When thinking about content and marketing strategies, B2B digital marketers know webinars must play a critical role. After all, there are very few methods marketers can deploy to capture audiences for nearly an hour at scale. Additionally, the first-party data and insights marketers get out of webinars is invaluable.
But too many marketers approach webinars with a “one-and-done” strategy. The idea, that webinars can only be run as a live event before being causally tossed aside for the next campaign or major asset, is a mistake.
Webinars are exceptionally powerful tools when paired with an on-demand strategy. And on-demand strategies can range from simply offering a previously-live event on-demand to using AI to create a range of content like blogs and e-books and more.
In fact, with the right on-demand webinar strategy in place, you can transform a digital event into a self-guided buying journey that prospects look forward to interacting with and provides your organization with the insights it needs to propel pipeline forward.
Let’s take a look at how.
Why On-demand Webinar Strategies Are Important for Marketers
An on-demand version of a live webinar can be watched anytime, and, by nature, empowers viewers to consume webinars and their content on their schedule. Viewers can also access an on-demand webinar from places outside their (home)office. But beyond ease of viewing, on-demand webinars offer marketers the opportunity to create more meaningful digital interactions.
That’s because webinars, whether live or on-demand, provide marketers with first-party data — information and behavior a registrant directly shares with an organization. With this information, marketers can transform first-party data into first-party engagement through personalization.
Why Webinars Accelerate The Buying Journey
With the ability to personalize at scale, marketers can encourage visitors to self-guide themselves through the buying journey and accelerate pipeline.
Let’s say a visitor watches and interacts with an on-demand webinar found in the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform’s Content Hub capability. During the webinar, they download resources, respond to polls and click on CTAs embedded throughout the event.
With that information in hand, an organization can proceed to personalize a variety of digital experiences for that visitor. Content Hubs show content relevant to their interests. Webinars automatically display CTAs crafted for their buying stage. Specialized landing pages are built personalized for them and their company — and is filled with content relevant to different members of a buying committee.
Throughout the entire process, more first-party data is collected, earning an organization more insights and driving opportunities for further personalization. And all of this can take place through on-demand experiences.
The Shift to On-Demand Buying
On-demand content consumption has steadily grown over the years. In fact, research produced by McKinsey in 2024 shows that two-thirds of B2B decision makers prefer remote interactions and to digital self-service. And the demand for that remote self-service shows up in the data, as well. According to our annual ON24 Benchmark Report, roughly 45% of all webinar attendees do so on-demand. Not only that, but on-demand webinars tend to see a 69% uplift in its number of overall viewers.
How Marketers Can Encourage On-Demand Engagement
So on-demand webinars can fuel first-party engagement and personalization. But how can you get the most engagement out of your interactions? Here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Communicate on-demand availability: At the start of a live webinar, it should be made clear to viewers that an on-demand version is easily accessible and contains all of the same features as a live webinar.
- Promote interactivity and engagement: Seize the on-demand webinar as an active opportunity and provide polls, surveys, and recommended content.
- Chapterize your content: On-demand attendees like to get to the point. So, they tend to skip around to the parts of an on-demand webinar that apply most to them. Make it easy for readers to navigate to different sections within the webinar by chapterizing recordings.
- Personalize the next step: What’s the next step for your on-demand audience? With ON24, you can create personalized CTAs — based on past behavior and audience segments — that encourage visitors to continue engaging with your brand and share valuable first-party insights.
Don’t Forget On-Demand Interactivity and Engagement
Just because an event is on-demand doesn’t mean a viewer’s questions will be forgotten and go unanswered. Interactive features that help foster audience interaction, such as configuring Q&A, chapters, polls and CTAs allow for the on-demand viewer to feel heard.
Why You Should Boost On-demand Engagement with AI Content
Like live webinars, on-demand content — and content consumption — doesn’t exist in a vacuum. One visitor may just want to see the key moments of a webinar while another may want an in-depth e-book or relive the entire experience.
It’s up to digital marketers to meet these audiences where they’re at and provide them with the resources they need. But doing so is made more complicated by the sheer scale of matching content availability with buyer behavior. AI-generated content can make this task much easier.
For example, the ON24 Platform uses its proprietary AI-powered Analytics and Content Engine (ACE) to generate content. From one webinar, you can quickly create, clip and draft:
- Webinar summaries
- Transcripts
- Blog posts
- E-books
- Video snippets
- And more
And, with segmentation, you can adjust and pair the content generated from one webinar to drive further engagement with a specific audience. Put another way: instead of generating content for a specific stage of the marketing funnel, you can generate content for each stage of the funnel and give your audience the tools they need to navigate between them.
Why On-Demand Engagement Compounds Over Time
So we’ve established that there’s a lot of content life after a live webinar. But that content doesn’t just sit there — it engages your audience and that engagement compounds over time.
For example, as a prospect becomes a customer, the content they consume can move from blogs, to a webinar series, to a content hub built personalized to them, their industry or use case. And, through each interaction, you learn more about that account, what engages them and what you need to do to retain them as a customer.
An example of one compounding tactic could be to create a personalized content hub that evolves with an account. Content like PDFs, e-books, product releases and blog articles can be automatically added and removed from the hub as the account progresses from prospect to customer to renewal.
Sales Team Integration
On-demand viewers are somewhere, out there, watching from the comfort of their own time and place. Sound like a moving target? Not quite. The ON24 platform combines powerful integrations with CRM platforms to help build a relationship between on-demand viewers and sales teams.
Each and every time an on-demand interaction occurs, your sales team gets notified. This means that follow-ups are easier to keep track of, and potential conversions are cultivated, not ignored.
Why On-Demand Should be Always On
On-demand content is a critical part of any marketing strategy. It can evolve with an account or industry. With the right on-demand strategy, you can establish trust, build relationships and propel your pipeline forward.
To learn more about how ON24 can help you in this journey, click here.
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