Author Archives: Jason Stegent

Sales and marketing professionals are the lifeblood of any B2B organization. They also get told ‘no thanks’ and have more doors slammed in their faces than the rest of the departments in any organization combined! Extremely thick skin, ‘can do’ attitudes, and a fearless mentality are a must in the sales and marketing game

As we’ve done the last few years, we direct you to our friends at Hubspot for their 75 Motivational Sales Quotes to Ignite Your Sales Drive in 2019. It’s a short read, but totally worth it. Now go make 2019 the best year yet! Click here to read on.

Without question, one of the biggest barriers to webinar success is simply not having an iron-clad webinar project plan in place. Too many companies and marketers think that they can simply ‘wing it’ and people will automatically register/attend. Nothing could be further from the truth. At Elastic Solutions, we believe the ideal webinar project plan is a six-week process that covers everything from topic/abstract creation to event archive. Here is a sample six-week plan for a live webinar (this will vary slightly if you’re executing a simu-live webinar):

Six Weeks Out:

• Topic and Abstract brainstorming and selection
• Choose compelling speakers that will generate interest and give an engaging live-day presentation
• Plan out your promotional roadmap (email x 3 or 4, website, social, partners, etc.) and on-demand plan. Don’t forget that promoting the on-demand version can be just as important as promoting the live event

Five Weeks Out:

• Finalize topic, abstract, speakers and live date
• Build your registration page and have it ready to go LIVE!

Four Weeks Out:

• Now that the webinar is live it’s time to begin promotion on your website, through a dedicated email blast to your audience, and through various social media channels. If you have partners and/or 3^rd parties that you’re leveraging, begin promotions through them as well
• Schedule a dry run 2 weeks before the live webinar

Three Weeks Out:

• Make sure that your sales team gets your webinar in front of key prospects and customers. While webinars are the ultimate lead generation tool, they’re also a great asset to accelerate opportunities through the pipeline and can be used to upsell existing customers. Webinars are no longer JUST for lead generation!
• Double check with your presenters to make sure that the live date still works for them and that no conflicts have popped up on their calendars. Things happen and you need to be 100% sure your presenters are going to be available

Two Weeks Out:

• 1^st Dry Run. First, make sure that your presenters are comfortable with the technology and are confident with everything they need to do to deliver a top-notch live webinar. Second, go through the presentation itself and make sure that presenters know their roles, who’s going when and who’s saying what, etc. An initial slide deck should be loaded into the platform for this dry run. Finally, start talking about what’s going to happen the day of the webinar – when do they need to login, what devices should they be using to deliver an optimal webinar experience for attendees, what happens if they’re having technical difficulties (worst-case scenarios…always need to plan for them), etc.
• Send your second dedicated email blast to your list. Continue with the other promotional strategies, of course

One Week Out:

• If necessary, execute an additional dry run with your presenters. For presenters that don’t have a lot of webinar experience and/or you don’t feel like they’re comfortable enough with the technology and everything they need to do the day of the live event, a second dry run is a great idea. For presenters that are webinar pros, it’s not necessary
• First reminder email is sent to all current webinar registrants
• Third promotional email blast is sent to your audience to generate more webinar traffic
• Make sure the final slide deck is loaded into the platform and that your presenters know exactly how the deck is going to be presented

Day Before/Morning of Live Webinar:

• If you are looking to get an extra registration boost, a final promotion the day before or the morning of the webinar has been proven to drive good ‘11^th hour’ results
• Send 2^nd reminder email to all current webinar registrants the morning of the live webinar

Live Broadcast:

• Presenters need to login 30-40 minutes before the start of the webcast to run performance checks and test audio/sound quality (no cell phones and no speaker phones!). Make sure your speakers are in a quiet environment where there won’t be any distractions
• Ensure that your team is ready to support your presenters and your attendees in case there are technical difficulties that need to be troubleshooted immediately. Again, always be prepared for the worst-case scenarios

1-2 Days After Live Date:

• Get your webcast archived on-demand and posted on your site within 24 hours of the live date
• Send a post-event email to all attendees and folks that registered/didn’t attend, providing them with access to the on-demand webinar
• Begin the process of promoting the on-demand webinar to the rest of your audience that never registered for the live event. Remember, don’t think that the live event is all that matters. On-demand webinars have incredible long-tail lead generation impact when promoted the right way!

