Webinars are having a moment as one of the best ways to engage with your audience.
They’re a powerful marketing tactic to generate leads. Considering how physical business events around the world are cancelled, there’s no better time than now to jump on the webinar bandwagon.
The ripple effects of COVID-19 means that your future customers are sitting at home (41% of employers have already offered some form of remote work, but now that number has skyrocketed), looking for content to help them generate business results in an uncertain climate.
Experts predict that things won’t go back to normal post-pandemic, so you should definitely be pivoting your marketing effects to focus on digital, remote-friendly tactics like webinars. Running a webinar is the perfect way to share knowledge with your audience.
What’s So Good About Webinars for Lead Generation?
87% of marketers who run webinars say they’re an effective way to generate leads.
We already know that B2B buyers engage with content before making decisions, and webinars are another effective way to engage with leads in a personal, authentic way. They can also be repurposed into sales videos, turned into blog posts, or even used as a podcast episode.
How to Prepare For Your Webinar
1. Define Your Goals
A webinar is like any other marketing campaign you run.
You need to set clear goals and know exactly why you’re running it. If not, you’ll hit hurdles along the way and end up seeing lacklustre results.
Consider these points:
- What type of lead do you want to generate?
- Will the content be top-of-funnel or bottom-of-funnel?
- How many audience members can you reasonably expect to join?
- How long will it take to prepare the content?
If you don’t map out your activities, you’ll struggle.
The success of a webinar depends on whether your audience shows up, is engaged, and whether they like the content. If they don’t, they’ll leave midway through and be left with a poor impression of your brand.
2. Decide On Your Webinar Content
Lots of brands decide they’re ready to jump on the webinar bandwagon for the sake of it, without thinking clearly about the content they’ll be sharing.
You need to share unique, interesting content that’ll make your audience willingly commit 30-45 minutes of their day to watch.
Here are some potential sources of content ideas:
- Unique pain points your business solves
- Common questions asked in the sales process
- Advice or offerings to businesses in your industry
At the end of your webinar, make sure to spare some time for a live Q&A session with your audience.
92% of webinar attendees say they want to engage in webinar Q&A sessions, and it’s the perfect opportunity to answer their burning questions.
3. Design Your Promotion and Onboarding Process
If you want people to show up, you need to promote your webinar and have a smooth onboarding process. This means identifying the correct acquisition channels to bring your audience to your webinar.
In most cases, you should start with your existing email list of customers and leads. They’ll be the ones most likely to show up.
Then, you should promote it across all of your social media channels, and consider running paid ads towards it (retargeting ads are particularly effective, as people are more likely to join the webinar if they’re familiar with your brand).
Source: https://bloggingx.com/webinar-statistics/
Don’t wait until the last minute to promote your webinar. People are happy to sign up for webinars that are 2+ weeks away, and you should continue seeing new registrations right up to the day of the webinar.
There is a range of platforms designed to host webinars that can integrate with your existing tools. Here are some top recommended ones online:
Ensuring Your Post-Webinar Strategy Drives Conversions
Once your webinar is over, there’s still work to be done.
Firstly, you should follow-up with participants and include a link to the replay.
Secondly, you can use your webinar content as new marketing assets.
For example:
- Offer any templates, or examples you used as downloadable assets
- Turn the recording into a podcast episode
- Post it on YouTube
- Repurpose the content into a blog post
- Turn questions asked in the Q&A into blog posts
That’s one of the reasons why webinars are so popular. Not only can you provide live engagement on the day itself, but you can also use it as a lever to create various types of content that resonate further with your audience.
Wrapping Up
Webinars are an amazing way to engage with decision-makers and generate new leads.
They do take time and energy to pull off because success never comes easy. By putting these techniques into place, you’ll be able to use your webinar for lead generation, turn your content into new marketing assets, provide greater value to your audience and keep your content pipeline full.
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