While free webinars are almost a norm, paid webinars are slowly making their presence felt. Various webinar platforms can be used for this purpose. Similarly, many payment platforms such as PayPal can be used to collect payments. So, how can you charge for webinars?
What Does It Take To Host Paid Webinars?
It is very normal for companies to host free webinars as part of online event marketing. This has the potential of attracting a good audience, many of whom can become leads for future business. This is also an opportunity to make your presence in the seminar and virtual conference space.
This is about free webinars while there can be webinars for which the companies can justifiably charge the audience. Here are some examples, of when you can charge the participants for attending your webinar:
- When you are sharing high-value knowledge or experience
- When you offer high-value training in a series of webinars
- When you offer additional technical support for your product or services
- When you offer exclusive information to your brand followers
- When you have people who are ready to invest in a solution that you can offer
How To Build a Paid & Successful Webinar
The first thing that needs to be kept in mind while putting together a paid webinar is you pick up a topic that brings a high return on investment to the participants.
Create the Right Emotion
When you are hosting a paid webinar, it has to have a top-grade professional feel about every aspect of the business. This applies to the registration page, marketing collateral, landing page, and payment experience. But most importantly, the webinar itself should be power-packed and must bring a high return on investment. Everything should be accurate and work seamlessly.
Ensure Content Is Exclusive
Organizing a paid webinar means you must provide content that is high-value and exclusive. Make sure your speakers are high achievers in their respective fields and they provide exclusive premium content from their experience. Also, since it’s a webinar for which people have paid money, make sure no unauthorized person finds entry into the webinar.
Make a Series of Webinars
If you are offering high-value content, one virtual event may not be enough. Pack in more by way of a series of webinars and offer your audience a package deal. You can come again and again with different episodes of the webinar. Or you can package the content into different episodes of webinars. The webinar can be broken into different sessions, for example, main, training, Q &A, and breakout sessions. You can provide the details of all the webinars on the registration page and can offer a package deal of 4 sessions for the price of 3, and so on.
Offer Some Takeaways
To offer more value for the money that the participants of the webinar pay, you can offer some takeaways in addition to the webinar. The takeaways can be a webinar summary, a survey report, a certification, or an online training program. These takeaways will help you keep the conversation going with your audience. At the same time, the attendees of the webinar will feel their investment in the webinar has been appreciated by you.
Choose Your Webinar Software Carefully
When you are organizing a paid webinar, everything about it has to be perfect. This also goes for the software or the webinar platform you are using. If you have great speakers and a decent audience, the only things that can ruin the experience are bad software, internet outages, bad-quality audio, and microphones. Make sure the webinar delivery software is high quality and you have tested it before the webinar starts. If you have chosen a reliable webinar platform that consistently offers a high-quality experience to the participants, a great part of the webinar delivery is achieved.
There are a plethora of webinar platforms but you should choose the one that does not ask the attendees to download a program to be able to view the proceedings of the webinar. The software should offer standard features including polls, chatbox, registration process, payment gateway, recording, and transcription services.
How Much Should I Charge For a Webinar?
A big confusion associated with the paid webinar is about their pricing. How much should I charge for a webinar?
This is a recurring worry of any webinar organizer. What should be the right pricing for the webinar can sometimes take hours of brainstorming and yet you may not arrive at a convincing solution. This is a major roadblock in launching a successful paid webinar. But before we talk about other issues, let’s understand one thing: The lowest price may not be the best price and it may not inspire many people to come for your webinar. General thinking may emanate from such low pricing that the webinar may not have anything worthwhile to offer. So more than doing any good, low pricing can result in a negative fallout on the webinar.
So, the challenge of setting the right price for your webinar holds many important keys and you should not ignore this aspect of organizing an online event.
The pricing for the webinar should factor in the overall goal of organizing the event, the value, and the exclusive content that you are planning to deliver through the webinar, the pricing of similar and comparable industry events, and finally the market research.
Like low pricing, you should avoid the temptation to go in for discount offers even if you are not getting enough attendees to your webinar. Instead of sending a confusing message by opting to give discounts, you should concentrate on selling the webinar seats more aggressively at the full rate.
Is It Wrong To Charge For Webinars?
With the rise of paid webinars, this kind of question is asked very often. Is it wrong to charge for webinars? So far, the trend has been to organize free webinars. The organizers of free webinars seem to be convinced that audiences cannot be made to join an online event unless it is completely free.
The idea of providing value-added and exclusive content through paid webinars is slowly picking up now. Organizers and businesses are increasingly employing sophisticated planning and content to hook audiences who are ready to pay for such high-value content. In this light, we can say it is not wrong to charge for webinars.
Will People Pay For Webinars?
When companies plan to organize paid webinars they often grapple with this question: will people pay for webinars? Well, if the content of a webinar is so compelling or so rewarding that people can’t help but line up for it, it can well be charged for. People would be happy to pay and book their seats.
But if the content is commonplace and there is no novelty or exclusivity, very few people would be willing to stop doing what they are doing to break into a webinar session. If there is a prospect of making more money than the investment by attending the paid webinar, people can be easily interested in such events.
Why Do I Feel Bad Charging Money For My Webinars?
Yes, some webinar organizers may feel bad about charging money from the attendees. This is because they feel they are not giving anything worth the money they are going to charge the people. Many times companies promote their products and services in which there is little for the attendees of the webinar.
Then, you may well ask why I feel bad charging money for my webinars. It’s because you know you are going to use the people in your webinar to spread your company’s message. There is hardly anything in those webinars for the attendees. That’s why many webinar organizers feel bad about charging for the webinar.
How To Charge For Webinars?
Most of the software used for holding webinars offers a complete range of services for organizing webinars that can be attended by thousands of people at a time. They have a registration page where people can fill in their details. Similarly, it has pages for event details, speakers, and other content and details.
The software also has multiple payment gateways that can be used to collect payments from the attendees. This means guests can pay up during the registration process on the software’s link provided by the organizer to the attendees. By making the payment, they can book their seats and enjoy hassle-free participation in the webinar.
Final Thoughts
Paid webinars have the potential to become a profitable venture. But it’s not easy to organize a webinar that is paid and successful. The biggest problem is that of time. Everybody is busy and has got something to do at the time the webinar is going to be hosted. Now, is there anything on the earth that needs to be seen and watched more urgently than what you have on your hand right now?
In this light, the webinar organizers must think about providing high-value and exclusive content. Once the content and speakers are finalized, the focus should shift to organizing the webinar in a sophisticated and seamless process.
The attendees should be the centre of the focus and care should be taken to ensure they return with substantive takeaways from the event.