21 ideas for planning, creating, and leveraging your webinars

How Webinars Should Fit into Your Content Marketing & Audience-Building Efforts

#SherpaWebinar

Today’s team

Todd Lebo Senior Director of Content and Business Development @ToddLebo

Daniel Burstein Director of Editorial Content @DanielBurstein

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• More than 10 years of research

• Over 1 billion emails

• 1,300 major experiments

• 10,000 sales paths tested

• Hundreds of publications and conferences

• 5 million phone calls

• 500,000 conversations

About MECLABS

#SherpaWebinar

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MarketingSherpa is a research and publishing organization serving the marketing community

MarketingSherpa’s research cycle provides knowledge for continuous improvement of marketing performance

How Webinars Should Fit into Your Content Marketing & Audience-Building Efforts

Pre-webinar – developing content and orchestrating pre-event promotions

During the webinar – managing the event in real time, and engaging your audience

Post-webinar – turning viewers into customers, processing feedback, and reusing content

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#SherpaWebinar

Free webinars aren’t free

IDEA #1: Focus on delivering value…not selling

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Is a webinar right for your purposes?

1. How complex is my purchase? 2. Can I help my audience without selling? “The goal with nurturing is not just always be closing or

always be selling. It’s really, always be helping.” – Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Revenue Optimization,

MECLABS

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IDEA #1: Focus on delivering value…not selling

#SherpaWebinar

Top Lead Generation Tactics

6%

6%

6%

13%

13%

16%

19%

20%

23%

26%

29%

31%

30%

40%

34%

47%

31%

34%

29%

43%

48%

56%

46%

53%

25%

29%

21%

17%

14%

17%

13%

15%

10%

6%

9%

10%

Print advertising

Social media

Direct mail

Public relations

Telemarketing

Paid search (PPC)

Virtual events / webinars

Trade shows

Content marketing

Email marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Website design, management and optimization

Very effective Somewhat effective Not effective

Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded June 2011, N=1,745

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Q: Please indicate the effectiveness of the following lead generation tactics for your organization:

Source: http://meclabs.com/training/publications/benchmark-report/2012-b2b-marketing/free-excerpt

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Are other companies using webinars?

15%

30%

40%

42%

48%

48%

54%

68%

72%

75%

81%

Mobile marketing

Webinars

Direct mail

Print advertising

Tradeshows

Paid search (PPC)

Content marketing

Website …

Social media

Search engine …

Email marketing

Source: ©2012 MarketingSherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded January 2012, N=1,915

Q. Which of the following lead generation tactics does your organization currently use?

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Source: http://meclabs.com/training/publications/benchmark-report/lead-generation/overview

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Effectiveness of webinars

6%

8%

16%

18%

24%

25%

25%

29%

30%

35%

35%

41%

57%

Podcasts

Infographics

Self-promotional content

Teleprospecting calls

Videos

Research-based content

Direct mail

Blog posts

Webinars

Thought leadership articles

Whitepapers

Sales calls

Email newsletters

Source: ©2012 MarketingSherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded January 2012, N=1,915

Q. Which of the following have been the most effective for nurturing your leads?

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Source: http://meclabs.com/training/publications/benchmark-report/lead-generation/overview

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POLL: What is your level of expertise with creating and promoting webinars? 1. Haven’t started 2. Beginner 3. Moderate 4. Advanced 5. Move over Dan and Todd, I should be running this thing

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Who are you targeting? 1 Pre-webinar

IDEA #2: Pick a target

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What is a buyer persona?

A detailed profile that represents an

actual, real-life group of your target

audience. It includes common interests,

motivators and expectations, as well as

demographic and other behavioral

characteristics.

Identify buyer personas

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IDEA #2: Pick a target

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Key buyer persona traits

Demographic traits

• Job title & responsibilities

• Organization size / department size

• Primary market (B2B, B2C, B2B2C)

• Industry

• Location

• Budget

Behaviors

• Key concerns for purchase

• Interests

• Motivation

• Expectations

• Decision-making authority

• Approvals needed for purchase

• Urgency

• Goals

• Familiarity with product / service

• Pain points & challenges

• Validation needed for purchase

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IDEA #2: Pick a target

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Researching buyer personas

Step 1: Ask customer-facing departments

Step 2: Ask prospects

Step 3: Ask customers

Step 4: Mine in-house database

What to look for:

• Common traits for ideal customers – Large deal sizes, short timeframes to purchase, most repeat purchases,

etc.

