Why Webinar Marketing Requires Great Planning

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This post was originally published on which-50.com.  

Webinars are an extremely powerful marketing tool, according to Alison Jack, Marketing Campaign Coordinator at Employsure. She warns that they take time and effort to organise — but the rewards are worth it.

She says, “Planning is key. A lack of planning and structure can lead to ad hoc webinars thrown together at the last minute. A proper strategy maps out exactly how your webinars will contribute to your overall marketing activity.

She also believes there has to be engaging content. “Before we had a strategy in place, it was common to reuse presentations from live seminars to try to replicate the same success.

“However, keep in mind an online audience often has a shorter attention span and can easily be distracted. Webinar content therefore needs to be highly engaging with a range of video content, clean slides, polls, and a Q&A to keep the audience engaged and switched on.”

Creating Consistent Branded User Experience

Jack says that when various teams are creating webinars, it can be hard to keep a consistent standard approach.

“For example, our teams were using different types of landing pages and registration forms that weren’t consistent.

“To resolve this, we created new landing page templates, EDM templates, PPT templates and webinar background for the teams to use.”

To streamline some of their processes, they updated their CRM with the ON24 attendee list, so it is updated every four to 24 hours.

Before they were manually updating the CRM with the list. There was also two- to three-day waiting period before receiving the attendee list.

She says, “We also can sort the leads by engagement score, so we know the sales team are reaching out to the hottest leads first. Giving the sales team access to the questions asked during the Q&A had a huge impact on the quality of the conversation with the leads.

“Pre-recording the webinar and creating a Simu live or On-demand event has been a huge time saver. The production schedule is carefully planned, and we do not have worry about nervous presenters or technical issues.”

Improving Knowledge Of Webinars

Improving the sales team’s knowledge of webinars is important, as Jack argues webinar leads require a different approach to inbound leads or leads that attend physical events.

She says Employsure conducted an internal analysis of its webinar follow-up strategy and discovered the first 24 to 48 hours after the webinar is a crucial time to begin to nurture attendees and move them down the sales funnel.

“This timeframe is your chance to continue the dialogue with your audience, including reaching out to the no-shows, which we also discovered converted better between 48 to 72 hours following the webinar.

“We worked with key stakeholders in the sales department to set up a dedicated team of sales people to target these webinar leads. To arm the dedicated sales team, we also created a best practice guide with useful info on the types of questions the sales team should ask on the call,” she says.

Hard Work Pays Off

Earlier this year Employsure conducted a webinar series called Back to Basics — a three-part series helping small business owners start the new year right.

Jack says this webinar series was a huge success, with more than 520 registrations, 228 attendees, 68 sales meetings booked, and sales of $236,828 from three webinars.

She says, “For marketers, this is where all your hard work in planning and hosting a webinar pays off. You now have a wealth of data and can strategically package it for a smooth handoff to your sales team.

“The success was the result of an effective strategy, engaging content and a confident team of sales people that knew exactly how to approach these leads.”