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The Power User’s Guide To Successful WebinarsTips, tactics and techniques from the sharpest minds in BtoB marketing

The Power User’s Guide To Successful Webinars 2

Interactive online webinars have emerged as the gold standard in BtoB marketing. Consistently ranking among the most reliable methods for BtoB engagement and lead generation, the format’s flexibility, functionality and consistently strong track record of roI have made it a preferred media for most marketers.

Illustrating this trend, the 2010 Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study conducted by The Lenskold Group and eMarketer, found 52% of respondents felt webinars are the most effective way to generate high value leads that are more likely to convert to sales. In that study, webinars beat out other vehicles in several measures.

However, because webinars are still a relatively new medium, some companies still struggle to find the right formula for successful webinars. To help develop a blueprint for webinar success, DemandGen Report interviewed a group of “power users,” a mix of executives with extensive experience in hosting webinars, as well as a track record for driving a steady stream of registrants, attendees and ultimately engaged viewers.

DemandGen Report collected insights to address core areas including:

• Creating compelling webinar content;

• delivering that content in an optimal fashion;

• Experimenting with new short-form formats;

• Integrating social media into webinar strategies,

• Developing successful pre- and post-event campaigns that support demand generation and engagement goals.

This ebook highlights webinar tips, tactics and techniques distilled from some of the sharpest minds in BtoB marketing. Insights from webinar masters focus on maximizing registration, optimizing the attendee experience and employing specifically timed actions that yield better prospects and more marketing qualified leads.


Creating Compelling Webinar Content

From a technology standpoint, webinar platforms are fairly mature. However, for many marketers the art (and science) of producing quality content is a dilemma that renews itself with each webinar project. A prime cause is insufficient planning in the pre-content phase. Webinar specialists agree that marketing objectives, profiling audience composition and promotional tactics are top pre-content considerations.

“Before you do any content development, determine what you’re trying to achieve with the webinar,” said Matt West, Senior Director of Marketing for marketing automation provider, Genius.com. “Start with your audience. Companies get so caught up in telling their story they forget that the audience should be the focus. Make sure that what you’re delivering is of value. Nobody wants to sit through your one-hour infomercial.”

As audience needs take shape, marketing objectives must be defined to meet those needs. For example, to drive lead volume, pair name-brand presenters with hot topics or notable research. “This is where titles like ‘5 Things Every Manager Should Know About…’ are most effective,” West said. “This kind of webinar is good for finding people that are ‘above the sales funnel.’ They’ll need to be nurtured longer before becoming sales-ready.”

Conversely, webinars targeting prospects further along in their decision-making process work best when topics match pain points with solutions. For example, a webinar titled “3 Content Pieces That Double Web Site Leads” is likely to draw attendees with very specific marketing needs.

Whether the webinar objective is broad or narrow, speaker selection is an important decision. Experts agree that industry ‘rock-star’ presenters are a good investment, but are not a prerequisite for success. “It’s always best when the presenter is seen as a subject matter expert,” said David Lewis, CEO of automation and lead management consultancy DemandGen International.

“Let’s say you’re a software company and you want to showcase a new release,” Lewis said. “It’s certainly appropriate to use the actual product manager as the subject matter expert. If the audience perceives that the presenter is not in sales – or marketing for that matter – you’re going to get more audience interest based on that person’s credibility.”

“Start with your audience. Companies get so caught up in telling their story they

forget that the audience should be the focus. Make

sure that what you’re delivering is of value.”

Matt West, Senior Director of Marketing, Genius.com


Since most webinars feature a presenter addressing accompanying slides, industry experts also stress that the visual content must be compelling. Addressing PowerPoint issues, text-heavy pages, font choices, evocative visuals, content/presenter choreography and other inherent hurdles are essential checkpoints for all presenters.

Webinar Content and Title Checklist:

• Use high-level thought leadership content to attract and engage a broad audience. Recognized industry experts, hot topics and exclusive research tend to work best at this level.

• Titles for thought leadership webinars should be strategic (i.e., “Sales and Marketing Alignment: New Infrastructure Concepts”).

• After big-picture webinar attendees identify with certain pain points, more tactical “how to” content gets into specifics. At this level, accentuate expertise by using credible subject matter experts rather than ‘rock star” presenters.

• Titles for how-to webinars should address specialized prospect needs (i.e., “4 Simple Steps for Optimal Lead Scoring”).

• Offers and incentives for either webinar type should be valuable to attendees and hand-raisers. Free white papers that complement webinar topics are useful and valuable; iPods and gift cards are nice-to-haves, but don’t add to perceived expertise.


Optimizing The Attendee Experience

Audiences share common attributes whether they are seeing a concert, attending a trade show or joining an online presentation. The ability to hold audience attention using continuous engagement often decides the fate of reality TV shows and webinars alike. When used correctly, core webinar functionality like polling, chat, hand raising and Q&A help insure desired outcomes.

“As people log on before a webinar starts it’s a good idea to send out audience-wide chats like ‘welcome to the webinar,’ ‘we’ll begin in five minutes’ and ‘here’s the Twitter hashtag for this discussion,’” said Veronica Neyland, Marketing Specialist for Citrix Online, whose GoToWebinar platform has been a pacesetter in the online presentation space.

