Webinars: Fire up your webinar program

Ideas for powering up your webinar strategy for lead-gen purposes

Fire up your webinar strategy

Webinars provide an opportunity for interaction with audiences in real-time, and are especially valuable when considered as part of your evergreen demand content strategy

Adapt and engage

Webinars are not just online presentations. The world of webinars keeps growing, with varied formats, lengths, and purposes keeping things fresh for viewers. This Webinar Oscars x Rotten Tomatoes mashup provides an entertaining overview of some of creative webinar format hits and flops. Beyond traditional talks, you can host Q&As that can be produced quickly inhouse, co-host webinars with a partner to drive reach, or consider alternatives such as workshops, quizzes, or game shows.

Go evergreen

Data-driven platforms like BrightTALK provide a way for marketers to keep webinar content alive as an evergreen resource hub, collecting integrated intent data in real-time while giving buyers content on their own viewing schedules.

And the repurposed content shines in webinar format. Discuss the top takeaways from an eBook, partner with a customer to get the story behind a case study, or bring original research to life with subject-matter experts. Then turn your webinars into social posts and audio snippets that bring your original materials to life.

Webinars are used by 62% of B2B marketing departments, and, on average, 20 - 40% of registrants turn into qualified leads, according to Ready Talk.

Here's their nifty webinar ROI calculator that might help you run the numbers on how impactful yours are or what to aim for.

Calculator

Five tips to level up your webinars for evergreen demand

1. Plan every webinar around a buyer persona

Reverse engineer the subject matter and content of your webinar to match the needs and priorities of your target buyers. The persona should determine the topics, depth, and complexity of the subject explored in a given webinar.

2. Promote to highly targeted audiences

Choose the channel, messaging and audience parameters in line with the types of leads you're looking to generate when promoting each webinar. A scattergun approach might get more sign-ups, but sign-ups are not leads. You need the right people registering.

3. Use the principle of scarcity to nudge action

Create a sense of urgency around registering for the webinar or accessing the on-demand version by placing a limitation on spaces or the availability of the recording and making a point of this in your promotion.

4. Spend extra energy on the webinar title

Spend a little extra time nailing the webinar headline so that it becomes as irresistible to your target audience as possible. You can always A/B test two different titles in your early promotions to see which is most effective and then push ahead with the winner.

5. Be super clear about the webinar type

If people sign up for what they think is a masterclass, and it turns into a product demo, they'll be out that digital door in a heartbeat. Be really clear in your promotion, title, and registration page what the nature of the webinar is: Q&A, product demo, masterclass, panel discussion, tutorial, etc.

Bonus tip: Experiment with short and snappy video promos for use on social media featuring the webinar speakers. They can help to make the webinar feel more personal and drive signups. Don't sweat the quality – capture the videos quickly and easily on a smartphone.