• Common traits for undesirable customers – Returns or refunds, smallest deal sizes, longest timeframes to purchase

Qualitative Research

Quantitative Research

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IDEA #2: Pick a target

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MarketingSherpa Case Study – SciQuest segmented their target audience

Challenge: Weekly webinars were not generating volume and quality of leads needed to meet goals for the collaborative procurement and supplier management solutions company

Approach: Properly identify and segment the audience to give them targeted content.

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IDEA #3: Segment your audience

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Cleaned up the in-house marketing database and got persona-specific content to the correct audience:

• They recognized inconsistencies in the way contacts’ job descriptions were recorded.

• They began standardizing the way contacts were identified. A dozen standard job description categories were created.

• They hired a summer intern to manually examine each contact and assign them to one of the 12 standard categories.

Marketing Sherpa Case Study – SciQuest: Segmentation

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IDEA #3: Segment your audience

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• Better segmentation capabilities from their improved database allowed them to create higher-quality segmented lists for webinar invites.

• The webinars could now be advertised to the specific audiences they could benefit.

• An invitation on an advanced webinar for the healthcare industry, for example, achieved a 4% acceptance rate – quadrupling the 1% acceptance rate for the company’s basic webinar invitation…a 300% increase in acceptance rate

Source: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30653

MarketingSherpa Case Study – SciQuest 1 Pre-webinar

IDEA #3: Segment your audience

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What will your audience find to be:

Relevant?

Urgent?

Important?

Make a choice of topic informed by the questions above and the research you conducted.

Pick a webinar topic for your audience 1 Pre-webinar

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• Your first inclination might not produce the best headline

• “Once you have a headline in a certain zone, a certain skill zone, there’s no way for me to predict which one is going to win, because I can’t get in the mystery of the audience’s mind well enough to guess that.” Flint Mclaughlin, CEO said prior to testing the headlines

• Based on two hypotheses (“Which is better, a fluid statement or a list?”)

Which title will perform best? IDEA #4: Test your title

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Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How button and form optimization increased conversion 166%

VS.

Minor Changes, Major Lifts: Three case studies, three discoveries, 166% increase

Which title do you think won?

Which title will perform best? IDEA #4: Test your title

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Winner:

Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How button and form optimization increased conversion 166%

Minor Changes, Major Lifts: Three case studies, three discoveries, 166% increase

Which title will perform best?

Small differences in wording resulted in a 92.2% increase in conversion Source: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/analytics-testing/headline-testing.html

IDEA #4: Test your title

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IDEA #5: Repurpose a proven topic

MarketingSherpa Case Study—HubSpot: choosing a topic that draws an audience

Challenge: HubSpot wanted a high performing topic to be presented by a presenter with a proved track record.

Approach: They picked a topic in the vein of previous successful events.

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HubSpot, a marketing software company, produces many webinars as part of an overall content strategy. One recent event, "The Science of Timing," garnered just shy of 25,000 sign-ups and included almost 10,000 attendees.

MarketingSherpa Case Study—HubSpot: picked a topic for their audience and got it right

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IDEA #5: Repurpose a proven topic

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The importance of "The Science of..." series is that previous events played into the marketing of "The Science of Timing." Through past attendance metrics, they showed that this content had interest for HubSpot’s audience: "The Science of Twitter" with ClickZ had pulled in about 3,000 registrants "The Science of Social Media" had received around 12,000 registrants

MarketingSherpa Case Study—HubSpot: knew their audience liked science-y content

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IDEA #5: Repurpose a proven topic

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Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing, HubSpot, explained the appeal of this event, "'The Science of Timing' kind of combined 'The Science of Twitter' and the science of social media, Facebook and blogging because it was all about timing…This webinar was an aggregate of some of the questions that people really had burning questions to.“

Results: They achieved a record-breaking registartion of 25,000!

Source: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31889

MarketingSherpa Case Study—HubSpot: answered audience’s burning questions

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IDEA #5: Repurpose a proven topic

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IDEA #6: Repurpose live event content

MarketingSherpa Case Study – Fairchild Semiconductor

Challenge: Good content that got a great audience response didn’t reach the number of people they had hoped for in a live presentation format.

Approach: Repurposed day-long, in-person seminar into 7 one-hour long pieces, and turn it into webinars

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#SherpaWebinar

30-50% of live webinar registrants actually attended, but of the remainder, 80% checked in later to access the archive.

