Ten Tips for Using Webinars for Lead Generation - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #125
Monday, July 21st, 2008Webinars have become increasingly popular in the last couple of years. Not sure if that’s because the cost to travel to live events has sky rocketed or if it’s because webinars can now be re-purposed into a variety of onDemand events that can have multiple uses and draws. The biggest challenge still exists though, regardless of the event being live or online - getting people to give up their time and actually show up.
At ReachForce we are gearing up for our own webinar series and have been doing a lot of research on best practices we want to be sure to implement. I’ve read a lot of great information so I thought I’d share what I’ve found and will be sure to implement…
Getting people “there” –
1. Get their attention from the beginning with an eye catching event title
It always amazes me how little time is spent on naming Webinars. The right Webinar title can immediately elevate your Webinar to a “must attend” event.
How do you decide on a Webinar title that stands out in the inbox?
Start with your Sales team/s. Find out what they are hearing out in the marketplace and ask them to help identify hot buttons you should consider for your title.
Other details - Be sure the Webinar titles run no longer than 30 characters, and consider using words like “Webcast” or “you’re invited”.
2. Format Invites for Maximum Engagement
People just don’t read anymore so you have to be sure to get to the point quickly. People seem to read the first sentence and then look for things like photos of your speaker/s, bullet points or other images included.
3. Make It Easy to Register
Seems like a given, right? We’ve all tried to sign up for Webinars that took us to multiple landing pages or asked us to fill out a form that was just too long and wanted too much information. Keep it simple and map out a plan to collect more information from registrants as you continue to follow up with event reminders.
4. Sell Your Event, Not your Products or Services
Remember to sell the benefits of your offering in the context of the event. Here’s an example – Instead of saying, “Our solutions accelerate sales cycles by 2X,” say, “Join us for a free webinar and learn how to accelerate your sales cycle by 2X”.
5. Call to Action: Front and center
Don’t wait until the end of your invite to ask people to register for your event. Remember lots of people scan/view emails in the preview pane. Include clickable links or buttons in the header or headline and in the body of the email at least twice. It may seem like overkill but your goal is to get them to register, don’t make them hunt for the right buttons to do so.
6. Remind them why they are there, on your landing page that is
Recent tests have shown tests that B2B prospects prefer more detailed information on Webinar landing pages. They want more information on what to expect from your webinar and what is going to be discussed before they commit. Don’t forget to include your speaker bios here too. People like to know more about who they are signing up to listen to.
7. Consider a personalized landing page (PURL) and pre-populated forms
In a recent test, more than 75% of Webinar registrations came from PURL recipients. People like the idea that the invite and information is being customized for them. Most marketing automation systems have this capability, be sure you’re using it.
8. Add links to additional information or content in your landing page
This specific webinar may not be of interest to your prospect but that doesn’t mean all of your offerings and/or content aren’t of interest to them. Offer additional information in different formats, maybe a previous webcast, a podcast, whitepapers or eBooks.
9. Offer an OnDemand Recording of the Presentation
Somewhere between 33% and 50% of the people who register for your Webinar will actually show up. So be sure to offer an onDemand recording of your event for those that can’t make it and remember to tell them it’s out there. This is a great excuse for follow up with those that didn’t attend and those that did. People that did attend may want to forward the onDemand version on to others in the decision making unit. That way, people can view your content at a time that works best for them.
10. Say Thank You
Don’t forget your common courtesy. Remember people took time out of their busy schedule to hear what you had to say. Follow up with a thank you and be sure to include links to more applicable information. Follow those click-throughs for laser targeting your next message.
Have we missed anything here? What has helped you drive more leads out of your webinars?
Quick Webinar Tips - B2B Marketing and Sales Tips #114
Monday, June 30th, 2008I have recently attended a few webinars on creating webinars. Both were sponsored by GoToMeeting. I don’t have a lot of experience with webinars but I am planning one for next quarter and I hope to implement all that I learned. Here are a few good tips I picked up:
- Always stick to the time frame
- Promote through partners – make it very easy for them to add a link to a landing page. Consider co-sponsoring a webinar for increased visibility.
- Know what your goal is and don’t misrepresent it to your attendees – Don’t make it a sales pitch if it has been promoted as educational.
- 2 Speakers can be better – different speaking styles and presentation skills will engage different listeners
- Give an incentive – publicize it in all communications, make it valuable (a compelling whitepaper is always good), Reward people who listened to the entire presentation by giving the incentive at the end
- Be sure to prepare ahead of time - check all audio and technology ahead of time
- Engage your audience with polls and Q&A
- Experiment to see what dates, times and length will work best for your audience
- Maybe we have just been conditioned but both webinars said hour long webinars Tuesday-Thursday at 1 or 2PM EST work best.
