In 2015 Live Webinars were one of the top 3 content formats leveraged by buyers to help them learn more about a company’s solution. But according to DemandGen’s 2016 Content Survey webinars slipped slightly from this position in 2016 for the following reasons:
- Lack of time to view a full webinar: 88% of buyers surveyed said they prefer shorter content formats
- Too much content available in general: 83% of respondents said they are overwhelmed by the amount of available content
- The need to watch webinars live: 73% of respondents said they prefer to access audio/video content on-demand.
But on the positive side…if you create compelling webinars buyers that do invest the time are more likely to convert into Sales Qualified Opportunities. So as an outsourced sales and marketing we still love webinars because they are a killer piece of content to make it easier for your buyer to buy and a great predictive tool in your lead scoring strategy.
So as an outsourced sales and marketing company here are 5 tips we give our clients to ensure they get the most out of their Webinars to maximize their content marketing investment.
Turn one webinar into multiple pieces of content Outsourced Sales and Marketing Team can leverage
We can get a dozen pieces of content because that one webinar can typically be repurposed into:
- 4 to 5 Short Weblette Videos
- 4-7 Blog Posts
- A White Paper and/or an Ebook.
These also are shorter pieces of content which buyers now prefer.
You don’t need to always have live webinars.
Having live events are a great way to generate leads but you don’t need to always go into the extra work of making these live events. If you do have live events you should expect as many as 50% to 60% not to show. But this does not need to be a huge cause of concern. You can still follow up with these with additional content marketing. Remember to send them a notification when the live webinar is recorded. And we have also found that if senior buyers sign up its worth as many as seven follow up calls to these senior decision makers because they signed up for the event because they had a problem they needed to solve. It’s worth as many as 7 calls.
Simply Start with an On-Demand Webcast
Building on two of the points above, doing webcasts live puts more pressure on the presenter and the moderator. Now that buyers prefer on demand webcasts you can start there.. Simply simulate a live webcast. With video editing software it is now easy to clean up any mistakes if you don’t like how you presented a section. So in one session with some basic editing you can create an impactful piece of content that can be used for an extended period of time faster and with less pressure.
On-demand webinars are essentially DVRed TV shows, Demand Gen Report’s 2016 Content Preferences Survey showed that 73% of respondents prefer to access audio/video content on demand.
Send Email Promotions Strategically: Blasting multiple emails with the same message and content is not the right strategy. Send the first mail about two weeks prior to the event, the second two days before the event and the last mail the day of the event. And articulate what they will learn from the event with slightly different subject lines and content.
Conclusion
Webinars should be a staple of any marketing, education and lead scoring program. But they are just one important part of an integrated outsourced sales and marketing program. Marketers should stop thinking about them as events and start thinking and using them as part of an overall strategy to tell their sales story to the market in a substantive way.
To learn more about how Gabriel Sales can help you get more out of your webcasting and overall content marketing and sales efforts and how we can help you build more modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our outsourced sales and marketing outsourced sales and marketing or the About Us section of our website.