A remarkable 75-80% of live webinar attendees stayed through the entire presentation.

They repurposed content that was already created, so these webinars were not as hard to make.

Source: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=23547

MarketingSherpa Case Study—Fairchild Semiconductor results

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IDEA #6: Repurpose live event content

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MarketingSherpa Case study—SciQuest: fewer webinars, more attendees

Challenge: Weekly webinars were not generating volume and quality of leads needed to meet company goals.

Approach: Respect the audience’s time: avoid oversaturation and put your webinar at a time when it’s easiest for people to watch it.

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IDEA #7: Test frequency and timing

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• Events were no longer scheduled for every week, but every other week.

• Webinar starting time was changed from 2 p.m. to 11 a.m. to attract prospects in Europe while also reaching West Coast attendees first thing in the morning.

• Webinar day became Thursday instead of Tuesday.

• No webinars were scheduled for July and August, when attendance was typically lowest.

Results: This tactic in combination with others

increased viewership 422% Source: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30653

MarketingSherpa Case Study– SciQuest: timing matters

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IDEA #7: Test frequency and timing

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Pre-event promotion 1 Pre-webinar

Source: MarketingSherpa

IDEA #8: Think beyond the email invite

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MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: a framework that produces results

Challenge: IDES, a plastics industry directory, was making high-quality webinars that drew a good audience. They wanted to expedite the process and get the same good results.

Approach: Create easy to use templates for a webinar communication plan that can be used and reused.

1 Pre-webinar Idea #9: Create a promotions template

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Idea #9: Create a promotions template

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MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: Promotion

Ads: 6 weeks prior to the webinar, ads placed throughout the website and link to the webinar platform’s registration page.

Webinars Page: Listing and ad link to the webinar reg page.

Social: They create a blog posting which updates LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

#SherpaWebinar

Newsletters: Include the upcoming webinar as a featured story in email newsletters beginning 6 weeks prior to the webinar.

Email Alerts: Have an opt-in list of people who have asked to be notified of upcoming webinars. Email alerts are sent to this list 1 to 2 days prior to the presentation. Email alerts are also sent to recipients based on past downloads of white papers from website and newsletter click tracking on topics associated with the webinar presentation content.

MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: Promotion 1 Pre-webinar

Idea #9: Create a promotions template

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Registration Form: Gathers minimal information: first and last name, email.

Viral: After 5 seconds, the registration page redirects to a Tell-a-Friend page created with SurveyGizmo. The form also asks if they would like to be added to our webinar alerts email list.

MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: Promotion 1 Pre-webinar

Idea #9: Create a promotions template

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Viral Emails: emails include summary information for the webinar and a link to register.

Webinar Reminder Emails: Through the webinar platform, reminder emails are sent 1 day and 1 hour prior to the event. They include connection and calling instructions, and the ability to add the event to their Outlook Calendar.

All post-webinar items are also produced prior to the webinar: On-demand video page, Landing page to download slides, Follow up emails to attendees and non attendees. Recipients receive a link to the webinar recording and slides within 3 hours of the presentation ending.

MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: Promotion 1 Pre-webinar

Idea #9: Create a promotions template

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• 73% of registrations coming from its email newsletter and special webinar alert messages

• 24% of registrations coming from Google searches

• 37% attendance rate on live webinars

• "Like all things, the upfront investment is hardest part — creating all the templates, figuring out the process," says Nathan Potter, Marketing Manager. "But once it’s a process, it’s dialed in. One person can handle it and bang it out fast.“

Source: https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31672

MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: Results 1 Pre-webinar

Idea #9: Create a promotions template

#SherpaWebinar

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IDEA #9 BONUS: Use our promotion template

MarketingSherpa webinar template

http://bit.ly/WebinarTemplate

How Webinars Should Fit into Your Content Marketing & Audience-Building Efforts

Pre-webinar—developing content and orchestrating pre-event promotions

During the webinar – managing the event in real time, and engaging your audience

Post-webinar-- turning viewers into customers, processing feedback, and reusing content

Review

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#SherpaWebinar

• Your audience has limited time and even more limited attention. Present your content with this in mind.

Continuously provide value

Based on Richard Mayer's research www.psych.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/mayer/research/research...

