Author Archives: Jason Stegent

Your registration page looks perfect. A multi-pronged promotional strategy is driving registrations left and right and you’re going to have a big audience the day of the event. Your presenters are prepped and ready to go. The slides look beautiful. Your webinar starts is 3, 2, 1 and…total mayhem. Your internet connection is all of a sudden spotty. The audio is in and out or the video isn’t working properly. Your slides aren’t navigating like they should. There’s a guy outside cleaning your office window making all kinds of noise. Your attendees are messaging that they can’t hear you. You see your live attendee number dwindle down to nothing. It’s a total disaster. Do you have options to avoid this happening to you?

Enter the Simu-Live Webinar

I promise, we’re not making this up. Simu-Live webinars are actually ‘a thing.’ It’s where you pre-record the webinar and broadcast it as a live event with live elements such as Q&A, chat, content downloading, social sharing and interaction, polling, surveys, etc.

So, what are the benefits?

1. Flexibility…

If you have presenters in different time zones, Simu-Live can prevent major headaches. It’s already a challenge to align everyone’s schedules to set time aside for the day-of, which is why pre-recording is preferred with a lot of our clients. The misconception, though, is that by recording your webinar ahead of time, you’ll miss out on the live interaction with your attendees. It’s actually the opposite! By pre-recording the meat of your presentation, you actually have more flexibility to focus on attendee involvement with questions, chats, polls, surveys, etc. to make sure the webinar experience is as interactive as possible.

2. Quality Control

As mentioned in our most recent webinar, 11 Steps to Making Webinars GREAT Again! (link to reg page), “it’s quality, not quantity.” Pre-recording allows you to review and edit the webinar before the live date, ensuring that your presentation is a slam dunk. Many times in a live environment, presenters get off script, go on a tangent and lose the audience. Simu-Live ensures you stay on course and deliver a webinar experience that will keep your audience engaged. Remember, one of the key metrics of a successful webinar is audience engagement.

3. Calm your nerves

As awesome as live webinars are, some people don’t do well under pressure… especially first-time speakers. Recording your webinar ahead of the live date will calm everyone’s nerves. Presenters will be more comfortable knowing that a tongue-tied stumble isn’t the end of the world, and you will be at ease with knowing your webinar will be executed exactly how you envisioned.

4. Eliminate What’s Out Of Your Control

As we mentioned above, some things are simply out of your control. A speaker suddenly can’t navigate the slides because he/she has spotty internet connection. The sound quality suddenly becomes poor. Or how about when a presenter has an emergency at the last minute and can’t participate? We’ve seen it happen before. Simu-Live simply throws these things out the window and truly puts you in control when it comes to your audience’s webinar experience

We’re not bashing live webinars…the majority of our clients still prefer them. However, there is another way. If you’ve ever been faced with any of these scenarios and it blew your webinar to pieces and wasted your attendee’s time, you should consider the Simu-Live alternative.

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.

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.

There are a number of motivations for a webinar – establish brand awareness, enhance credibility and thought leadership, educate your audience, build a business case for your solution/services, drive qualified leads for your sales force to pursue, etc., etc., etc.; but none of that means a thing if you can’t get an audience, and the only way to build that audience is to get registrants. If you have made the effort to get people to your registration page, you need to do all you can to convert them into registrants. Optimize your page so that your visitors have no reason to leave without registering. These tips will help increase registrations, attendees and your overall webcasting ROI.

1. Submission Form Design

When designing your submission form, less is more. The optimal number of fields for your submission form is from 4 to 7. Each additional field you add causes a higher percentage of people to leave without registering. You should only require a field if it makes a direct impact on your follow-up campaigns. Also, be sure to have fields aligned in one column, preferably on the right side of the page. Placing the form on the right side instead of the left side can increase conversions by 24%. When designing the page, make sure the “Submit” button is contrasted with its surroundings and make it as noticeable as possible.

2. Provide Incentive

If you are trying to get registrants to sign up in advance for your webinar, give them a reason to sign up now instead of hoping they come back later. Try providing teaser content that is related to what the webinar is about, such as an eBook, email, or whitepaper. Something that has worked really well for us and our clients is to leverage video on the registration page, essentially using it as a webinar trailer of sorts. It’s extremely effective! That’s not surprising when you consider that video is consistently ranked among the top two content marketing tools on the market today (along with webinars!).

3. Page Content

Your page content should be limited to a brief description of the webinar and what your audience will learn by attending. Think like a registrant – anticipate any questions your audience may want answered before they decide to register. What value are you providing that will make your audience want to take 45-50 minutes out of their day to hear what you have to say? Repeat after me: “short and sweet.”

