Why webinars are your perfect affiliate tools

Although affiliate marketers employ various tactics to strengthen and diversify their campaigns, they should constantly seek for new ways of product promotion to streamline their work and maximize the opportunity of getting a higher commission.

Here’s where live webinars come into play.

What is a Live Webinar

Simply put, webinars are a smart way to increase your bottom line sales (and they may be the best form of content for your business).

Why webinars

• They can be used to interactively engage with your prospects and educate them on topics and products. Webinars work essentially as an online lesson, where the host plays the role of a teacher.

• From the attendee point of view, webinars offer a unique experience to connect directly with professionals who represent the niche of interest. That’s an opportunity to hear firsthand about a topic from an expert and ask questions about things that may seem confusing.
• You’ll make your affiliate website more interactive and engaging to your visitors.
• You’ll boost the search rankings and visibility of your website.
• Webinars introduce a deeper connection with your prospects and take it to a new level. As the host of a webinar, you can get into the discussion with your audiences and get an understanding of who they are in person. This level isn’t accessible with the other marketing tactics such as blog posts, YouTube videos, emails or even social media.
• Webinars are optimized for selling. Since they are live, people are forced to pay attention as they don’t want to miss a thing. Therefore, webinars are converting well.

Of course, live webinars shouldn’t be a standalone marketing technique, rather they need to be supported by other techniques within an actionable multichannel strategy.

Let’s dig deeper and explain how you can certainly use live webinars when you are an affiliate marketer.

How to Prepare for a Live Webinar

Marketers often refrain from live webinars because they (or at least most of them) don’t usually connect directly with their audiences. However, it’s just a case of getting used to such an activity. If you want to get your hands on video marketing, you can warm up by recording videos for your YouTube channel or your website.

As a host of a live webinar you’re becoming a, so-called, ‘brand advocate’. Therefore, make sure your expertise about a given brand is impressive and you know the answers to all the frequently asked questions. Hence, read the documentation of products you’re going to market and check up with the merchant about your grade of knowledge before you go live. Remember, it’s better to spend more time on preparation for the role of the host than it is to start too soon and get easily taken aback by the least expected question. Beware that live webinars can’t be cut in the middle just because you’re not ready. You’re putting your authority at risk and your authority, once broken, cannot be restored easily. So better be ready!

Webinar Best Practices

Remember that despite the fact that webinars are optimized for sales doesn’t mean they shouldn’t work as a sales pitch. It’s the opposite that guarantees you success here. Hosting a webinar, you should preserve a neutral and authoritative voice. Its content style should resemble your blog posts. This means your webinar should be for sure satisfy “3-e rule”: educational, engaging and entertaining. But that’s only the basis, ideally it should also be:

• high-quality
• based on data,
• present value,
• with rich media,
• come without asking for anything in return.

Prepare a few polls/surveys upfront. Your webinar is also your opportunity to drive some unique statistics. Therefore, think your questions over and ensure they will bring value by revealing something useful about your attendees. Polls can be used in your introduction to warm up your viewers.

• Start by introducing yourself. Don’t expect that your viewers know you. Most of them will be newcomers so you should explain who are you in the first place, what your webinar is about and why you are hosting it. This will build up some trust at the beginning.
• Work on headline for the webinar. Without an intriguing topic, people won’t show up to your webinar, nor will they last long if your overall content happens to be boring.
• Finally, it’s not just the topic alone staying behind your webinars’ success. You need to keep up engagement throughout the webinar as your viewers can leave at any minute. Make your presentation to the point, packed with exciting data, sprinkle it with light storytelling and a sense of humor. Another thing is the quality of your performance – it also needs to be top-notch and user-friendly.

Final thoughts

Hope now you understand what webinars are all about and you’ll be able to introduce them to your affiliate business. Make sure to read our other tips, cause nothing is better than staying tuned day and night. Do you have any further questions? Feel free to throw them in in the comments below.