Webinars as a tool for growing a SaaS business - 5 benefits

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With the benefit of being both time and cost-effective, a webinar will increase the growth of your SaaS business by not only easily adding value to existing clients, but help you secure even more. In this article, we will go through the ways in which hosting a webinar will be a boost to your SaaS business.

A ‘software as a service’ company is one that hosts an application and makes it available to customers over the internet. The software in question sits on a SaaS company’s server while the user accesses it remotely.

A SaaS company maintains servers, databases, and software that allow the application to be accessed over the internet — most likely by web browsers. Users can access the software from almost any device. Because SaaS is digital by nature, distributed via the internet, with users accustomed to the digital format - a webinar is a perfect tool for a SaaS company.

SaaS customers usually pay a subscription fee— often monthly — to access the application. Some subscriptions are based upon how much data needs to be stored, the number of users who will access the application, or the level of technical support desired.

Down below are five important benefits that SaaS companies can get from hosting webinars.

People who register for your webinar are clearly interested in your business and the field you are active in - with this in mind, you can easily nurture and convert them into customers. Webinars help build brand awareness by creating an engaging experience for attendees - it’s all about making a memorable and interactive experience, which we go into more detail in some previous blogs here. Real faces telling the ins-and-outs of your business also humanizes your brand and make your company fun to engage with.

You can also use your webinar internally within your organization, to make training new employees more of a fun and interactive experience than brand guides or textbooks.

Webinars will not only build upon the relationship with your existing audience but attract a whole stream of new leads- and if you are well-positioned with your virtual webinar, you can bring in hundreds and thousands of leads that are not only new, but qualified.

As you can read about in our previous blogs, you can further qualify attendees by including key questions within the registration process to help determine specific qualifications for your ICP (ideal customer profile). Whether that’s number of employees or company revenue, webinars can help you to obtain that information from the outset and funnel new contacts to the appropriate sales pipeline.

This can include your social media channels, your blog, and website- the more places you create and publish content, the more likely you’ll bring in more engagement and, ultimately, more conversions, regardless of where your audience is.

Every keynote, session and panel has the potential to become a lasting part of your content marketing strategy in some way- your webinar can be recorded and put online, or you can use the script in the form of blog posts. The keynotes and speeches from experts in the industry can be used later on and transcripted, or promoted on social media to bring in more leads from different avenues.

With your recorded webinar, you can split the speeches up until seperate videos and pad out your Youtube channel with them, edit the audio into a podcast and release a new episode, publish recaps and transcripts as blog posts, or build a library of the content on a learning system for longterm playback and lead generation. Or all of the above! There’s no limit to where your content can take you.

Then there are the mountains of social posts and short form video & blog content using pieces and snippets from all of the sessions that it’s possible to work with.

Webinars are an excellent way to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. They allow you the opportunity to personally provide solutions for any problems people might have with your SaaS product. It helps build trust as you are able to clear up any doubts.

Webinars are also an excellent way of expanding your business- even better than physical conferences as they allow you to reach a global audience from all over the world, whereas in-person events may alienate some potential customers. Webinars also mean you can reach everyone at one time in one place, whereas a physical event may mean that some people only get the opportunity to mix with a few others or miss some aspects.

Just like with potential customers, webinars are a great opportunity to establish and deepen relationships with other brands- there’s always the potential to connect with another brand that has a similar target audience where you (and they) can double your reach and event impact, leading to even more growth and leads.

Today, many successful organizations do this as part of their marketing strategy - leveraging each others network and resources, to reach a wider audience of new leads and offer a wider range of knowledge with mixing guest speakers.

There are many ways that you can partner with other brands, including:

• Co-marketing

• Lead sharing

• Sponsored speaking slots

• Paid sponsorship

Of course, this depends on your goals for the event, the platform you select, and what options you wish to employ. Make sure when you’re doing your initial planning you consider these options and determine some guidelines for how you want to structure your brand partner and sponsor opportunities.

A tip is to check out Univid's webinar platform if you are looking for a platform with many smart functions to reach a wider audience, engage your attendees, and convert leads.

So, we’ve come to see how webinars can prove to be highly beneficial for your SaaS content strategy and generate high sales volumes.

By putting in the time to plan your event effectively and make it the best it can be, it will help you to get closer to your audience and convince them with your expertise.

The data you collect during the webinar will also help you to improve your marketing strategy and be valuable for your next event.

Like everything else in life, the more events you create, the more effortless and easier each process will become. Putting in regular effort will mean you can grow your audience and customer base in the long run- a webinar in this way is an invaluable effort that reaps great rewards. And remember - it only takes one great webinar to give a huge boost to your growth curve!