How to customize your webinar branding in every detail
Branding is an integral part of marketing, and every successful marketing strategy is based on either creating a brand or strengthening it. The same rule applies to webinars: if you want to have a successful webinar (or, even better, a series of successful webinars) that will help improve your business, you need to hone your webinar branding.
Why is branding so important?
The concept of brands has existed for decades, but with the advent of mass media – and especially the internet – it has gone to a whole new level.
Nowadays, it’s literally impossible to create a successful business unless you brand your product or service. Even drop shipping companies, selling mass-produced goods, often decide to brand their products – because it helps their business in the long run.
The explanation for this is simple. Ever since our earliest beginnings, we humans have loved to belong to a group, a tribe, etc. We feel a special bond with our hometown, organization, and country, but also people who share our taste in music, clothing, and so on. And this is where branding enters the stage.
People are more likely to buy a branded product, than a product that’s not branded in any way. Even if they are of the same quality. Because it’s not only about utility (the aspect of something being useful and practical), it’s also about belonging to a group.
Think about any major company in the world, from coffee shop and fast food chains to tech companies, and you will notice that all of them have created a strong brand to back them up. Practically speaking, having a strong brand is equally important as having a high-quality product or service.
Brand recognition drives a business forward, gathering new customers and maintaining current ones. And the more people know about you, the more of them will be likely to buy from you and engage with your business. In marketing, this is called “brand awareness”.
Branding and webinars
The best aspect of branding, what makes it so effective, is that you can match your brand to literally any aspect of your business. In fact, some of the best branding campaigns weren’t directly connected to the product at all. The goal is to link the “object of branding” to the core ideas and values behind your product or service, that is – your business. In that respect, it’s possible to take branding to your webinar(s), thus strengthening your business and bringing in new leads.
Your webinar doesn’t only have to be a “path” to your brand. Actually, the webinar itself can be synonymous with your brand i.e. your values and principles. It is practically an extension of your business branding, at the forefront of your buyer’s journey. And in order to become that, the webinar needs to adopt the principal aspect of branding – it has to stand out.
Define your distinctive features
What sets you apart? What makes your business different from the rest? Is there something that can help you stand out from the crowd? These are all questions that will help you create a much better and more memorable webinar experience for your attendees.
You need to think about all the aspects of your business, including your core values and principles, so that you can incorporate them in your webinars.
You can start by defining your tone of voice. Every brand has a tone of voice, and it should be noticeable in your webinars as well.
Tone is more than just the words we choose. It’s the way in which we communicate our personality. Tone of voice is the way we tell our users how we feel about our message, and it will influence how they’ll feel about our message, too.
(Nielsen Norman Group)
Basically, a tone of voice is the way a business communicates with its customers. It’s a very significant part of the buyer’s journey, and it needs to be defined very well in order to work out.
Defining your tone of voice comes down to two key questions:
- Who are you communicating with?
- What goal(s) are you trying to achieve?
Once you answer these, it will be much easier to come up with a suitable tone of voice.
Think about your ideal customers (who they are, what their interests are, which demographic they belong to, etc.). This will help you decide whether you want to maintain a more loose, informal and relaxed tone of voice, or a more formal and serious one. For example, you shouldn’t address entrepreneurs in their 20s and brokers in their 50s the same – it’s simply not the same age group.
Their habits, business ideas and even language are much apart. So, knowing who you talk to will allow you to find the right “frequency” and schedule when creating content for your webinar.
When attendees notice that the way you address them is in accordance with their worldview and core beliefs, they will trust you more and be ready to engage further.
Pro tip: Webinar presenters should exude confidence talking about the topic of the webinar. The last thing you want is a presenter who doesn’t seem to be comfortable discussing the topic, or someone who doesn’t understand the topic well. This may affect the further actions you want your webinar attendees to take.
