Pre Recorded Webinars Explained | Pros and Cons

Webinars have become a popular marketing tool. They are an effective way to grab the attention of your audience, build relationships with them, and establish yourself or your brand as an authority in the industry.

Because presenting webinars can be challenging when you are aiming for perfection in one go, pre-recorded webinars have emerged.

For the most part, webinars give you the opportunity to engage with your audience in real-time, by answering their questions and interacting with them. You might think that these benefits would be lost with a pre-recorded webinar - but would they really?

Why You Should Use Webinars

You should use webinars as part of your marketing strategy if you want to:

• Provide in-depth or brand new information on a niche topic

• Host a panel discussion on a topic that’s currently relevant to your industry

• Provide a detailed and example-based tutorial

• Host an interview with a prominent industry leader

Webinars are also a great way to increase your lead generation and build your brand. The most effective webinars can generate an average conversion rate of 19%. Of all the people who land on your webinar landing page, 51% will convert on the first sign-up and of that, 36% will attend your webinar.

Those numbers are impressive when you consider that the industry average landing page conversion rate is 2.35% and the top 10% of successful landing pages have conversion rates above 11.45%.

By hosting a webinar, you can become recognised as a thought leader in your field. People will begin to associate you with the topics that you discuss in your webinars, and this will increase your brand power.

You need to provide your attendees with useful information and consider that the average webinar viewing time is around 53 minutes. In that time, you need to push your CTAs and encourage your leads to request discovery calls and demos of your product. Make those precious minutes count!

Should You Be Using Pre-Recorded Webinars?

When hosting a webinar, you have two options: live and pre-recorded webinars. Pre-recorded webinars may sound like the more convenient option, but before you get going, here are a few pros and cons that you should consider:

Pros of Pre-Recording Your Webinars

Using your webinar more than once

Pre-recorded webinars can be used many times and with different audiences, if the content is relevant. This is especially true if you create evergreen content.

Live webinars need a team member to take time out of their day to actively present. This is even more cumbersome if there are more complicated parts that require active management during the presentation. By creating a pre-recorded webinar, you continue with other tasks whilst your attendees watch your webinar.

Available around the clock

Creating pre-recorded webinars allows you to place the content online and have it readily available for anyone who wants to see it. This is even more convenient for people who would like to access your content in different timezones.

Live webinars are usually constrained by set dates and times. People who are unable to attend your webinar because of scheduling conflicts may miss the webinar completely. A lost viewer is a lost lead, so making your content more readily available may increase leads and conversion rates.

Making your webinar perfect

Your attendees are expecting perfection from your webinar. The brilliant thing about pre-recorded webinars is that you have ample time to prepare them. You can edit them to deliver the best shots and to create the perfect flow.

With a live webinar, it is difficult to achieve perfection. Making a good impression is important to attract and convert leads, and if you want to establish yourself and your brand as an authority in the industry, looking like an amateur isn’t going to help.

Improving your sales funnel

Webinars are a great tool to move your leads along your sales funnel. With recorded webinars, you can provide prospects with information as soon as they make their qualifying decision - i.e. their decision to fill in a form or download an ebook or register for a webinar.

For example, once they have made this decision, the next webinar in the series can be sent to them automatically.

Live webinars would only give your leads access to the information at set dates and times. If they are looking for immediate information after having made their qualifying decision, this opportunity is lost if the live webinar is not in line with their decision time.

Additional revenue source

Live and pre-recorded webinars are gaining popularity as additional revenue sources for organisations. More and more, people are turning to webinars as a source of information.

People are willing to pay for content that they deem worthy. So, by giving people what they want, you can create an additional revenue source. Added bonus: you get your payments immediately because they are made online.

Live webinars might limit the number of participants that you can host based on the date and time that you schedule them. The potential revenue that you will have received would be much lower for a live webinar than it would be for a pre-recorded webinar that is always available.

Creating at your own time

The great thing about having a library of existing content is that it gives you the time to create new content and to upload it whenever you are ready.

By perfecting your webinar, you will continue to establish confidence in your audience, so the more time you invest in making the ultimate webinar, the better for your brand.

Cons of Pre-Recording Your Webinars

Pre-recorded webinars are great but, as with everything, there are cons to them. Here are a few downsides to using pre-recorded webinars:

No Sense of Urgency

One of the best ways to get people to sign up for webinars is by creating a sense of urgency. Telling people that there is “limited” available space and getting them to book by a certain date sparks their interest to act now. With pre-recorded webinars, there is no real urgency to respond to the call to action (CTA) if the content is always available online.

Reduced interaction

Live webinars give you the chance to engage with your audience and answer questions as they come through in real-time. This is lost with pre-recorded webinars.

The greatest disadvantage here is that if anyone has any burning questions, you do not have the opportunity to address them.

Time-consuming

Creating a pre-recorded webinar is a time-consuming and work-intensive process. You would also need to anticipate your audience’s thoughts and do your best to address them during your webinar.

This is quite challenging. Because you may not anticipate everything, some attendees could be left with questions and decide to not respond to your CTA.

Perfection or nothing

Considering that you will have had time to prepare, practice, and edit your webinar, your audience will be expecting the best of the best. A pre-recorded webinar with flaws can come across as unprofessional and careless.