Idea #10: Every slide is a micro-conversion

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#SherpaWebinar

Help your audience connect with each other

#SherpaWebinar Idea #11: Start a conversation

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#SherpaWebinar

Idea #12: Go light on the selling…

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http://marketingsherpa.com/b2bsummit

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Idea #13: …or create a second tier

2 Mid-webinar Two tiers of webinars

Content Webinar

Focused on providing value to potential customers. Good for higher up in the funnel.

Focused on sharing your solution with attendees. Better for farther down the funnel.

Sales Webinar

Promote sales webinars in a straightforward manner (so your audience doesn’t confuse them with content webinars.

#SherpaWebinar

Idea #13: …or create a second tier

2 Mid-webinar Two tiers of webinars

Promote sales webinars in a straightforward manner (so your audience doesn’t confuse them with content webinars.

Source: http://www.meclabs.com/engage

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Idea #14: Don’t overlook showmanship

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Engaging + information speakers

From MarketingSherpa case study about IDES Presenter: The sponsoring company provides 2 presenters: An Expert and a Personality to add flavor and interest.

Source: https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31672

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Idea #14: Don’t overlook showmanship

2 Mid-webinar

Engaging + information speakers

Or in our case…

Subject Matter Expert

Todd

Personality/Moderator

Dan

#SherpaWebinar

Have staff on hand to conduct Q&A through your platform since you won’t likely have the time to address every question on the call. Assign staff members to answer attendee questions and monitor tweets. Give the staff answers to common problems: • I can't get in • I can't register • I don't know what the telephone number is Encourage the audience members to have a conversation with each other by using a Twitter hashtag, like #SherpaWebinar.

Manage the event in real time 2 Mid-webinar

Idea #15: Have a support team

Before, during, after: a webinar on making good webinars

Pre—developing content and orchestrating pre-event promotions

Mid– managing the event in real time, and engaging your audience

Post-webinar – processing feedback and reusing content

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Share the slides

Idea #16: Easiest way to share slides is on SlideShare

3 Post-webinar

You can download these slides from http://www.slideshare.net/marketingexperiments

#SherpaWebinar

Exit Polls: Audience members are automatically directed to a short exit poll with 2 questions:

• Would you like to receive email alerts for upcoming webinars?

• What topics would you like to see in the future?

On-Demand Video Recording: Recordings are produced and posted. Then they are embedded onto a page on website optimized for search engines and available for people to view (and share) anytime from the comfort of their office.

MarketingSherpa Case Study – IDES 3 Post-webinar

Idea #17: Have a follow up campaign

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Email Follow-Up

• Specific emails are sent to attendees and non-attendees providing them with a link to view the webinar video and download presentation slides.

• These are sent approximately 3 hours after the event, once the on-demand video recording is available from our website.

• On-Demand Webinars are promoted in future email newsletters. Past newsletter links are changed – rather than linking to the defunct registration form, they link to the recorded webinar page.

Follow-Up After the Webinar

Idea #17: Have a follow up campaign

3 Post-webinar

#SherpaWebinar

Landing Page: from the on-demand webinar page, people can click a link to a landing page where visitors can complete a short form to download the slides. The form on the landing page is CRM cookie-based for contact information – most visitors just see the questions which include inviting them to join the webinar email alert list. If a visitor is new, additional contact data is collected one step prior to the form with questions.

Than You Page: The customized landing page links to a downloadable PDF copy of webinar slides.

Archive and Persistent Lead Generation 3 Post-webinar

Idea #17: Have a follow up campaign

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55% lead capture rate from visitors who view an archived presentation

Source: https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31672

MarketingSherpa Case Study—IDES: results 3 Post-webinar

Idea #17: Have a follow up campaign

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Reward attendees…while continuing to nurture and repurpose

3 Post-webinar

Idea #18: Attendee thank you gift

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Leverage the second-largest search engine

Idea #19: Upload replay to YouTube

Source: http://www.youtube.com/marketingsherpa

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• Blog Posts

• Photos

• Podcasts

• Videos

• Presentations

• eBooks

• News Releases

Repurpose webinar information 3 Post-webinar

Idea #20: Anywhere you have content, you can repurpose

#SherpaWebinar

Now that you have all this value in your webinars…

Idea #21: Communicate hidden value

Source: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/about-web-clinics.html

#SherpaWebinar

Now that you have all this value in your webinars…

Idea #21: Communicate hidden value

Source: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/about-web-clinics.html