Blogs : August 2016

A lot of today’s sales and marketers reach out and tell their audience how great they are. “We help companies do XYZ via a cloud-based solution that does XYZ and the end result is XYZ. Let me know when we can schedule 20 minutes to chat about how we can do the same for you.” Guess what? Your prospects are getting thousands upon thousands of those emails from sales and marketers all over the world. So how do you create competitive differentiation?

One of the things that has been very successful for us, and our clients, is a letting the market dictate how they want to be sold to. And we get to that point by taking a research-driven approach to lead generation. Too many B2B organizations are too busy telling their prospects how awesome they are, and not taking enough time to understand what’s keeping the market up at night. Selling to a prospect’s challenges is Sales 101, I know, but companies have gotten away from that. Here at Elastic, there are two ways we go about it:

Industry Studies/Surveys – you’d be amazed how much your prospects will divulge to you in a 15 question survey. It’s mind-boggling. They’ll tell you where they’re good, where they’re great and where they’re doing crappy and need help. Your sales and marketing teams can use this info in their follow-ups, in their lead nurturing and drip marketing campaigns, and in your messaging for that specific market. You can then use all of this data to build a piece of content that simply regurgitates what your prospects told you. And when you promote a piece of content and let your prospects know that this is the result of responses from hundreds of their peers, your download rate will be much higher compared to literature that isn’t based on research. Your prospects love to hear what they’re peers in the space are doing and how they measure up. It’s a powerful way to drive leads

Webinars – webinars are a great way to summarize the findings of a market research campaign. As opposed to your audience just reading the results on paper, actually hearing/seeing the people that executed the research brings more credibility to the overall campaign. Webinars offer an interactive environment to take your research to the next level. And guess what? Webinars can also serve as the foundation for your next piece of content. If you’re working with the right webcasting provider, your platform should be able to measure attendee engagement a number of different ways. How long did they attend? What questions were asked and what occurred in group chat? How did they respond to poll questions and surveys? What content did they download and how many times was the webinar shared through social mediums? What parts of the webinar received the most engagement? Like I’ve always said, webinars are so much more than just the presentation itself All of this data will help you:

1.  Determine what your audience is most interested in. So when you follow-up post event, you can trim the fat and get down to what really matters to them.

2.  Dictate what your next piece of content will be. Perhaps the audience feedback gives you an idea for what your next webinar topic should be. Or perhaps you have enough data to build a top-notch piece of content – highlight reels from the webinar, eBooks, whitepapers, etc.

Stop telling your prospects what you THINK they need. Put the tools in place that enable them to tell you what they’re interested in and what they actually DO need. Then use this feedback to tighten your lead generation approach, drive more opportunities and close more sales.

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The most important thing any webinar can provide for its attendees is VALUE. How are they going to be better off taking 45 minutes out of their hectic schedule to hear what you have to say? If you can’t answer that question, you don’t have a webinar worth delivering. But the presentation itself isn’t the only place where you need to drive value. A successful webinar campaign is so much more than the presentation itself…

 

 

Registration Page:

This is where it all starts. Your abstract needs to immediately tell a story that resonates with your audience. Take away the fluff and focus on what the webinar is going to cover. What challenges in the marketplace are going to be addressed in this webinar? What educational benefits are folks going to get out of attending? Customize the page to meet your message – banners, logos, pictures, videos, etc. – and optimize it to reach a larger audience and improve registration to attendee conversions (social media integration, save to Outlook and Google calendars, etc.).

Emails:

As soon as people register they should receive a confirmation email with webinar details – links, dates, times, test your system instructions, etc. You should also send them two reminder emails – typically a week before and the morning of. But how about being a little different? Instead of just sending them a boring instruction manual on how to access the webinar and view it optimally, why not include a piece of content that will give them value and touches on some of the points that your upcoming webinar is going to cover? It could be a link to an on-demand webinar, a link to your blogs, a collection of videos or pieces of literature that support what you’re going to be speaking about during the webinar (eBooks, Whitepapers, etc.). These emails should be seen as an extra way to provide value for a prospect that has already shown interest by registering for your webinar. They’ve entered the funnel, not it’s time to nurture them.

Webinar:

The big day is here, but just don’t give them a presentation. Provide an engaging experience. The content has to be top-notch, yes, but give them access to other forms of content within the webinar environment. This provides you with more touch points and more ways to measure their engagement. Q&A is a given, but provide other engagement options. Conduct polls and surveys, providing instant feedback so they can see how they stack up against their peers. Provide the ability to download content related to the presentation – webinar slides, literature, videos, blogs, etc. Give them the ability to automatically register for your next webinar while they’re watching your current webinar. This is a great way to increase attendance for future events and provides an easier way for folks to attend your upcoming webinars. They’re watching your webinar and like what they’re hearing…why wouldn’t they want to see what you have in store for your next event? Give them more value than they bargained for.

On-Demand:

It drives me absolutely crazy how overlooked this part of the process is. Don’t just send them a “Thank You” or “Sorry we missed you” email with a link to the on-demand version. Do that PLUS provide access to the slide deck (if they attended); drive them to your blogs and social media pages; give them a great piece of follow-up content and provide access to the resource library on your site; if they haven’t already registered for your next webinar, take them to a place where they can easily sign up for any of your upcoming webinars. You’ve got your prospects at a place where they’re a sponge…give them access to quality content and allow them to soak in all of the value you can drive for them and their organization.