- Profile your audience when they register so that the speaker can be more relevant to the audience
- Promote that the audience will get a chance to engage with the speaker(s) – “This is your chance to ask Seth Godin anything you want” (If this is a big part of the draw be sure to allow plenty of time for Q&A, possible ask for questions ahead of time. People will tune in to see if their question is answered)
For more tips on increasing webinar attendance check out 12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part I - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #105 and 12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part II - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #107
Drive More Successes From The First Half of 2008 - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #111
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008As we are fast approaching mid-year, it is a good time to look back at the investments you have already made this year and look for new ways to leverage these investments.
This is a time to make the invisible visible.
Most B2B Marketers have invested in either search engine optimization, paid search advertising or both this year. My guess is you were probably hoping for more quality leads from these investments. Have you considered these ideas to get more bang for your buck?
- Identify visitors that didn’t announce themselves (the companies they originated from). Your web analytics tools can help with this or check out ReachForce Convert for more segmentation level data and visitor patterns.
- Now that you’ve got the companies identified, do you have the right contacts to reach out to and play offense? Consider reaching out with an offer call to action relevant to the pages they viewed.
How about your current customer marketing? Are you doing everything you can to get more from what you already have?
- Is your customer database up to date and complete? 2% of data goes bad every month. Which 2%? Who knows. Your customer database is a great place to start a data refresh project.
- While you’re refreshing, do you have the right buying contacts for additional products or services? If not consider adding these to the customer records so you are ready when you have new or updated product offers.
Many of you invested in events in the first half of ’08. Have those leads been followed up on? According to SiriusDecisions, only 10% of trade show leads are followed-up by Sales. Are you, as a Marketer, nurturing the other 90%?
- For those leads that are non-responsive, make sure that you have the right contacts in those companies. Think about the role of the person you are targeting? Think about the multiple folks involved in a purchase process at your target and their role. You might need different offers or calls-to-action for each member of the decision making unit.
- Continue to nurture leads not ready for sales – dialog is important, it takes 5 to 7 touches to turn a lead into a prospect.
Webinars seemed to have only increased in popularity in 2008. Although the event happens live, the recorded content can be repurposed.
- Did you record the webinar and post on your website? Are you campaigning around the event even though the live version has already happened?
- Have you considered using services like Insight24 to syndicate your webcast to over 13 million viewers?
- Don’t forget about the podcasters. You can easily turn a webinar into multiple podcasts. Make sure short, bite sized content is available for those always short on time.
Summer is often “down-time” for marketing and a time to plan for the blitz of lead generation post Labor Day. This summer instead of “getting ready for what’s to come”, consider spending a little time repurposing what you’ve already done, in between the down time of course.
12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part II - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #107
Thursday, June 19th, 2008In the first half of the B2B Lead blog series on 12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+, I shared 6 tips for getting the most out of your webinar. I recommended that you start by getting into the right mindset. It is important to realize that webinars are just another part of “the conversation” you are having with your customers and the community as a whole. Think about using them as a way to keep the relationship alive, build a community of followers, to spark group discussions or change the way people think about an issue.
In today’s post covering tips 7-12, I’m going way out on a limb to suggest some other cutting-edge practices that a new generation of B2B marketers are using.
7. Turn your webinar into a twebinar –a webinar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter. Twitter is a great way to spread the word before the day of the webinar, and an even better way to facilitate Q&A or capture suggestions during and afterward.
8. Don’t wait to reach out and engage with registered attendees. Contact those who registered early to offer more information and continue the conversation. Some ideas for this include sharing a white paper on a relevant topic, distributing event materials or research findings. Bulldog Solutions claims that this will enable you to engage with 10 % of the registrants before the webinar takes place.
9. Pick one core slide that is most intriguing or highlights your core content. Draft a few soundbites around the slide and excerpt the content for a Podcast. Embed the slide image and podcast in a press release or on your community site. Use this to market the archived or “on-demand” version of the webinar.
10. Don’t forget to promote your webinar series via all of the programs you are normally producing including: trade shows, press releases, PPC search engine ads, web pages including your home page, community, blog and customer support pages.
11. Continue the conversation on your blog by using it for Q&A. If your material is good, the Q&A segment can produce lots of great content. Take the conversation to your Community area to show prospects all of the materials they can find there. This will help you keep a loyal audience.
12. It’s officially the “Remix Era,” so take the materials you developed for the webinar, remix them and post where appropriate. Issue a press release with highlights embedded. Transcribe and post the content as a contributed article on Hub pages or Scribd. Syndicate the archived event on sites like On24.
