Attend the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and Get a Free Report on B2B Lead Gen and Web 2.0 Media - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #95
So, I’ve been asked to speak at the upcoming MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum. The topic – “Webinars in a Web 2.0 World.” At first, I thought: Wow, how do you make Webinars interesting to a marketing audience today with social media and viral marketing all the rage?
I mean, there hasn’t been much innovation happening with Webinars. They seem to be moderately effective at driving revenue but actual attendance rates have been dropping overall with the emergence of more immediate forms of education such as Video tutorials and podcasts. However, they are more effective, in my experience, than simply relying on a Podcast or a pre-recorded tutorial. Not actually sure why that would be the case?
And, then I thought about how we were using Webinars as a community building tool at NetQoS. Perhaps the attendees haven’t thought about webinars as a community building opportunity? In my experience, it seems that most Marketers are using a “hit and run” approach to Webinars. They pour tons of money into recruiting an audience and paying Webex to broadcast the event. Then, they grumble when only 40% of the registrants actually show up. And, finally, they turn over the attendee list to Sales for followup.
What a waste! If you are going to pour so much time and effort into attracting an audience of like-minds to attend your event, why not funnel those potential prospects into a Community where they can find educational content in a variety of formats and begin to build a relationship with them? That’s the only real way to make Webinars pay off in the long run.
I’ll be sharing the techniques we used at NetQoS to do just that at the MarketingProfs conference. The event will also focus on topics like B2B lead generation, conversion, retention, ROI and measurement, new technologies, integrated marketing - and much more. If that interests you, I recommend you sign up to attend. They are even throwing in a new research report on “BtoB Sales Lead Generation: Integration of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 Media. Register and it is yours for free.
See ya in Boston in June.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:06 am
I wanted to provide my perspective based on our work with customers here at ON24 (note: we provide webcasting technology that can be used for webinars). Regarding attendance, my company did a report last year that looked at webinar attendance across our webcasting platform. The findings determined that attendance levels did NOT decline but remained even. Other factors may impact attendance - promotional efforts, topic, speaker, timing, etc.
I think that there is also an increase in using webinars format for corporate communications and training (CPE and CME). You raise a good point about how to further nurture prospects through educational content, with webinars being one type. Here are some additional thoughts as you prep for your panel:
1) Lead scoring: This will further enable an organization to priortize these leads - who can be followed up with sales immediately and who should be funneled to your lead nurturing efforts.
2) On-Demand: As you mentioned, there is a lot of money and effort poured into driving audiences for the live event. Another component is maximizing the on-demand content. Group the content into a community, include in subsequent customer newsletter or posting the link elsewhere online are just some ways to further extend the shelf-life. For example, my company started Insight24 (www.Insight24.com) as a way to post archived B2B webcasts, videos and podcasts. You never know where your next sales lead will come from.
3) Rise of Virtual Events: When you think about it, the rise of virtual shows/tradeshows provides additional opportunity for \
May 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am
I read you post with interest, Pam. Good luck at the Marketing Profs event, I am sure you will once again be a HUGE hit. The thing that has got me wondering of late is the role of new media in B2B lead generation. My current thought is that webinars will become legacy and be replaced by new media such as YouTube for broadcast communication. What do you think about adding more measurement and live Q&A added around a YouTube video to measure and score the audience - as in adding Nielson-like measurement for real-time feedback guiding the audience to relevant targeted messages OnDemand?
May 6th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
You know it is interesting. I suspect there will be many changes in the broadcast mechanism for Webinars as Marketers simply don’t want to spend upwards of $4,000 to 6,000 just to broadcast their event. However, I’m not sure what that change will be. For some odd reason, in my experience the live events always pull greater attendance than pre-recorded events. Of course, you always want to archive the events for those who couldn’t make it. But just offering up a pre-recorded event does not create the sense of urgency to drive large registrations. It’s also important to remember the average viewing time of the YouTube viewer - 30 seconds. I believe some changes will have to take place to drive this trend. I haven’t seen anyone who has cracked the code yet although I’m learning about others like BrainShark and the ON24 model. I think metrics would certainly be good and scoring/targeting based on behavior is certainly an excellent idea. The next few years will bring many new capabilities in this area. Are you aware of any companies capitalizing on this? At NetQoS, we actually used our blog to field live Q&A after the Webinar. Was a great tool to lure the interested attendees into a “conversation” on the blog.