Thematize the entire webinar experience
A webinar doesn’t start at the moment when your attendees start viewing the content. Actually, it starts way before, at the moment when potential attendees first find out a webinar will be held. That is why it’s important to thematize the webinar experience, from start to finish. What does this mean?
You need to incorporate all sections of the buyer’s journey with the overall theme of the webinar. Decide what it is that you want to achieve. What are the values you want to instil, what is the message you want to share with your audience? When you do this, then it’s time to incorporate design and copy into the whole process.
Remember, a webinar starts much before the actual day of hosting it. Your goal is to attract a lot of people for your online event, which is why the offer has to be appealing; otherwise, you cannot expect a large turnout.
It all starts with the copy and visuals. Since you’ve already decided upon your tone of voice for the webinar, now it’s time to craft a good offer and use the right visuals. The webinar starts with the first offer your potential attendees will read.
When it comes to marketing your webinar, it's important for your design and copy to work together seamlessly. This includes all visual aspects, such as ads and social media banners. To simplify your design process, there are many poster templates available for use. Remember to keep your design and copy in line with the theme of your webinar.
Choose the right words i.e. language specific to your target audience, as well as the visuals that will complement the copy, meaning: font, colour, images, etc. When you choose the right copy and design, you can implement it in your communication channels.
Depending on your marketing strategy, you can promote your webinar via email (as an email campaign or a newsletter), on your social media (as posts of ads), on Google ads, banners, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. You don’t have to use all of these if that’s not your marketing strategy. Pick a couple that are relevant to your target audience and craft the copy and visuals accordingly.
Remember, promotion is a vital part of the whole webinar experience, and without it, it will be almost impossible to draw enough attendees. In your offer (newsletter, social media, post, etc.) explain in great detail what your values are, what your webinar will be and – very importantly – how it will benefit the attendees. Backed by strong copy and powerful visuals (as well as a strong call to action), your offer can truly become a lead magnet for webinar attendees.
Pro tip: Create a landing page for your webinar, for which you can use an AI website builder. This will solidify the whole branding for it, and help you get more attendees. The landing page should be simple and straightforward, listing the date and time for the webinar, topics that will be discussed and a clear and direct call to action (remember, you want them to register hassle-free).
Create a community for generating leads
The best results come about when you have a great demand. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to generate a huge demand for a product, service or, in this case, a webinar. Know that it’s much easier to generate demand if you have a strong community of like-minded people. Thus, when you decide to host a webinar and share it with this community, it will be a lot easier to have a large turnout. So, how can you create a community that will generate webinar leads for you?
The best way for this is to start a closed Facebook group, dedicated to the topic close or directly connected to your business. So, if your business is about eprocurement software, you can create a private FB group where professionals in the procurement industry can join and engage in discussions, share insights, and exchange knowledge. LinkedIn also has an option for creating groups, but they are not nearly as popular and effective as Facebook groups. If you still want to use LinkedIn, it’s much better to create a business page and share content there.
However, Facebook groups are perfect as an online forum for people who share the same interests. Also, another reason why Facebook groups are much better than, for example, newsletters, is that they allow interaction between group members. When you have a newsletter, your subscribers are not connected in any other way than being on your email list; they simply receive your updates and promos, but it’s not interactive.
On the other hand, Facebook groups allow people to discuss topics of common interest, share ideas, exchange views, etc. And of course, you get to share the content you find valuable and slowly create a community of potential leads.
Over time, you can share more and more content about your business, as well as similar topics, and introduce your brand (be it a product, service, organization, etc.). And once you decide to host a webinar, and share updates about the date and time of hosting, there will already be a strong community of potential attendees. Thus, getting enough registrants will be greatly facilitated, and you will still have a strong community for new webinars in the future.
Pro tip: If you have a lot of content, that can be spread across a couple of webinars, don’t cram everything into one webinar. You will only waste good material. Creating a webinar series – with its own name – is also a great way to generate demand and reinforce your brand, because customers love a regular influx of useful content they can engage with.
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