I’m really interested to hear what you have found to be successful on the Webinar marketing front. Is a twebinar really effective? Do attendees really convert to blog readers? Can you effectively engage with registrants before they attend the Webinar? Chime in with your thoughts.
12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part I - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #105
Thursday, June 12th, 2008A Roadmap for Webinars in a Web 2.0 World
This week’s Marketing Profs B2B Forum has been an enlightening experience. Not only have I picked up a few great social media ideas and techniques (thank you Erickson Barnett), but I’ve started to shift the way I think about the role of traditional Marketing techniques in our Web 2.0 world. In this case, I’m referring to Webinars–that old staple of lead generation for B2B Marketers.
So, as I prepared for my presentation on Webinars in a Web 2.0 world, I came up with a list of tips for producing and promoting webinars or really any form of educational content. Thought I’d share them with you in a 2 part post. Here are the first 6 tips. Feel free to chime in with any others that I missed.
- Start by getting into the right mindset to make the most of your webinar. It is important to realize that webinars are just another part of “the conversation” you are having with your customers and the community as a whole. So stop thinking about marketing them like an event. Think about using them as a way to keep the relationship alive, build a community of followers, to spark group discussions or change the way people think about an issue.
- Next, package the webinar to make promoting it more successful. You might consider breaking it into a series of webinars to be held every 6 weeks to keep your followers interested in what you have to say. Produce complimentary content such as white papers, assessments, tools, etc. that you can email to registrants.
- When you draft the promotional copy, remember to write for your target personae. Use simple, but compelling language. Drive home the WIIFM (What’s In It for Me) message. NOTE: You should also use the right words in your copy. Use Google Trends to see which terms your audience is using to search. For example: the word “webcast” is searched for far more often than the word “webinar.”
- Here’s another important tip for packaging your webinar. Post your slides prior to the day of the webinar so people will have a good idea of the content you will cover. Several years ago, I engaged in a survey with Webtorials to assess the effectiveness of podcasts vs. webinars and understand why – for my company—customers responded better to webinars. The key: the slides. Funny, how people love to hate PowerPoint, but when it came down to it, they really needed the slides for comprehension to assess whether they wanted to spend a precious 30 to 45 minutes listening in.
- Use social media to trigger viral distribution of your invitation. Identify a list influencers, reach out and ask them to help you spread the word about your webinar. Use Twitter to tap the influencers with a large following and “direct message” them. Post to Facebook groups interested in the topic. And, share with your LinkedIn network. After all, you are offering a service to these folks – the opportunity for free education on a topic of interest.
- Post your slides using slide sharing sites to get your content in front of people who are actively seeking content/education. If your slides are crafted well, you will trigger what the authors of Made to Stick call the “pain of knowledge gaps” which should entice the viewer to tune in to your webinar.
And, speaking of knowledge gaps, there’s more to come in the next post with 6 clever ways to get additional mileage out of the actual content you produce.
Attend the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and Get a Free Report on B2B Lead Gen and Web 2.0 Media - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #95
Thursday, May 1st, 2008So, I’ve been asked to speak at the upcoming MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum. The topic – “Webinars in a Web 2.0 World.” At first, I thought: Wow, how do you make Webinars interesting to a marketing audience today with social media and viral marketing all the rage?
I mean, there hasn’t been much innovation happening with Webinars. They seem to be moderately effective at driving revenue but actual attendance rates have been dropping overall with the emergence of more immediate forms of education such as Video tutorials and podcasts. However, they are more effective, in my experience, than simply relying on a Podcast or a pre-recorded tutorial. Not actually sure why that would be the case?
And, then I thought about how we were using Webinars as a community building tool at NetQoS. Perhaps the attendees haven’t thought about webinars as a community building opportunity? In my experience, it seems that most Marketers are using a “hit and run” approach to Webinars. They pour tons of money into recruiting an audience and paying Webex to broadcast the event. Then, they grumble when only 40% of the registrants actually show up. And, finally, they turn over the attendee list to Sales for followup.
What a waste! If you are going to pour so much time and effort into attracting an audience of like-minds to attend your event, why not funnel those potential prospects into a Community where they can find educational content in a variety of formats and begin to build a relationship with them? That’s the only real way to make Webinars pay off in the long run.
I’ll be sharing the techniques we used at NetQoS to do just that at the MarketingProfs conference. The event will also focus on topics like B2B lead generation, conversion, retention, ROI and measurement, new technologies, integrated marketing - and much more. If that interests you, I recommend you sign up to attend. They are even throwing in a new research report on “BtoB Sales Lead Generation: Integration of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 Media. Register and it is yours for free.
See ya in Boston in June.
