We live in a world where technology both dominates and changes at the drop of a hat, making your latest offering yesterday’s news in an instant. Staying relevant within your industry is a major contributor to achieving and maintaining success.

Communication is key when approaching product promotion, retention, and gaining new buyers and clients — and it can’t be a one-way street. Don’t just speak to your buyers, sponsors, and financial backers, speak with them. 

What does this look like? Communication seems easy, yet so many companies miss the mark, which ends up hurting their brand. A great way to open communication channels is through a classic webinar.

The goal of any webinar is to retain the interest of attendees and renew their excitement in your products and services. One way to achieve that objective is through engagement marketing. 

This method will help you better reach your audience and provide stronger offerings that nurture your relationship with them and keep them coming back for more. Learn why engagement marketing is important, how to create an engaging webinar that gets results, and how to track your progress. 

What Is Engagement Marketing?

Engagement marketing is the act of approaching and interacting with your consumers. In the past, this included email campaigns and content marketing, but these tactics have grown stale. However, engagement marketing can revitalize those tired methods. Social media posts, the modern addition to your marketing toolkit, are often more engaging than established marketing tools and boast demographic-oriented advertising. To be effective though, these approaches must be personal (more on that below).

The purpose of engagement marketing isn’t to create brand awareness; most buyers know what a product is before they buy it and can readily research any offering or brand on their own. Rather, the goal is simply to help consumers make a purchase decision based on more than basic impulse and their original desires. And it does so without flooding them with junk emails and generic advertisements that they’ll easily overlook.

In short, your aim is to show your target customer why your product is best for them by engaging with them directly, instead of throwing them an outdated sales pitch.

Before you jump into engagement marketing, consider the following influential elements.

Creating Relationships 

Think about your offering from the buyer’s point of view. How will a consumer use your product or service? How have you personally benefited from your products or services? How can you otherwise create relationships with your consumers? Can you share these experiences with your customers in a social media campaign or other marketing efforts?

Answering these questions will establish a starting point for your engagement activities.

Building Loyalty

You obtain customer loyalty by being transparent and consistent and by backing your products in ways that instill buyer confidence (think money-back guarantees, free shipping, etc.). 

Your target customer should feel confident in reaching out to your company for any reason and receiving a response from a real person, not a bot. 

Sparking Conversations

Engaging with your audience generates top-notch marketing ideas. Spark conversations online and via emails by running surveys, opening live chats for all your web pages and webinars, and encouraging input from customers (including potential ones). 

Why Businesses Need Engagement Marketing 

Your audience already has the information they need about your company: In a single web search, they can learn what your company stands for and why, what you have to offer, and even personal information about you and competing businesses in the industry. 

Even harsher, your clients don’t care about your products any more than the others on the market. However, they do care about why your offering is ideal for them and why your company keeps popping up in their social media feed. Engagement marketing can differentiate your brand to consumers by showing them how your products stand out and why you’re the right choice.

Let your engagement marketing efforts turn potential customers into loyal buyers. 

Make Your Customer Experience Count

When a consumer gives you a shout-out on social media, thank them back publicly. When they use the same platform to voice a complaint or concern, leverage transparency to make your company memorable. Also, include interactive experiences in your campaigns when possible to grab people’s attention and improve their customer experience. 

Make All Experiences Special 

Securing a customer’s loyalty is no excuse to let your performance slip. Your customer engagement marketing strategy should strive to keep these customers coming back — and bringing their friends along. For example, launch loyalty programs and rewards for customers who post about your products or services online, or send marketing emails with discounts, teasers, or other enticements so customers will return. 

How To Create an Engaging Webinar

Now that you understand how crucial engagement marketing is, you can create a webinar that incorporates it to grab consumer attention. Engagement marketing should permeate your efforts before the webinar starts through to the end, and we’ll explain how. 

Before Your Webinar

• Get your audience involved. Ask what they want to cover in your webinar. You can narrow the topics so the final selection is still relevant to your webinar’s goal. 
• Gather consumer input by asking attendees to provide questions before the webinar starts. This gives you time to prepare and sort questions based on relevance and interest. 

Above all, make your customers feel they’re active and important participants in your webinar. 

During Your Webinar

• Keep attendees talking! Leave your live chat open and have a poll going throughout the webinar. This is a great way to hold interest.
• Ask questions and check the chats. Capitalize on one-to-one marketing in both public and private chat areas by having moderators at the ready to help.
• Provide freebies. Conversion rates go up when you have free downloads or other freebies your potential customers can use. They’ll feel more likely to engage in future event marketing efforts. 
• Take note of the attendees who pay the most attention and stay engaged. These are the customers to reach out to in your future content strategy efforts and email campaigns, as they yield the highest ROI.
• Encourage voting. We love polls because it inspires discussion and covers various topics. Try it and see how this customer engagement strategy sparks deep, relevant conversations. 
• Showcase your audience. Have someone who’s an expert in a certain discussion or who has a differing view attending your webinar? Give them the stage during your webinar and show your respect for their knowledge. 
• Maintain a strong CTA. Remember to send event links and reminders for your audience to learn more, book a free consult, or grab a sneak peek of your next product launch. 
• Hold a Q&A and pay attention to who asks questions and who doesn’t. Attendees with lots of questions are paying attention, while those who remain silent (and disengaged) are likely there only for the freebies. 

After Your Webinar

• Successful marketing platforms continue to achieve results after a webinar ends. Your content marketing strategy should include a follow-up email with fresh information to keep potential and loyal customers engaged.
• Give your attendees something for their time. A free download, discount code, or link to the next webinar are ideal gestures of appreciation. 
• Collect input. Your attendees will have questions, concerns, or ideas for your next webinar, and you’ll want to hear them. Their opinions and questions will help you refine your future webinars for peak performance and results. 
• Encourage everyone to come back. This includes those who simply sat through the webinar and those who registered but failed to show — this time. Incentives in the form of free webinar access can increase conversion rates for no-shows. 
• A post-webinar session with a Q&A can be most effective in creating two-way conversations with your target customer. 
• Track the effectiveness of your webinar by comparing your conversion rates post-webinar to your email marketing campaigns and other efforts, including any social media campaign ideas you have. 

A webinar that lets the audience be part of the process and help lead the topic is a big part of engagement marketing. Learn more about Banzai’s process here. 

Make Webinars Recurring

To keep your audience engaged constantly, create a webinar series by following a favored topic. You can vary your subject matter as your attendees suggest ideas or shift interests. Treat your webinars like a television show or a podcast to encourage constant engagement and stay relevant with your buyers. 

Reach Your Entire Audience and Create Loyalty With Webinars

Engagement marketing and webinars go hand-in-hand thanks to webinars’ lucrative and wide-reaching possibilities. They enable your entire audience to participate in your webinar, make your brand memorable, and, most importantly, strengthen your connections with your buyers. 

Explore webinar platforms to find the best fit for your needs. The right choice will help you expand and modernize your brand and make your followers feel like they matter. Explore all we have to offer at Banzai to make your next webinar an entertaining and high-yielding event.

Ready to succeed? We can help you get there. Our team at Banzai will assist you with the marketing tools and knowledge necessary to best engage with your audience so you can get your products into the hands of the consumers who need and want them most.