by Donald Gates
Becoming a successful web marketer requires availing yourself of the most cutting-edge technologies and techniques for getting your marketing message out and converting your audience into earnings. Today what this means is combining the awesome powers of two state-of-the-art tools of trade: web conferencing and PowerPoint presentations. The web marketers who are most successfully dominating their niches are those who employ both of these resources in conjunction with one another.
The tools web marketers used in the past–Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad campaigns, telephone conference calling, elaborate Help Centers with FAQs, searchable Knowledge Bases, and toll-free telephone numbers–are no longer enough to provide your customers and colleagues (existing and prospective) the kind of services and savings they require in order to do business with you. Suppose the meeting or conference (as most marketing-oriented meetings and conferences do these days) merits inclusion of an audio-visual presentation. A teleconference will do no good then. But (until recently) that only left one other option–quite possibly one of the most significant expenses in any company’s budget: travel expenses. And as travel costs continue to rise astronomically in an increasingly uncertain economic climate and in-person conferences become increasingly cost-prohibitive for all parties involved, alternatives to in-person conferences are vital to a modern business’s very survival. Teleconferencing, which does at least allow for remote meeting, still is certainly no solution, and not only because of the potential costs incurred by marketer and target market alike. Where teleconferences also fail is in suffering an irreconcilable absence of any visual component.
And while web conferencing precludes travel costs, using PowerPoint presentations in conjunction with web conferencing precludes travel, materials (think of the savings on photocopying alone), and physical labor costs. Instead of lugging around a heavy easel, projector, screen, transparencies, and other supporting materials to all of those in-person meetings, they can instead plug their entire marketing message into a clean, compelling, and classy PowerPoint presentation they can take conference members through remotely, any time of day or night. PowerPoint presentations can help you deliver your message with maximum effectiveness for a minimum of costs no matter what type of “gathering of minds” you are coordinating-whether business meetings or seminars, product unveilings or creative collaborations, PowerPoint presentations can replace many expensive and unwieldy, more “traditional” methods of delivering your marketing message. And web conferencing is the ideal medium for their delivery.
Another cost-savings that both web conferencing and PowerPoint presentations provide is in mailing/shipping expenses. Whether you’re sending out direct mailings to masses of people or individual marketing packages to select VIP prospects , you’re wasting a lot of money unnecessarily when you can offer the same marketing presentation–only live , with you present to guide your prospects every step of the way–by delivering the presentation or pitch as a PowerPoint presentation over live web conferencing. One huge marketing hurdle this helps overcome (beyond just the costs of creating and mailing all those physical marketing materials) is the possibility that prospect won’t even read what you send them, but rather throw it in the trash (or, if they do read it, throw it out after they come across a point that needs more explaining).
So far we’ve explored the money-saving benefits of web conferencing and PowerPoint, individually and in combination. We’ve seen how it saves money on phone bills, travel expenses, and mailing costs. However, web conferencing and PowerPoint, alone and together, also saves time on the very same elements-on phone calls, on travel, and on the creation and distribution of physical marketing materials. Just as we described earlier in this article in regards to money, at no time in history more, perhaps, than during this global economic crisis does the concept that “time is money” have more relevance and meaning either.
The third and, perhaps most valuable, reason successful marketers use PowerPoint presentations and web conferencing together are their combined effect on any marketing campaigns performance. The sheer breadth of ways that you can use web conferencing to improve and enhance your business is staggering: Automated customer support; Live pre-sales contacts; Promoting big sales; Networking in live chat rooms; Recruiting affiliates, employees; Training new affiliates and employees; Community outreach; Courting venture capital.
And all of these functions can be integrated with PowerPoint Presentation to improve and enhance their quality, performance, and effectiveness. In fact, HotConference, provides desktop sharing, which makes presenting PowerPoint presentations (not to mention collaborating long-distance on their creation and development) even easier. HotConference offers the most versatile feature set in web conferencing, with tools like a Whiteboard on which you can write, draw, and erase at will in real time, and a variety of ways to incorporate that into your presentation, with 5 different ‘levels’ of Presentation for you, the moderator, to choose from. Another key feature HotConference provides (one alluded to briefly in this article’s intro) is brand-ability-the ability to brand your HotConference web conferencing interface with your own company name, logo, banner, colors, and other branding elements. And as your PowerPoint presentations are no doubt similarly branded (and if they’re not, they should be), this seamless integration of private label branding with your web conferencing delivery system only magnifies your overall impact.
Add to this them 1-month free trial period and the immense cost-savings over other, more expensive but less feature-rich or user-friendly, web conferencing services. With HotConference you get all the above-mentioned benefits and–as you can only begin to image, we’re sure–a whole lot more.
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