinar.
Steps to take post-webinar
Send out a post-webinar survey
It is always wise to take feedback from your audience and know how they found your event. Ask them what they liked about the webinar and how they were impacted by the information that was provided by it. Also, ask them about how they feel the webinar could’ve been better and more convincing. This way you can improve on your weak points and increase the quality of your future events.
You can post a link for the survey on your social media platforms and website. You can also send emails to the attendees personally to get their feedback.
Download your webinar and post it on digital platforms
Remember earlier when we talked about making sure that your hosting platform allows you to download your webinar? Here’s why. This way, you can post your webinar on social media platforms, display on your website, or use it to create repurposed content in the future.
Add all your attendees to your mailing list
Now that you have created a good connection with a bunch of new potential clients, stay in touch with them. You should add all your attendees to your mailing list and periodically update them about the happenings of the industry, as well as your practice.
However, always make sure that you take permission from them to be added to your email list. Uninvitedly sending out emails to someone can hurt your marketing efforts.
Tips to hold a successful webinar
Take a dry run of your webinar
One of the most important steps to make sure that you have a flawless webinar is to go through a few dry runs. Before the day of your webinar, try to take as many practices runs as you can. You need to be familiar with the flow of the entire event and be acquainted with the tools that you are going to use for the webinar.
This will also help you test your hosting website and request any necessary changes to the developer if there are any.
Invest in some good quality equipment
You wouldn’t want your attendees to strain their eyes or ears while the webinar is going on. You would want to provide them a seamless experience where they can concentrate on the content and not on you adjusting your presentation now and then.
Hence, you should invest in some good quality equipment, like headsets, microphones, and a good webcam.
Aim to provide value with no obligation to buy
If you want your nutrition practice to not be perceived as a money-hogging business, you should aim to provide value to your audience rather than using this as an opportunity to increase your revenue.
By concentrating on the value proposition of your webinar, you can create a real connection with your audience and allow them to evaluate how useful your practice is. It can also help your practice be conceived of a greater value than how they perceive your competitors.
Hence, don’t try on hard-selling your practice and only concentrate on providing value with your webinar.
Keep the webinar interactive
If the webinar is going to be just you talking on a topic, you might as well record a video and send it to your attendees. What sets webinar apart from pre-recorded videos is that it allows you to constantly communicate with your audience and answer their questions instantly.
However, as a host, it is also your responsibility to make sure that your audience participates in the webinar. For that, you can ask poll questions, come up with challenges, or just ask for their opinions or challenges on a particular matter.
End the webinar with a call-to-action
By keeping the previous point of value proposition in mind, you should keep a call to action that organically encourages them to collaborate with you. Be it a free trial session or email sign-up, a call to action is necessary so that they stay connected with you and within your reach. You can eventually nurture them to convert into clients.
While creating your CTA, make sure that it is clear and easy to understand. It should also provide a streamlined method for them to act upon the prompt. You can share a link to book an appointment as a CTA or share your contact information so they can get in touch with you and understand your services more thoroughly. You can also use relevant e-books as a catalyst for the CTA.
Think about visual branding
You can capitalize on this increased face-to-face time with some visual branding. You should add your nutrition business’ logo on the webinar and try to create a visual environment that sets with your brand design.
You can make your background seem more aesthetically pleasing based on your brand’s colors, or even put up a physical banner that fits in the frame. All these nitty-gritty add to the cohesive experience of the webinar.
Keep it compatible with all devices
This is one of the prerequisites that we talked about while evaluating the best platform for your webinar. Not everyone has the luxury of owning a laptop or PC. Most people still rely on their smartphones to perform their internet-based tasks. While their majority is less, you still need to account for them
To make your webinar more accessible for your audience, you need to keep it compatible with all devices, like tablets, phones, and laptops.
Use these easy-to-follow steps and conduct a successful Webinar
As we discussed, a webinar can be a major marketing event that can substantially increase your conversion rates and allow a wider audience to analyze your practice. It can not only help you conduct one-on-one conversations with potential clients, but it also portrays you as a valuable expert in your field and gives you a better edge than your competitors.
And to make it all the easier for you, we have charted out this step-by-step guide that will help you efficiently plan your webinar, as well as guide you on what to do after the webinar. Following this guide will help you make the most out of your event.
