Every customer or lead or prospect is different, but the buying process they go through is pretty much the same. It’s your job as a business owner to match your marketing content to meet the needs of your audience whichever stage they are in the buyer’s journey.
Match your marketing content to meet the needs of your audience wherever they are in the buyer’s journey. [Tweet this]
That’s one of the most awesome things about webinars. They can be used not only to convince qualified leads to make a purchase, but also to attract fresh prospects, and nurture relationships with current clients.
So how do you use webinars to match the stage your customer is in? What would be the best type of event to host when your audience is still in the awareness stage as opposed to the decision stage?
Here’s a closer look at each stage and our content recommendations:
Awareness Stage
This is when your potential customer is starting to recognize their pain points. They acknowledge that they have a problem but don’t know what that problem is yet.
This is the perfect opportunity to subtly introduce your brand as a go-to resource and establish yourself as an authority.
Example:
A restaurant owner is noticing that they’re not getting as many new customers as they used to. They investigate in-house and find nothing amiss – the food is still good and the regulars keep coming in with no complaints.
They then decide to go online to search for potential reasons why a business might experience a sudden decrease in new customers. They attend your webinar – where you interview a PR expert in the hospitality and restaurant industry about the importance of brands having an online presence and monitoring their customer reviews – and they discover that they have negative reviews posted on online spaces they have no presence in.
Webinar Idea:
A value-heavy interview with an expert about common pain points your target audience might be suffering from. You can also facilitate a Q&A between an industry authority and your audiencenot only to attract fresh customers but to learn from them as well.
Want to find out firsthand how effective webinars are in moving your prospects through the buyer’s journey? Host your next event with WebinarJEO!
Consideration Stage
Customers at this stage of the buying cycle is already aware what problems they face and are now researching the best solutions.
Example:
The same restaurant owner now knows that it’s the negative reviews online – especially the ones not posted on their business pages – that’s affecting their brand. They have responded to the ones they found, but are now wondering what other fixes they can do to prevent the same issue from happening again.
They search online, and since you were the one who facilitated the webinar that opened their eyes to the importance of online reputation management, they check your site out first to see if you have an event that focuses on actionable, quantifiable methods that can help them manage their restaurant’s image online.
They attend your webinar and learn how an optimized Facebook Page, a complete Yelp/TripAdvisor/Google Business profile, and a keyword monitoring tool can work together to make sure a business doesn’t miss a single customer review and can immediately conduct damage control.
Webinar Idea:
Webinars that focus on step-by-step solutions work best in this stage of the journey. You can do over-the-shoulder or screen-sharing presentations to demonstrate the actual how-to using the tips and advice you gave. It also doesn’t hurt to conduct a quick Q&A at the end of your event.
Decision Stage
At this stage, the solution has been thoroughly researched and potential products have been chosen, the customer just needs to be convinced to buy YOUR product.
Example:
The restaurant owner has optimized their brand’s presence online. They have all the pertinent details their customers might need posted on their public spaces and they’ve improved their social media marketing. The next thing they need sorted is monitoring for mentions of their name online and they’ve looked into several tools that might work best for them – one of which is yours.
They trust your judgement – being the one who helped open their eyes to the issue in the first place – but they still need a bit of push in order to take that final leap.
They check out your page and attend your latest webinar about your product and the ways it can help businesses like theirs. You go through the product features, but more importantly, showcase the benefits each feature provides. And you give them an irresistible call to action. They are convinced and they make the purchase.
Webinar Idea:
Product demos work best at this stage with a touch of social proof. The proof can be in the form of the number of other people who have bought the product, video testimonials, or written reviews.
Note: When done right, webinars – or other content strategies for that matter – can hasten the buyer’s journey and can even get customers to skip a stage straight to purchasing.
shunikerhiqu 