4. Show Registrant Count

Providing the number of registrants you have shows potential registrants the demand for the webinar and can help influence them to sign up. You can get folks asking themselves the question, “If my colleagues are signing up, am I missing something by not doing the same?” Creating legitimacy is important to snag those visitors and convert them into registrants.

5. Sharing is Caring

Provide social media share icons to enable your webinar content to be shared with ease. This is a hassle-free way to drive additional registrations. Also, provide the ability to add the webinar to your personal calendar. This helps increase your registration to attendee ratio, which for some companies is quite poor.

6. Keep ‘em while you got ‘em

If you’ve driven a visitor to your registration page, design the page so they are less likely to wander off. Customize the page with company logos, color schemes and pictures related to the webinar. As mentioned earlier, leverage video when you can. Registration pages are like a plate of food; if it looks great, you’re much more likely to dig in. If you’re using a webinar provider that doesn’t allow this level of customization, you’re with the wrong provider. Limit menu dropdowns and any other distracting elements that are not directly related to the webinar. Keep them focused on the webinar, and be sure to have your call to action throughout the page such as, “Register now to learn about…” or “By registering today, you will receive our free eBook…”

7. Get personal

Let the visitors know who the webinar speaker(s) are. Provide pictures, names, titles, bios, etc. This enhances credibility and makes the webinar a more personable experience, as opposed to “some person” that will be presenting information to them. If your presenters are willing to take it a step further, ask them if they’re willing to provide their email or a virtual business card on the page.

Give it a try! Play with the theme, wording, placement… mix it up until you find the perfect balance. Now watch your registration numbers climb and do your happy dance.

We’re all guilty of it. I’m a big preacher against it, but sometimes even I have to remind myself not to do it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about “just touching base” or “just checking in.”

We’ve all had opportunities that get stuck in the pipeline. We thought we did everything right – we dug for business pain and how it was affecting the prospect’s ability to execute their job effectively, we built the business case, and then put a proposal against that business case that solved the challenge that prospect was facing. We thought it was a done deal and that signed contract would be in our inbox any day. But it hasn’t come through and even worse, your prospect hasn’t responded to your calls and emails for a few weeks, if not longer. And you’re not helping your chances when you lead with “just touching base.” It annoys the hell out of them. They’ve got a lot of people vying for their time and competing for their business, and only the folks that bring real value every step of the way are going to earn it. Here are a few things you can do to stop the awkward silence and get that contract through the door:

Reiterate the Business Case

If you’ve built a strong value proposition and the deal is looking like it’s stuck and quiet on the other end, reiterate why you and the prospect got to this stage in the first place and why your solution will solve their challenges. There’s a lot of value in saying, “Jim, when we first got together you mentioned that driving qualified leads into the pipeline was your biggest challenge. You’ve worked with organizations that drove ‘leads’ for you, but they rarely met your defined criteria of what a qualified lead should be, and thus you were wasting your time on contacts that either weren’t the right fit or they weren’t close to a buying cycle. You told me this was killing your pipeline and that your sales team was becoming frustrated. We came up with a solution that would get you in front of ‘sales ready’ leads and increase your pipeline value 5 X. I wanted to make sure that solving this challenge and increasing pipeline value is still important to you, and that you’re ready to do something about it by moving forward with our solution.” How much better is that than “Just checking in?” Another road to take would be to state the risk they’re facing by not doing something.

Find an Article/Case Study, etc. that will Resonate

I always tell our sales folks to do their homework and study the industry. Be on the lookout for articles, case studies, research reports, etc., that they can use as ammo to accelerate opportunities through the pipeline more effectively. Instead of “just touching base,” taking an approach of “Sarah, I came across this article and thought you would find it interesting. I believe it speaks to the challenges you are currently faced with and best practices for solving them. I hope you find it valuable” brings a lot more value. It shows your prospect that you’re thinking about them and doing your homework. They respect that so much more

Provide a Piece of Content/Invite Them to an Event

As a provider of webinar-based marketing solutions, I believe that webinars are a great tool to accelerate opportunities through the pipeline more effectively. Webinars are no longer just a tool to educate your audience and drive more qualified leads. They’re a fantastic weapon to help you close business. When it makes sense, we often use on-demand webinars as tools to get a prospect moving. Or if we have an upcoming webinar, take The Seven Costly Sins of Lead Generation for instance, that’s going to cover a lot of issues that one of our key prospects is faced with, we’ll send them a personal invitation. “Dave, we have a webinar coming up next week where we’ll cover a lot of the ideas that you and I have brainstormed together over the last few months. Here’s a link to register…I hope you can make it.” Value, value, value.

