In our opinion, webinars are a marketer’s best friend. They cost-effectively extend your reach, generate audience engagement and drive pipeline. However, not everyone we’ve spoken with about webinars has achieved these benefits. Some organizations can’t even get a webinar strategy off the ground, while others who are running webinars simply can’t seem to get the ROI they’re looking for. Here are the four most common webinar hurdles that are preventing marketers from driving pipeline, and how they can overcome them.
- I don’t know how to kick-start a webinar strategy – many folks that we speak with simply don’t know how to get a webinar campaign off the ground. They see the value in webinars, and they want to add them to the mix, but they simply don’t know where to begin. They don’t know how to find compelling content; they don’t know how to find engaging speakers; they don’t know how to promote webinars the right way to generate the audience they’re looking for. At Elastic, our managed-service webinar offering can essentially act as your outsourced webinar team. From registration page creation to event archive, we manage the entire process to ensure your webinars are flawlessly executed and deliver on your end goal. And if you’re a marketer, your end goal with webinars should be quality lead generation and better pipeline results. View our on-demand webinar – How to Build a Webinar Program From Scratch – for more ideas.
- I occasionally run webinars, but I don’t have the bandwidth to run more – these are typically marketers that have had success with webinars and wish they could run more, but their lack of bandwidth is holding them back. In this scenario, like the hurdle above, a managed-service webinar provider makes sense. You don’t want a webinar vendor who can only drop off the technology and wish you the best of luck. You want a webinar partner that can do the heavy lifting and make bandwidth a non-issue, enabling you to create engaging content that will ultimately generate more revenue for your company
- My webinar content and formats are growing stale – keeping your webinar content and formats fresh is essential to ongoing engagement with your audience. Boring webinars and ho-hum formats will make your prospects think that you’re boring and ho-hum as well. Put together content that is different than everything out there in the marketplace and truly educates your customers and prospects. Don’t make it a company commercial…make it a fun, educational session. In terms of formats, if you’re going to do audio and slides be sure to make your slides pop. Look into vendors that can also offer live video streaming and/or can roll videos into your audio and slides-based webinar. Video-based webinars (videocasts, as we like to call them) offer a more personalized experience for your audience and can help optimize demand generation. Be sure to use engagement tactics like social interaction, Q&A, polls, surveys, content downloads and chat features. When you give your webinar audience more opportunities to engage, it means better reporting metrics and insights into your prospects on the backend. This intelligence will enable you to sell and market smarter, resulting in increased revenues and tremendous webinar ROI.
- My webinar attendance has been underwhelming, leading to a lackluster pipeline and poor ROI – let’s face it…as a marketer, you’re running webinars to get eyeballs that turn into interest and, hopefully, new business. Poor webinar attendance is the biggest webinar challenge out there today, and there are many reasons for it. In our most recent webinar – Solving the Webinar Attendance Problem – we go in-depth about this problem and what companies can do to solve it. It will give you the answers you’re looking for and is definitely worth a watch!
Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com