Webinars Are a Popular — But Often Misunderstood — Engagement Tool. Try These 9 Tips to Use Them the Right Way. Leverage webinars to establish your expertise and demonstrate the value of your business. Discover how engaging, informative sessions can build credibility and drive sales.

Webinars have become a popular presentation tool for many businesses. They allow a company to educate clients and promote products or services to an online audience. However, some businesses do not use webinars to their fullest advantage. Here are some tips for utilizing webinars that may not be as commonly known to help companies build their reputation as experts and sell more value to customers.

Provide real value without directly selling

When people sign up for a webinar, they want to learn something useful without feeling like they are being sold to. You need to focus your content on providing real value to your attendees through helpful tips, strategies, case studies or data they will find useful. You can do this without directly pitching your products or services. This will build credibility as an expert people want to learn from. Later in the webinar or in the follow-up, you can discuss how your offerings can help them implement what they learned.

For example, if you are in web design, your webinar could provide tips for improving website usability without a sales pitch. Later you may explain how your web design services can apply those usability best practices. Attendees will be much more open to your solutions after first benefitting from the helpful content.

Related: Why Webinars Should Be a Key Part of Your Business's Online Strategy

Ask compelling discussion questions

One main thing you can do is pause during your webinar to ask open-ended questions that encourage discussion and interaction in the chat box. Questions like "What challenges have you faced with this" or "How could these tips apply to your situation" get people engaged and thinking deeper about the content. It makes the webinar feel more like a conversation than a one-way presentation. Compelling questions also help reinforce the key ideas since people need to process them to answer.

Share relevant case studies and examples

Nothing sells better than real-world examples. Look for case studies from customers or public case studies about how other businesses leveraged the strategies or tools in your webinar topic successfully. Discuss the challenges they faced, the steps they took and the results they achieved. Attendees can more easily imagine applying the ideas to their own situations when backed by specific examples. Make sure to get permission to share any customer stories or to only share what is publicly available.

Record and distribute the webinar later

Many people sign up for a webinar with the intention to watch it live, but real life gets in the way and they miss it. Others may discover the valuable topic after the live date passed. By recording your webinar, you give it longer legs and an opportunity to reach a wider audience. You can upload the recording to your website, share it on social networks or send the link in follow-up emails. It becomes a piece of evergreen content promoting your expertise for months afterward.

Offer a valuable downloadable resource

Along with sharing the webinar recording, also provide attendees with a downloadable workbook, checklist, template or other takeaway resource they can reference later. This could be a compilation of the webinar discussion questions, key stats shared or a planning guide for implementing the strategies. By giving them something immediately useful they can apply, it leaves them with a positive experience of your webinar and brand.

Related: 12 Steps for Creating the Perfect Webinar

Ask for interactions during the live session

To keep people engaged when attending your live webinar, frequently ask questions for poll questions or type answers in the chat. Questions like "Type A if you've faced this challenge or B if not" or "Rate your confidence on a scale of 1 to 5" make people active participants instead of passive listeners. You can even have everyone introduce themselves in the chat to create connections. Interaction makes the webinar experience more engaging and impactful.

Follow up consistently after the event

Just because the session ended does not mean your contact with attendees should end. In the days following, you could send at least 3 follow-up emails thanking people for attending, recapping the key takeaways, and offering additional support or resources. You may also want to send a survey to collect feedback on your webinar experience. Consistent follow-up is important here!

Promote your upcoming webinars in advance

Don't just publish a webinar signup link the day it will happen. Promote your upcoming webinars well in advance, whether on your website, blog, in emails or on your social networks. Using emails enables you to inform your customers about your next session. This is important because you need to give attendees time on their calendars and generate early interest and commitment through teasers about the topic and speaker. You may even do an early bird discount for those who register several weeks before to encourage this. This advance promotion will spread the word wider and will lead to higher registration numbers.

Related: 7 Practical Steps to Host Webinars That Drive Sales

Consider a webinar series

Instead of one-off webinars, you can even plan a webinar series around a specific topic or set of related topics. This could work greatly — it could be a monthly webinar series like "website optimization tips" or a multi-part series like "social media marketing mastery." A series approach will allow you to go deeper into the content over time and build community around the topic. It will also give your attendees a schedule to look forward to.

While getting started with webinars requires some planning and preparation up front, putting these strategies into action can start generating positive results for your bottom line over time. Good luck!