Are Businesses Planning to Replace In-Person Meetings in a Post-COVID world?

In general, webinars are a great way to connect with the clients and audience without worrying about the commute and other hassles. Webinars make it easy to build valuable relationships with clients and boost sales. While there was no doubt about the long-term benefits of conducting webinars, business owners and marketers realized the potential of webinars even more during the current pandemic. Normally, there was an option to choose between in-person meetings and virtual ones.

However, social distancing measures compelled businesses to go virtual. Due to this, there is a notable increase in webinar hosting activities. To determine the current trends in webinar hosting, GoodFirms undertook research.

The webinar research attempts to understand the viewpoint of webinars hosts on the increasing use of webinars, the reason for the popularity of certain webinars platforms, what the future looks like for webinars and in-person meetings, and the kind of investment that goes into hosting a seamless webinar. The research also highlights some of the best ways to keep the audience engaged in a webinar and keep them wanting more.

The Rise in The Popularity of Webinars

Humans adapt to the changes around them. This applies to the changing weather conditions or a situation like the COVID — 19 pandemic. When businesses were forced to move all of their activities online, they decided to host webinars for all the related activities. Be it internal staff meetings or meetings with clients or connecting with the audience.

Since the social distancing measures have been put into place, there is a 167% increase in webinar hosting. Now, an increase in webinar hosting was not just from the marketers’ end. There is a rise because the demand from attendees was growing. Webinars gave a chance to the businesses to show their expertise in the field and keep the audience interested in the brand.

Not only that but webinars are being organized for covering a wide range of topics. Even though some webinars are being repeated, the audience is still interested in gaining whatever knowledge they could from the comfort of their homes.

The Publisher & VP of Research at savingforcollege.com, Mark Kantrowitz said, “We have had a significant increase in the number of webinars we’ve hosted since the start of the pandemic. We increased our webinar schedule mostly driven by demand from our site’s visitors. Demand for our webinars has been very high, even when we’ve repeated a previous webinar.”

In-person Meetings vs Webinars: What Does The Future Look Like?

Business owners started using webinars looking at the current situation. But when it comes to deciding on replacing in-person meetings completely with webinars, not all of them agree to it. About 55.6% of founders say that webinars are a temporary arrangement until the social distancing restrictions are imposed.

There are also 27.8% of webinar hosts who realize the potential of webinars but also know the importance of in-person meetings. So, they are expecting to adopt a hybrid model in the near future. That’s because a webinar will definitely expand the reach geographically but in some cases, a visit to the client’s place is necessary to understand their requirements.

On the contrary, there are also 16.7% founders/CEO who are planning to completely replace in-person meetings with webinars. The primary reason for taking such a decision is that the businesses can reach a larger audience along with saving time and money. Another reason for the popularity of webinars is that they offer a certain level of flexibility to the attendees and the hosts too.

Tips & Tricks To Host A Successful Webinar

As compared to in-person presentations, it is difficult to retain the attention of the audience in webinars. In the case of in-person meetings, an attendee might feel shy to get up and leave, whereas, in webinars, they just have to close the browser tab. So, it is extremely important to hook the audience in the initial few minutes of the webinar. The audience is there to get genuine information on the topic of their interest.

Apart from useful information, webinar hosts recommend using polls and Q&A sessions to keep the audience engaged. Also, they think that including attractive visuals and keeping the presentation precise can help a great deal in getting the point to the audience.

Mark Webster, Co-Founder of Authority Hacker said something on similar lines. According to him, “It’s important to always have clear inputs, goals, and outputs in your webinar. Make it clear what your audience will be learning, point out the things that the audience can take away and action, and always make sure there is a clear, concise point to your webinar”.

Conclusion

The shift from in-person meetings to webinars is definitely not easy. But businesses and audiences both are adopting the new normal and making the most out of it. Webinars have become immensely popular due to the convenience they offer. Again, the convenience factor applies to the attendees as well as hosts. Even though many business owners are planning to completely shift to webinars, for some the importance of in-person meetings is still unparalleled. In the future, a hybrid model is expected to become popular.