WEBINARS MADE EASY!

If you have an online business or you're thinking about starting one, you've probably heard about webinars.

Webinars (seminars conducted via the "web") have been around for a long time and are often used for lead generation, education and sales. I googled "webinar software" and listed five of the options that came up below. The first three options listed are more traditional ones and are what many people use for webinars these days.

Webinar Jam

Got To Meeting

Easy Webinar

Meeting Burner

Zoom

Each webinar option listed above is different and there are many, MANY others out there! Some are "wrap-around" products that use Google Hangouts for the actual webinar, others are stand alone products. I use Zoom for all of my webinars, but I don't use the "webinar" option they offer because it's a lot more expensive. Instead, I limit my webinars to 50 people and operate from the regular "video conferencing" program. (I also use Zoom for 1:1 coaching, group coaching the masterminds I run throughout each year. I can do all of this for the same price!)

All of the webinar software and programs I've seen offer a variety of features and pricing levels. Some webinar products offer a free one-month trial, others offer a free option for a small number of attendees or for meetings less than an hour. It can get very confusing, (it did for me--see my "Helpful Idea" in the next paragraph), but it's super important to research the webinar options you're considering very closely with your specific requirements in mind. For example, I've never used traditional webinar software and lead pages for my webinars, because for the three or four webinars I conduct each year, that choice would cost me about $100 for each webinar I do.

Helpful Idea: Not sure which webinar software is right for you? This is what I did and it really helped! Create a two-column chart with one column for everything I needed in a webinar and the second column for other features I wanted. You may need traditional webinar software or you may be able to get by with web/video conferencing for now. This chart will help you see what you really need!

Note: When you search for "webinar software," options pop up that are technically not webinar software...

Web/Video Conferencing: (This is what I use with Zoom.) Web or Video conferencing ususally contains additional features such as: meeting recording, slideshare, screenshare, live or streaming video, whiteboard with annotation, web tours, text chat, polls and surveys. What web conferencing doesn't include is providing the templates for all of the landing pages, or any reminders and updates for the webinar attendees. Having these for your webinars is definitely a time saver and can really lessen the load if you produce a lot of webinars each year with many attendees.

Regardless of your choice of program, please know that there are many ways you can easily produce professional webinars that educate your customers, provide you with quality lead generation and sell your goods and services online. The hardest part is choosing which program!

If you'd like some help creating a webinar or choosing a quality platform for your specific needs, feel free to sign up for a 20-minute business strategy session with me here.