“Another really great way to use chat is to have the moderator tell attendees something like, ‘we have a speaker dialing in from Boston and another from Santa Barbara — please type into the chat pane where you’re calling from,’” Neyland noted. “We see a huge influx of replies from little things like that.”

The Q&A pane is arguably the most-used webinar feature. Using the first name of the person asking a question is a simple Q&A tip that takes engagement up a notch. It seems obvious, but can be overlooked in live webcasts.

Q&A functionality can also gauge information recall in novel ways. Neyland offered this example: “Near the end of a webinar we’ll ask a question such as, ‘Earlier in this presentation we identified the biggest pain point of webinar creation.’ The first person to answer that question correctly gets a free copy of the hottest new marketing book.” The idea of engagement by incentive is appealing to viewers, and yields useful data on content retention.

Involving the audience through polls has also proven a successful strategy to keep an attendee engaged. “Webinar viewers tend to get sidetracked by their email and other distractions,” Lewis noted. “Having polls continually throughout the presentation keeps them focused.”

The prevailing wisdom is that polls should add value on top of what’s being presented. “It’s okay to do some up front, like asking ‘What kind of marketing automation system do you use’ and then showing those results to attendees so they can benchmark themselves within the group,”

“As people log on before a webinar starts it’s a good

idea to send out audience-wide chats like ‘welcome

to the webinar,’ ‘we’ll begin in five minutes’ and ‘here’s the Twitter hashtag for this

discussion.”

Veronica Neyland, Marketing Specialist, Citrix Online


Lewis said. But he warned against self-serving polls that seek to qualify attendees for sponsors without yielding any insights for attendees.

Another best practice for survey presentations is to poll attendees with the same question that’s being shown on-screen. Audience results are displayed alongside the main study. This not only engages; it generates instant quantitative data that’s enlightening for attendees and sponsors.

Real-time screen sharing between presenters is another feature that can lessen monotony during a presentation. With real-time screen sharing, the presenter can use and show any application on the presenter’s computer—from Internet web browsers to video players and photo programs. A good presenter might choose to momentarily exit PowerPoint and navigate to a web site or show a video to enhance and energize the point they are making in the presentation. Using screen sharing technology to show something other than presentation slides is a creative way to liven the presentation content and format and reduce presentation fatigue.

When using audience interaction tools, the ability to measure how they are performing is useful. GoToWebinar’s Attentiveness Meter is a dashboard-style feature that measures participation based on Chat, Q&A and other attendee behavior. It is a data visualization tool that helps moderators prevent attention decay in real-time by taking actions that refocus viewers.

Using screen sharing technology to show something other than presentation slides is a creative way to liven the presentation content and format and reduce presentation fatigue.


Experimenting With Short-Form Webinars

In his recent webinar, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, author, speaker and former Apple executive, Guy Kawasaki, offered this simple formula for webinars: “10 slides; 20 minutes; 30 point font.” Kawasaki’s presentation actually totaled 62 slides, but the notion that ‘less is more’ was clear. There are new developments in webinar marketing that are embracing such ideals, starting with duration.

The use of 30-minute and even 15-minute webinars has been on the rise. These short-form presentations are gaining favor as marketers confront the twin issues of content overload and attention scarcity.

“The 30-minute webinar is great for very focused topics — it’s 20 minutes of content, and 10 minutes of Q&A,” said Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing for inbound marketing solution provider, HubSpot. “Too many companies try for 60-minute webinars when they don’t have enough of the right content. And sometimes the speakers [in longer webinars] are not conscious enough of the audience’s time.”

Lewis likened short-form webinars to a time-tested TV model. “If you think about the actual content of a sitcom – 22 minutes – it reminds you that the more you rehearse and refine your presentation, the more worthwhile content you can pack into shorter webinars,” Lewis said.

Lewis recommends 15-minute webinars with tight storyboarding for clinics on “spot topics” that people can view at the start of the day, or while eating lunch. “You’d use something very short like that to get a higher response rate.” DemandGen International is testing a prerecorded 12-minute format, which extends to 22 minutes when done with a live presenter.

“The 30-minute webinar is great for very focused topics — it’s 20 minutes of content,

and 10 minutes of Q&A.”

Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing, Hubspot


Building Effective Promotional Campaigns

email remains the primary promotional tool for webinar enrollment. As a marketing platform, webinars have matured while best practices for driving registration have emerged.

“Multichannel promotion is a smart strategy, but email is the best tactic for webinar invitations if you want to reach the most relevant audiences at scale,” said Katie Martell, Director of Buzz for NetProspex, a provider of verified crowd-sourced prospect data. “Just by regularly sending webinar invitations to targeted audiences, your brand will be perceived as a helpful, valuable partner that’s ready to solve pain points.”

Webinar Promotional Checklist:

Use a compelling subject line (avoid too much marketing speak);

Make a clear “what’s in it for me” statement with the invite; and

Develop an email template that has large headlines, easy to find registration links, and renders well on mobile devices.

