OK, let’s face it things have changed. Since March this year some sales and marketing teams have struggled to generate sales leads that can be converted into business so to be successful they need to change their tactics and use all the tools at their disposal.
Today the team at Volpes Marketing look at one of the most effective ways of getting face to face engagement with prospects and how, if done correctly, they can become a cornerstone of your lead generation and inbound marketing strategy – webinars.
Already you are probably thinking that every time you look at LinkedIn or open an email there is yet another invite to a webinar that does not interest you so they won’t work, but you would be wrong.
Our guide to planning a successful webinar programme outlines how, if executed correctly, webinars can highlight your brand, move prospects along the sales funnel and even assist in up-selling to existing customers.
1. Set objectives
Like any marketing activity you need to outline the objectives for your programme. Be clear about what you want to achieve and what success will look like so that when you conduct a review you can measure success. Identify the target audience clearly, many webinars fail to achieve anything because their creators don’t create content for the right audience.
The advantage of webinars is that if the content is right they can achieve multiple objectives and deliver real results particularly in a difficult business environment.
2. Choose a topic and outline your webinar
Selecting the topic of your webinar is very important if it is to succeed. There is no point running a seminar about how great your company is, you need to share relevant information from your industry that will be of benefit to your target audience. This will encourage target prospects to sign up and stay engaged with you during the webinar.
Once you have the topic you need to create an outline that can be delivered. An average webinar will last about 30 minutes so content needs to be built around this timeframe. Do you need slides created? Are there key points you need to get across? Will you provide a copy of your presentation at the end for attendees or something else? Will questions be during or after the webinar.
3. Delivering your webinar
For some companies just going live on social media could be the best way to deliver their webinar but we would advise using one of the purpose built systems that are available such as Gotomeeting or On24.
These systems have built in functions such as sign ups, reminders, recording functions, presentation tools and analytics which can help you deliver a successful webinar and can also be integrated with MIS systems such as HubSpot for lead scoring ad recording engagement.
4. Attracting attendees
As we have already said for a webinar to be successful it needs to be targeted at the right audience. Just a few ways which you may want to attract attendees will include:
Email campaigns aimed at a segment of your CRM
Personal invites via LinkedIn to relevant ABM targets
Website promotions
Included on company email footers
PPC advertising and sign ups
PR to relevant business media
Remember that once you have someone signed up they will need reminders before the actual event to ensure they attend.
5. Measurement and follow up
If you are using a system such as On24 or Gotomeeting inbuilt monitoring tools will give you a good idea of how well received your webinar was including:
Duration of attendance
Downloads of resources
Interaction with web content
Question summaries
By giving actions and events scores as part of your lead scoring you can then move prospects along the sales funnel and see if they are ready to be passed off to the sales team for follow up.
Don’t forget that your webinar can then be used as part of your overall content strategy. The recording should be added as a resource to your website, relevant prospects can be emailed a link to the recording if they didn’t attend and webinars can be added to your nurture journeys.
Running a successful webinar campaign can deliver high quality sales leads so if you would like to talk to a member of our team about how we can supercharge your next programme or would like to know how they can be integrated with your content strategy or inbound marketing please contact us for more information.
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