This means that you have to put in twice as much work to make sure that your presentation is absolutely flawless.

Appearing cheap

This is one of the biggest disadvantages of hosting pre-recorded webinars. Here’s why they could seem cheap:

• Audience members want to feel appreciated and acknowledged. The lack of engagement can leave your audience member feeling like you weren’t concerned about them personally and were more fixated on getting your information out there.

This will be much worse if they have attended previous webinars where they were able to ask questions and are not able to do the same at your webinar. Audience engagement is increasingly being viewed as a premium feature. By taking that away, your audience could feel like they are being swindled.

• People like to feel special. They like to feel like they are participating in a once in a lifetime event that is available one time only.

By having your webinars available 24/7 online, their perceived worth decreases and this could damage your chances of converting your lead. Appearance is everything.

How To Make Your Pre-Recorded Webinar Work For You

The best pre-recorded webinars give attendees the perception that they are watching a live webinar. These are some best practices that you can use to achieve this with your pre-recorded webinar:

Create Your Pre-Recorded Webinar From Scratch

Pre-recorded webinars give you a sense of control that can be lacking with live webinars. This is why you should ideally create and record your webinar from scratch as opposed to recording a live webinar and using that.

You want the end result to be impeccable, and you can achieve this when you are able to map out your webinar and record it from the ground up.

Avoiding time-specific references

You should stay away from time-sensitive events (such as the passing of a bill) because if the event is viewed in the future, it may look outdated. This is especially true if the information on the event you have mentioned has changed since the time when your webinar was published.

Image is everything, and your company needs to be portrayed as being on top of their game and ahead of the times. This is why you should opt for evergreen topics.

Mentioning Q&A’s

Although your webinar will be pre-recorded, Q&A’s are essential in webinars. It is virtually impossible to address audience questions in real-time with a pre-recorded webinar, but there are ways that you can work around this.

For starters, you can set expectations for your audience and let them know that if their answers aren’t attended to in the session, they will get a response on a specified later date.

Applications such as Easy Webinar allow attendees to send questions which go directly to your email. That gives you the added bonus of responding to the attendees in real-time or after the event has ended.

Another way to tackle this is to address FAQs before they are asked. As an expert in your field, you will be aware of questions that are regularly asked and you can deal with these.

To give people the impression that the pre-recorded webinar is actually live, you can “pretend” to answer these FAQs as though they are being asked in real-time. For example, try this:

“Mary has just asked us an interesting question about our payment plans and how long they run for. Thank you for that Mary”

Mention that you will only be addressing a few of the questions and that the rest will be responded to at a later stage.

Creating a Sense of Urgency and Scarcity

Yes, it is possible to create a sense of urgency even though you are using a pre-recorded webinar.

By offering coupons, discounts, or a promo code, your attendees can feel that the pricing is only available for a limited time and will respond to your CTA on the spot.

Timed CTA Events During Your Pre-Recorded Webinar

You want to keep your audience engaged and paying attention to what you are saying. A great way to make them more interactive is by including time CTA events during your webinar that can:

• Ask them questions

• Encourage them to buy something on the spot

• Provide them with downloadable content

Timed CTA events include the attendee in your pre-recorded webinar and can also be a great opportunity for you to add a buy button for immediate action.

Using Landing Pages and Pre-Recorded Webinars To Increase Your Lead Generation

Webinar landing pages and pre-recorded webinars are great complementary tools to increase your leads.

By using a well-designed webinar landing page, you can increase the likelihood of converting traffic into leads and create a professional image for your brand. Here are a few tips for creating the perfect webinar landing page:

Structuring Your Landing Page Correctly

The structure of your landing page should take your audience members to all the information that they want to see and make them understand why they need to become a lead. These useful tips can help you create the ideal structure:

• Get to the point: An effective webinar landing page presents all the necessary information and CTA as quickly as possible. The quicker your page visitor finds the information, the higher the chances that they will respond to the CTA.

• A CTA that stands out: An effective CTA is clear and immediately shows your page visitor why they came to your landing page in the first place. An easy way of achieving this is by making it bright and clear and placing it above the page fold.

• Less is more: Your page visitor has things to do. So the less effort you need from them, the better. Ask for short, concise information, such as their name, surname and email address, that gives you everything that you need to contact them once they have left your page.

• A clear value proposition: Use the information on your page to entice your page visitor. Tell them why they need to sign up for your webinar and how it is beneficial to them. The key is not to give everything away, but to share just enough to leave them wanting more.

Engage Your Audience With Teasers

Your page visitor needs to find a reason to stay on your page once they have found it. A great way to increase the chances of this happening is by putting short snippets of your webinars on your landing page.

By showing your page visitors the juicy parts of your webinar, they will be curious and will feel motivated to sign up for your webinar and become a lead.

Webinars and landing pages have become very popular marketing tools in recent times. The effects of the pandemic have also led to their increased use. By using these tips, you are well on your way to using your pre-recorded webinar and landing page to increase your leads and sales.

To learn more about creating webinars that drive conversions, sign up for our 5-day Webinar Email Course. We’ll teach you everything you need to know to set up and plan your webinar and generate more leads.