38% of B2B marketers say that webinars provide higher quality lead generation compared to other marketing channels.
Yet many companies hesitate to invest in webinars because of the time and effort it seems to take to promote and execute the event.
It’s time to stop sleeping on webinars. This channel can be a boon for your marketing efforts and enable you to increase brand awareness, grow your database, push prospects down the funnel, and ultimately drive conversions.
Read on to discover how to market before and after your webinar so you can tap into the full potential of virtual events, build authority, start a dialogue with your ideal customers, and add another effective cog to your revenue-generating machine.
B2B Webinar Marketing: Where to Start
All successful webinars start with a thoughtful, relevant topic. Dedicating focused time to topic ideation is the greatest favor you can do for your webinar. It allows you to identify and address your target audience's specific needs and interests, ensuring that the webinar content resonates with them and delivers valuable information.
In addition to increased engagement, intentional topic ideation allows you to differentiate your webinars from competitors, providing unique value and positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Another way to build that industry authority is by finding a well-known guest speaker to add an extra layer of credibility to your event. A speaker with some star power creates appeal for potential registrants and also signals that the information covered in the webinar is accurate and trustworthy.
With an established topic and speakers, you have the foundations to start making the most of webinar marketing.
Pre-Webinar Marketing: Stand Out from the Crowd
The average person receives over 120 emails daily, many of which are marketing emails designed to encourage recipients to take a specific action. So how can you stand out from the crowd when promoting your webinar if prospects are constantly inundated with email content?
Pre-event marketing is critical in compelling people to take time out of their day to register and attend your webinar. By diversifying your marketing channels, you can meet your ideal prospects where you know they spend time, show value to your database, and drive meaningful registrations from a variety of sources. Consider using the following tactics to market your webinar:
- Compelling registration landing page: Your landing page should clearly explain what people can expect to learn from your webinar. Emphasize how this will benefit attendees and persuade people to register and attend. Pro tip: your landing page should showcase images, titles, and bios of your speakers and hosts to add credibility and a personal touch.
- Emails to existing marketing contact database: Leverage your entire customer and prospect database when sending out emails to announce the event and promote registration. Even if a webinar is not primarily intended to engage or educate existing customers, they might forward the invitation to a colleague, so casting your net wide is a great way to grow your attendee list and overall database.
- Website pop-ups: Use pop-ups on your website as another way of spreading the word about your upcoming webinar. This will ensure you reach as many people as possible, demonstrate that you’re actively holding events, and give prospects an appealing conversion path.
- Ads on relevant platforms: Running ads on relevant platforms, like LinkedIn and Google, is a targeted way to reach the exact people you want. You can narrow ad audiences by demographics and firmographics, create ads based on relevant keywords, and more.
- Create an Event on LinkedIn: Inviting connections to register for your LinkedIn event keeps your business profile current. It also allows company members to go into their LinkedIn profile and personally invite prospects outside of your database, making even more people aware of your upcoming webinar.
During the Webinar: Making Your Mark
While we’re focusing on the work associated with the pre- and post-webinar marketing activities, preparing to host the actual event is also critical. If a webinar is disorganized and messy, attendees won’t be interested in what else you have to offer. Some simple things you can do to make sure your webinar is successful are:
- Brand the virtual room with your company colors and logo
- Require all speakers to be on camera in a clean, quiet environment. Avoid having anything distracting in the background.
- Ensure presentations are polished and visual (and not too text-heavy)
- Open and manage the chat so attendees can ask questions throughout the event. Consider designating a specific speaker to monitor the chat to answer questions live or assign another team member to answer questions behind the scenes.
By giving attendees an enjoyable and educational experience, they’ll be more likely to convert in the future.
After the Webinar: B2B Webinar Marketing Isn’t Over
Once the webinar ends, your work is not done! What you do after the webinar matters just as much as – and maybe even more than – pre-webinar promotion, so don’t drop the ball on capitalizing on the leads you just engaged.
All post-webinar marketing should focus on converting prospects who attended. Do this by offering something appealing and relevant, like a free trial or discount on your product or service, to engage your list further and push them down the funnel. The best way to do this is by leveraging the same channels as you did for pre-webinar marketing:
- Webinar distribution: Immediately distribute the webinar recording and relevant presentation materials to attendees and no-shows and encourage them to share it with others and take any relevant next steps.
- Landing page: Create a landing page with a relevant and compelling offer, like a free trial, so webinar registrants have a tangible reason to stay engaged with your business and keep moving through the funnel.
- Send offer emails to event registrants: Promote your offer with engaging, eye-catching emails that emphasize the can’t-miss benefits of taking the offer. This will ensure that you engage with event registrants while the webinar is still fresh in their minds.
- Website pop-ups: Similar to pre-webinar promotion, leverage smart content to target the right people (i.e., webinar registrants excluding customers) with your compelling offer to keep your service at the forefront of their minds when they visit your website.
- Ads on relevant platforms: Target a specific list of people, such as registrants or attendees, with advertisements on LinkedIn, Google, and other relevant platforms tohat clearly convey to list members underscore to list members the benefits of the promoted offer.
- Add webinar recordings to your website: Create an easily navigable section on your website where you store all webinar recordings. Follow search engine optimization (SEO) best practices by adding the transcript, relevant copy, H1s, and meta tags with keywords to drive organic traffic to the webinar page and website. In other words, your live event can become an optimized website page that generates organic traffic long after the event occurred.
The Final Step: Tracking the ROI of Your Webinars
Tracking and analytics play a pivotal role in successful webinar marketing campaigns. Marketers gain valuable insights that inform their strategies, improve engagement, and drive better webinar outcomes by diligently monitoring and analyzing data.
One of the primary benefits of setting up proper tracking is the ability to identify who registered, who attended, and who didn't. With this information, you can segment your audience and target and personalize future marketing efforts accordingly. You will also be able to understand how the webinar impacted each prospect's journey through the marketing and sales funnels.
It’s also important to understand which channels drive the most registrations. For example, if many webinar registrants came from Google ads, that channel might be worth scaling in the next webinar campaign.
Tracking webinar lists also allows for effective lead scoring. Assigning more points to individuals who attended the webinar compared to those who only registered helps your Sales team prioritize and focus on high-quality leads.
You can also gain an understanding of email promotion effectiveness. Are people opening your emails but not registering? Maybe they’re interested in attending a webinar, but the topic didn’t resonate with them. Maybe your subject lines were great to get people to open, but then the body copy didn’t convey the value of the webinar. You can identify potential barriers by paying close attention to email performance.
By collecting all this data, you can grasp attendee behavior, allocate budget effectively, scale for future campaigns, increase audience engagement, refine your webinar strategies, and ultimately, drive more conversions.
B2B Webinar Marketing: The Conclusion
Webinars offer an engaging and interactive platform to educate, connect, and convert potential customers. By leveraging webinars in your marketing strategy, you can enhance your brand's visibility, generate leads, nurture relationships, and establish your position as a trusted industry authority.
You just have to do it the right way.
The ProperExpression team can help you with all elements of successful webinar planning, execution, and promotion, so all you have to do is show up and engage with your ideal prospects. Book a free, personalized consultation today to discover how webinars can become your most effective lead gen channel.