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

While webinars are the most versatile, effective content marketing tool to engage your audience and drive significant pipeline, there are still a lot of companies out there that simply haven’t made webinars a consistent piece of their lead generation strategy. And after countless discussions with marketers, we’ve found three common barriers to webinar adoption:

1. Bandwidth Issues – when a small marketing team looks at everything that a successful webinar entails, from registration page creation to event archive, they think there’s no way they can run a successful webinar campaign. It’s a legitimate concern, but if you work with a webinar provider that has a managed-service option, it can make the bandwidth issue obsolete. At Elastic, we assign a team to each of our client accounts to ensure their webinar process is seamless and on point. This includes a webcast project manager to build your registration page and customized webinar environment; taking care of all confirmation and reminder emails; managing scheduling logistics and dry runs; training your presenters on how they can be at their absolute best the day of the event; recording the day of the event and providing live support; archiving it on-demand and giving you an on-demand asset that you can use for lead-gen purposes for a long time to come, and much more! Long story short, having a team that can manage all the technical and production details, while you worry about producing great content, can help you execute great webinars on a more consistent basis
2. Thinking they don’t have any content/topics to present on – we get this one all the time, but little do folks know that great content to present on is often staring them in the face! If you’re using blogs, repurpose a blog into a webinar. If you have whitepapers/eBooks/research reports/case studies, use those as the foundation of a webinar. Great content is typically there, you just need to know where to look for it. Read this blog to learn more
3. They’ve been burned by webinars in the past – this is completely understandable. If you’ve had a bad experience with something in today’s world of instant gratification, you’re unlikely to go back to that well. However, we’ve found three reasons why folks have been burned by webinars:
   • Their previous webinars weren’t properly promoted or properly managed – they didn’t promote them long and hard enough (3 weeks minimum, leveraging as many promotional channels as possible) and the project management of them was poorly executed. They didn’t have an outlined, 5-6 week webinar success plan in place. Proper planning is essential to webinar ROI
   • Their previous webinars didn’t drive value for the attendees – the topics didn’t speak to the pains and challenges of their target audience; they didn’t truly educate their audience; and worst of all, they used webinars as a one hour sales pitch. Big no no.
   • They had technical difficulties – plain and simple the webinar platform they were using didn’t work. Nobody could get in and watch the presentation; the slides wouldn’t move; the audio didn’t work; they didn’t get the reporting metrics they were looking for. And worst of all, they didn’t have anyone from their webinar provider that could troubleshoot it for them in a timely manner. Challenges like this can make it hard to regain the trust of your audience

Does any of this sound like the reason(s) you’ve shied away from using webinars as a tool to drive pipeline for your business? If so, all of these are challenges that can be easily solved!

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of ElasticSolutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

I’ve been in the lead generation game for a long time, and whether it’s our webinar-based software or services, Elastic Solutions is laser-focused on quality lead generation. Because of that, our conversations with our clients and prospects always center around the topic of lead-gen. We’re increasingly hearing marketing and sales leaders say that their qualified leads aren’t converting, and after peeling back the onion we’ve found three common themes:

1. It was never qualified to begin with – this above all else, and most of the time it’s because the organization doesn’t have a clear definition of what a qualified lead is. They weren’t dealing with the ultimate decision maker, aka the person that is going to sign the contract; they didn’t confirm that there is a true intent to purchase the type of solution that they offer; they don’t even know if this ‘lead’ can afford what they’re selling, regardless of how bad the need may be. You get the drift. Add in the fact that the majority of ISRs/BDRs – typically the roles that are tasked with qualifying leads – get happy ears when a prospect says ‘yes’, without qualifying them further, and it’s no wonder that ‘qualified’ leads not converting is a headache for marketing and sales leaders
2. Not all of the stakeholders are being touched – according to multiple studies and surveys, on average there are 6-8 stakeholders involved in an enterprise B2B deal. And chances are you’re not touching all of them. Just because it’s important to Jim the COO, doesn’t mean it’s important to Suzie the CFO. Samantha the SVP might be faced with this challenge, but another challenge is keeping Danny the EVP up at night. Are you marketing and selling to all of these pains? In today’s marketplace, it’s imperative that you A) understand who all of the decision makers are at the outset B) figure out the unique challenges that these decision makers are faced with, and C) present a business case as to how your solution/service can solve these challenges and generate ROI for all stakeholders involved. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen deals lost, that could’ve been won, because this wasn’t properly vetted upfront
3. You’re just checking in – let’s assume that everything is properly vetted. You’re dealing with the key folks; you know their challenges and have a solution in place that can solve them; the intent to purchase a solution like yours is there. And then…crickets. The deal goes cold on you and you find out that it went to a competitor. Where did it all go wrong? We’ve found that many times this happens because organizations are ‘just checking in’ and stop marketing and selling. Active opportunities need to be nurtured every step of the way until close. Instead of ‘just checking in’ – three words that decision makers hate, FYI – send them something of substance. Invite them to a webinar or send them a video. Send them a recent whitepaper or pass along an article that speaks to them and the position they’re in as a buyer. Give them something that matches up to where they are in their buying journey. Trust me, your conversion percentage will thank you for it

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of ElasticSolutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

It’s where everything begins. It’s where you make your first impression. It’s where you’re audience decides whether or not they’re going to give you 45 minutes to an hour of their time. The registration page. Seems simple enough, but a boring, vanilla, unoptimized registration page can be the difference between a webinar with huge registration numbers or one with little to no audience at all. Let’s look at the Do’s and Don’ts of webinar registration pages

Continue reading →

Webinars are the best content marketing/lead gen tool in a marketer’s toolbox. Successful webinar strategies don’t just simply happen…far from it. There are certain steps and processes involved that separate the great ones from the rest of the pack. Anything worth doing is worth doing exceptionally well, right?
Continue reading →

Think about how many tools allow you to:

• Know if you’re dealing with the right decision makers and influencers
• Learn about what your targeted accounts are doing around X, Y and Z
• Get insight into what they like/dislike about their current solution
• Understand if the person on the other end is a legitimate opportunity for you and your business

Not many. However, a well crafted survey is one of those tools. Because it’s a part of our business, and because more and more B2B marketers are using surveys to drive actionable insight from their key accounts, I present to you the ‘Anatomy of a Good Lead Generation Survey’:

Continue reading →

If you’re a B2B marketer, you know one thing is for certain – driving qualified, ‘sales ready’ leads is tough. I’m talking about leads that are truly qualified and fit a defined criteria. Quality lead generation is the #1 thing that keeps marketers up at night, and it should because the B2B landscape is more competitive than ever and it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd. With that in mind, here are our top lead generation trends in 2018 that B2B marketers should implement into their strategy to drive pipeline like never before.

Continue reading →

Sales and marketing professionals are the lifeblood of any B2B organization. They also get told ‘no thanks’ and have more doors slammed in their faces than the rest of the departments in any organization combined! Extremely thick skin, ‘can do’ attitudes, and a fearless mentality are a must in the sales and marketing game

As we’ve done the last few years, we direct you to our friends at Hubspot for their 60 Motivational Sales Quotes to Ignite Your Sales Drive in 2018. It’s a short read, but totally worth it. Now go make 2018 the best year yet! Click here to read on.