According to the findings of a study conducted by Wainhouse Research, commissioned by Citrix Online, 51% of 533 respondent trainers believe webinars are more or just as effective as in-person training or workshops, and another 36% believe webinars are almost as effective. Yet there are still many companies and brands that prefer these more traditional approaches. Both certainly have their merits, but comparing these merits is akin to comparing apples to oranges. There are certain scenarios where webinars perform spectacularly and others where in-person training or workshops perform spectacularly. Rather than comparing the approaches to each other, it's best to compare them to your needs at hand. They each have their advantages that will better suit your business depending on the immediate scenario. This article focuses on the advantages of webinars for training and the ways that they can benefit you:
#1 Cost-Efficiency
The cost of hosting local training or workshops is no joke - and just imagine how expensive it is to organize an international one. Conducting training on the web saves both organizers and learners a great deal of money. According to the same study, the major reason why people opt to use webinars for training is to save on:
- travel costs
- the presenter’s food
- accommodation
- airfare
- and even land transportation allowance in addition to the agreed speaking fee
Instead, webinar trainings allow them to conveniently present from their office or home. Gone are the days when you have to pay for conference space, booklets, handouts, and certificates as webinars allow you to provide all of these online. You won’t even have to buy everyone's snacks and coffee too!
But the best savings a webinar can offer is time. Webinars are more efficient since you won’t have to devote too much time to the tedious preparations that are almost always associated with in-person training. The less time spent preparing gives you extra leeway to really focus on what your audience wants, and what they want is good content.
#2 Flexibility
Recorded webinars give participants flexibility while learning as they can access e-learning materials anywhere on their own time schedule. Hour-long sessions can be segmented into specific topics, possibly into 4 to 7-minute videos or how-to clips, that learners can easily go back to without the hassle of re-watching the whole session. It's a simple solution to offer, but it works wonders in enhancing a consumer's overall user experience. The more positivity associated with your brand, the higher chances that your audience will come back for more.
Training webinars are also designed to flexibly fit a professional’s busy schedules. An hour-long webinar is relatively short compared to whole day in-person trainings or seminars, which allows them to keep developing new skills and techniques with that extra time. The more a professional learns about his craft, the more topics they'll have to offer in future webinars. It's a glorious cycle that pays off in the long run.
#3 Audience
The ability of webinars to be recorded and archived is a key advantage to reach out to more people even after the live web presentation. In fact, 63% of trainers utilize webinars to widen their reach of audience, not just overseas but also people with disabilities and special literacy needs. Make your webinar Section 508 compliant by utilizing closed captions or streaming texts of all spoken dialogues to allow them to fully participate and highly improve their webinar experience.
#4 Lead Generation
Now, the more you expand your audience, the more you can generate leads. That's right. Webinars can be used for lead generation for your sales. Use your webinars to plug your business and the products and services that it provides. People who aren't residing nearby are probably unaware of everything you have to offer them. The accessibility of webinars gives you a chance to get them properly informed. Afterward, you can appeal to their wants and needs and show them how they can utilize your products to benefit them. Once the webinar is over, you can then follow-up and pursue customer purchases using surveys, live Q&As, email campaigns, and more.
#5 Testing
Another reason why people are turning to webinars for training is that webinars nowadays can be coupled with testing and training modules ideal for continuing education and certification, academic assessment, HR screening, and sales and product training.
ConferTel, in particular, offers an all-inclusive testing module enabling trainers to design test questions - whether multiple-choice, true or false, fill in the blanks, matching, or multiple select. You won’t even have to conduct them yourself as the test automatically pops up on participants’ screens after the webinar presentation. And we go the extra mile by sending reminder emails to those who did not pass or complete the test. The results are then immediately displayed after test completion, and retakes require no waiting period too! What’s even better is we deliver post-exam reports and granular data points to segregate testers according to their performance.
If your training is tasked to issue certificates of completion, we also make this fast, easy, and cost-effective for you! Our testing and training module supports developing custom awarding certificates complete with your logo, the student’s name, the course title, and the date of training emailed to students or trainees as a PDF file.