Puls Biznesu Webinars Reaching Thousands

When Puls Biznesu started last December with its first webinar, the Polish business daily was entering new territory. "We'd never had an event just for Puls Biznesu readers investors," says Magda Karda, marketing director for Puls Biznesu. "The market is really tight here, and we decided that webinars were a great way of providing something extra."

Working with the National Bank of Poland as a co-sponsor, Karda and her team set up the Investors Academy, aimed at young investors and offering seven free webinars. "We used Facebook and our website to recruit people, starting out by asking them what they wanted and who they wanted to hear," she says. "We got 600 answers!" And the first webinar attracted an impressive 1,000 viewers. At the end of each webinar, a test was provided and those who participated and passed it got a certificate from the National Bank of Poland showing that they'd graduated from the Investors Academy.

The cooperation with the National Bank of Poland was just the beginning. "We have just started with another series of webinars," says Karda. The new series is called the Forex Academy of Puls Biznesu - and is done in cooperation with six partners. There will be eight webinars, the first took place last week and the second one was held yesterday. Based on the initial viewings, Karda estimates that each webinar will be watched by around 4,000 to 5,000 people.

"The response is great," says Karda. "People call us, write to us and thank us for the webinars. Most of the comments are that this is the first time they have gotten such high-quality information in such an accessible way - and free of charge. And our partners are more than happy to be a part of it, they reach an enormous audience and can present themselves as experts which is important for them, we're going way beyond traditional ads." Which is not to say that it hasn't helped with selling ads - Karda says that since the start of the webinars, customers from brokerage houses have been spending more on ads. 

Karda is rightfully proud of the webinars - which she says are the biggest in Poland. "They generate income with very little cost, they bring people to the web and they enrich our database of subscribers," she says. "It comes down to finding the right business model. The key success factor is the quality of the product. Before we launch a new webinar we carefully research the topic so we know when we go to a partner that we can show them that this is what our readers want."

The success of the two seminar series means that there will more. "We have a lot of ideas for new webinars, and the next one is already set for finding partners," says Karda. "There are at least three more on the way that I hope we'll be seeing in 2011."