I know it sounds simple, but not enough sales reps do it. If you can do your due diligence and provide value during every stage of the funnel, you’re going to break that awkward prospect silence and get more signed contracts in your inbox.

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

With all of the different marketing tactics available today to drive pipeline – and there are a TON of them – live, physical events remain one of the most important pieces of the marketing puzzle for many organizations. For some, it is THE most important marketing technique and the one that swallows up most of their budget. With that said, these organizations could be doing so much more to touch a larger piece of their target audience and maximize their investment… enter the Hybrid Event!

Across all industries, Virtual Events are becoming more and more popular due to their cost-effectiveness and ability to cast a wider net and drive more measurable response on the backend. A hybrid event is simply a conference/tradeshow/summit/workshop, etc. that combines an in-person event with a virtual/online extension. The bottom line is that the majority of the people you invite to your in-person events aren’t going to attend, and it’s not because they’re not interested. Studies have shown that 90% of the time the reason your target audience doesn’t attend your events is because they can’t justify the cost and/or time away from the office. This means that more than likely they want to hear what you have to say, there are just obstacles that won’t allow them to be there in-person. Hybrid events provide a medium for you to reach these folks, interact with them and measure their engagement. There are a number of advantages to adding hybrid events to your strategy, and here are a few that I believe are incredibly compelling for any organization:

• Extending the reach of your events – as mentioned above, the majority of your audience is not going to attend your in-person events because of cost, time and travel restrictions. Too many companies make no effort to touch these folks and that’s a huge mistake. Adding a virtual component allows you to engage with this piece of your audience that you’re currently missing out on.

• Extending the shelf-life of your events – you’ve done all of this hard work to build an impressive list of presenters and a stack of fantastic content for your event. Unfortunately for too many organizations, once an event is over, it’s over. They don’t do anything to extend the shelf-life of their event’s content. By adding virtual to the mix, you can essentially capture the event and offer it on-demand, extending the life span of the event and allowing it to keep working for you as a lead generator for months to come.

• Creating new revenue streams for your business – many companies are starting to realize the revenue potential that hybrid events bring with them. Some examples include:
1) Additional sponsorship revenue from your in-person sponsors/partners by telling them they can gain access to an online audience by sponsoring the virtual component of the event.
2) Registration revenue from your virtual attendees. As a best practice, many companies that charge for their events will offer 50% off for online attendees. And NO, this model is not going to cannibalize attendance of your in-person events. If anything, giving them the opportunity to see what they’re missing in person will increase the likelihood of them attending your event next year…if they deem your content valuable, of course!
3) Assuming the event is for marketing purposes, adding a virtual extension allows you to get engaged with more prospects, which will allow you to drive more qualified leads, which will lead to more pipeline value…you get the picture.

• Measurability, Measurability, Measurability – Along with cost and time and driving more traffic, perhaps the most compelling reason to add an online piece to any event strategy is the fact that you can measure end user engagement more effectively, ultimately giving you a better sense of event ROI. The fact is there are certain things that can’t be done with in-person events in terms of measurability. Adding a virtual extension gives you more visibility into what all of your attendees are doing, allowing you to essentially score your prospects based on engagement and focus on the lowest hanging fruit.

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

As most marketers can tell you, webinars have become the most important tool businesses have today to tell a story, generate demand and drive pipeline value. And when everything is done properly – from a top-notch registration page, to an integrated promotional strategy that drives optimal traffic, to speakers that are engaging and bring a ton of value to the audience – the end result is a great webinar and a lot of quality prospects for your sales force to follow up with. But why stop there?

In a recent webinar of ours – The Five Keys to a Pipeline Boosting Webinar Strategy – we discussed the five essential elements of any effective webinar plan. And perhaps the most overlooked by most marketers is having an actionable on-demand strategy that drives results. You’ve put all of this hard work into delivering a world-class webinar, and now you’re not going to do anything else with it? That thinking is for the birds. An on-demand webinar is content marketing gold, and there are a number of ways you can bend and stretch it so it can be leveraged as a lead generator for months to come. Here are just a few ideas around how to re-purpose your webinar content:

Build an Event: Marketers are always looking for ways to execute events that are more cost-effective, drive more traffic and offer more measurable results on the back-end. The problem is, they keep looking to the same places and aren’t getting the results they’re looking for. If you have a robust webinar strategy where you have a lot of on-demand webinars, using them as the foundation of a virtual event is a great way to re-purpose them and drive new leads. You can set them up against scheduled times so they could act as ‘live webinars’, and leverage other content you have (whitepapers, case studies, videos, blogs, etc.) to fill out the rest of the event. I can’t tell you how many marketers I’ve spoken to that tell me they want to execute an event, but they don’t feel they have the content. If they only knew that re-purposing existing content could be the solution they’re looking for

Create a New Whitepaper or Case Study: The norm is to write a case study, whitepaper, eBook, blog, etc. and leverage it as the foundation of a webinar or webinar series. Great approach…we do it too and love it. But what about the idea of leveraging a webinar as the foundation for a top-notch piece of literature? That’s exactly what we’re doing for our last webinar, The Seven Costly Sins of Lead Generation. We already have the content essentially built, so writing the whitepaper will be a cinch

Use it as the Foundation for your Outbound Efforts: As everyone knows, sales people like leads. And when they don’t have leads being handed to them on a silver platter, they like to be equipped with ammo to make their outbound efforts more fruitful. One way to do this is to tell them to promote the on-demand version of webinars that make sense to their prospects. Tell them to mention it in their voicemail, their conversations with prospects, and in their emails. Have them put a link to a recent webinar in their signature. The person on the other end of the line wants some value, and providing them some education in the form of an on-demand webinar could be just the thing to peak their interest

The Rise of Video: leveraging video is more realistic and cost-effective than it’s ever been. If you’re using the right webinar provider, you should be able to get an MP4 (complete media capture) of the webinar. Take that MP4 and upload it on your site, behind a registration form, so you can host it for perpetuity. Then upload it on your YouTube channel as well. But also be cognizant of the fact that on-demand webinars have shorter viewing times than live webinars, meaning it’s less likely your audience is going to watch the entire recording. With that in mind, turn your webinar into a 4-5 minute highlight reel. Post it on your website, through YouTube and other social channels. Chances are this will give you more traction in terms shares and likes than an entire webinar recording will.

No matter what you hear from other vendors in the marketplace, pulling off a top-notch webinar strategy isn’t easy. It takes a well thought out approach, from registration page creation to event archive, to turn your webinars into what we like to call ‘sales accelerating weapons.’ When executed properly, it’s a beautiful thing. When done poorly, you can lose an audience forever, so making sure you nail your presentation IS that important. Here are four ways you can lose a webinar audience:

1. Registration Page: Most people don’t even know that they’ve lost their webinar audience before it even started. If there’s one thing your registration page needs to do, it needs to tell your audience why they should take 30, 40, 50 minutes out of their day to hear what you have to say. What value are they going to get out of it? What are they going to learn and how is it going to make them better? Telling them how great your product and solutions are won’t do the trick. Either is telling them that the majority of the presentation is going to be a demo (see more on that below). And while you have them on the registration page, make sure it’s optimized so they can save it to their calendar and share it amongst their peers. If they like what you’re cooking, they’ll serve it throughout their network as well

2. Downloads and Plugins: If your audience has to download a plugin to view your webinar on their desktop, two things are most likely true:
1 – You’re not using a webinar/webcasting solution…you’re using a meeting tool that limits you in a variety of ways.
2 – A number of your prospective registrants aren’t going to bother downloading software. It annoys them and they simply don’t have the time because your audience has less patience for this type of stuff than ever before. Look for a browser-based solution where no plug-ins are required. When you see the difference in registration, you’ll be glad you did.

3. Lack of Engagement: If you’re using the right webinar tool, there are so many things you should be able to do to keep your audience engaged – live Q&A, group chat and one-on-one chat, polling, surveys, content downloads, sharing and email options, etc. These are all things you should be considering to not only keep your audience engaged, but to measure their interest at the end of an event. Having insight into how engaged your audience is allows you to trim the fat and make your webinar follow-ups a lot more laser-focused. Trust me, your sales force will thank you for providing them with this insight. It makes their job that much easier

4. Death by Demo: I get it. People are proud of their products. They’ve invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears to develop what they consider to be a world-class solution. Problem is, your audience doesn’t care unless your demo speaks to where they are in their buying journey. In today’s world of ‘Content is King,’ you should know by now that it’s Content Marketing 101 to give your audience the content they want, when they want it. The problem with executing demos in webinar environments is that your audiences have different needs and are at different stages of the buying cycle. In my opinion, you should NEVER do a demo for top of the funnel webinars. You should focus on industry challenges and your company’s approach to solving those challenges. If you’re ever going to demo, do so when you can customize a demo to meet your attendee’s needs. This should be geared for folks that are much further down the funnel.