12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part II - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #107
In the first half of the B2B Lead blog series on 12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+, I shared 6 tips for getting the most out of your webinar. I recommended that you start by getting into the right mindset. It is important to realize that webinars are just another part of “the conversation” you are having with your customers and the community as a whole. Think about using them as a way to keep the relationship alive, build a community of followers, to spark group discussions or change the way people think about an issue.
In today’s post covering tips 7-12, I’m going way out on a limb to suggest some other cutting-edge practices that a new generation of B2B marketers are using.
7. Turn your webinar into a twebinar –a webinar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter. Twitter is a great way to spread the word before the day of the webinar, and an even better way to facilitate Q&A or capture suggestions during and afterward.
8. Don’t wait to reach out and engage with registered attendees. Contact those who registered early to offer more information and continue the conversation. Some ideas for this include sharing a white paper on a relevant topic, distributing event materials or research findings. Bulldog Solutions claims that this will enable you to engage with 10 % of the registrants before the webinar takes place.
9. Pick one core slide that is most intriguing or highlights your core content. Draft a few soundbites around the slide and excerpt the content for a Podcast. Embed the slide image and podcast in a press release or on your community site. Use this to market the archived or “on-demand” version of the webinar.
10. Don’t forget to promote your webinar series via all of the programs you are normally producing including: trade shows, press releases, PPC search engine ads, web pages including your home page, community, blog and customer support pages.
11. Continue the conversation on your blog by using it for Q&A. If your material is good, the Q&A segment can produce lots of great content. Take the conversation to your Community area to show prospects all of the materials they can find there. This will help you keep a loyal audience.
12. It’s officially the “Remix Era,” so take the materials you developed for the webinar, remix them and post where appropriate. Issue a press release with highlights embedded. Transcribe and post the content as a contributed article on Hub pages or Scribd. Syndicate the archived event on sites like On24.
I’m really interested to hear what you have found to be successful on the Webinar marketing front. Is a twebinar really effective? Do attendees really convert to blog readers? Can you effectively engage with registrants before they attend the Webinar? Chime in with your thoughts.
2 Responses to “12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part II - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #107”
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June 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Great tips and definitely all ones we’d recommend here at Bulldog Solutions. To answer your very last question…Yes! We often engage with registrants before a live Webinar with a simple e-mail soliciting their input and questions. Up to 20% of registrants reply to this e-mail…in some cases I’ve seen even more than 20%. This not only opens a dialog with specific registrants about thier pain points and questions, but provides invaluable feedback for the speakers, who can use the questions to tweak their own content and match it up to what the audience needs. We talk a lot about “conversation” and “two way” communication” and “user-generated content.” This is a perfect example of a simple way to incorporate all of that.
June 20th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Clarifying the “claim” in point number 8. That is based on real data, and does assume that these pre-event communications are done appropriately. And, it really addresses one of the downsides of live webinars as opposed to on-demand lead generators such as white papers or on-demand webinars. When a lead registers for a webinar, he/she is expressing interest *right now*. With a live webinar, though, you’re then making himwait until *you* are ready to share the information (there are many benefits to live webinars, but this is one downside). Two ways to engage the lead that is more based on his timeline/interest rather than the date you’ve chosen to deliver the information: 1) Ask for input regarding the webinar — “Hey, you registered for this; we’d love to hear about your specific interests prior to the webinar, as that’s good information for the presenter to have;” this is a great way to gather information in the lead’s terms as to what their interests are (*great* information for 1:1 follow-up) *and* increases the likelihood that the lead will actually attend…because you asked for his input; 2) Providing pre-webinar relevant information that *is* on-demand; don’t use the pre-event communication to drive registration to additional live events — you haven’t demonstrated that you can deliver value yet — but provide white papers, articles, or other related resources that give the lead something *now* that will be more useful while he’s waiting for you to actually deliver the live webinar.