With today’s marketing ecosystem supporting a vast number of webinars each day, companies are getting more creative during initial outreach.

One expert noted a unique strategy for the invite phase of a webinar. “One component we added was an ‘include your ideas or questions’ input option,” said Sally Lowery, Director of Acquisition and Retention at email service provider iContact. “We invited registrants to send in a few relevant points or case study items two weeks prior to the webcast.” Lowery said it turned out to be the largest webinar she has done to date, drawing more than 2,000 registrants.

Many marketers believe that intriguing subject lines compel the curious to click. “Phrases like ‘You’re Invited’ can pull very well,” Lewis said. “It’s human nature to like being invited to things. If an intriguing e-vite comes from a person – not a company – I’m going to open it to see what I’m invited to. ‘Please join us,’ ‘We’d like you to attend’ and ‘This might interest you’ are all variations on this simple tactic.”

“Multichannel promotion is a smart strategy, but email

is the best tactic for webinar invitations if you want to reach the most relevant

audiences at scale.”

Katie Martell, Director of Buzz, NetProspex


As for the technical formatting of email invites, some marketers choose to use the customizable templates provided by the webinar solution. Others prefer text-only email invites for their casual style and to-the-point appeal. The general guideline is to use the format most likely to resonate with a particular target audience.

Research from Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark showed 67% of people do not display images by default in their email system, so HTML emails may not render effectively. Industry experts recommend marketers do A/B split testing with both HTML and text email invites to see which performs better with their audience.

The growth of mobile is also presenting new opportunities and challenges for marketers. According to the May 2011 Responsys study, Email on The Move: The Future of Mobile Messaging, there has been an 81% growth in mobile email viewership in six months between October 2010 and March 2011. Email viewership on the iPad alone has increased 15% during that period. Because it’s increasingly likely that recipients read messages on an iPhone, Blackberry, or other mobile devices, marketers should consider that images and other HTML features won’t render correctly in these platforms.

According to the May 2011 Responsys study, Email on The Move: The Future of Mobile Messaging, there has been an 81% growth in mobile email viewership

in six months between October 2010 and March

2011.


Making Webinars Social

Increasingly, marketers are finding that social media adds a new and dynamic element to webinars. “Social media has become a major avenue to promote webinars,” Neyland noted. “It doesn’t bring in the most registrations, but social is definitely the fastest-growing channel for webinar promotions.”

The use of social media in webinars typically begins with the email invite and promotion. Emails often include “share it” links for Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. Another social tactic is to create a hashtag unique to the event, which is then promoted via social channels. During the live event that hashtag is posted again. “I’ll have several screens open so that I’m posting interesting things the speaker just said, while following the postings of others under that hashtag,” Neyland said.

Social Media Integration Checklist:

Including social sharing buttons on email invitations;

Customizing hashtags to boost webinars timed to coincide with major industry events (i.e., #dforce for Dreamforce);

Pulling in additional attendees during the webinar with live tweeting; and

Encouraging attendees to use your hashtag to share ideas from the live webinar, and have those tweets include a link to the webinar.

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Extending The Life Of Webinar Content

Opinions vary regarding live versus on-demand (recorded) webinars. Some feel that topic relevance diminishes sharply after the live event, making a case for content freshness and frequency. Other marketers strongly believe in a webinar afterlife in the form of corporate website archives and open Internet repositories like Slideshare.com.

“The main reason people participate in live webinars is because the topic is hot or urgent,” Lewis said. “But if you’ve constructed a webinar well, it should have a shelf life beyond the live event.”

If webinar content is valuable enough to those who miss a live event, Lewis said goals can be met (and even exceeded) with the on-demand option. In fact, one facet of on-demand distribution is very appealing from a data perspective. “Those who download a recorded webinar are far more likely to provide a real email address because that’s the only way they’re going to receive the file,” Lewis said. This makes sense, given that a higher incidence of bogus contact information is associated with live webinar registrations.

“The main reason people participate in live webinars is because the topic is hot

or urgent. But if you’ve constructed a webinar well,

it should have a shelf life beyond the live event.”

David Lewis, Ceo of DemandGen International


Registration Vs. Attendance: Managing the Variables

Similar to tradeshows, conferences and virtual events, webinar sponsors must reconcile registrations with actual attendance. Online presentation pros generally concur that attendance in the 35% to 50% range of registration is acceptable. Many marketers have developed equations to predict the registration-to-attendance gap. These usually derive from past performance, plus estimations of brand and content appeal.

“Webinar registration is affected by email deliverability, open rate, and conversions on the registration landing page,” Martell said.

Using actual campaign stats to illustrate her point, Martell pointed to the following case for tactical audience targeting.

Objective: Register 650 prospects using a well-defined contact list.

“Usually half of registrants attend the live event, with an additional 10% watching the recorded broadcast when it’s made available,” Martell said. “In this particular scenario we had more than 420 live attendees [more than 50% of goal], and more than 15% watched the on-demand version.”

Campaign

• 3 email invitations sent to a list of 60,000 prospects

• email invites began three weeks prior to event, ending one day before the event (does not include event reminder emails)

Results

• 89% deliverability = 54,000 emails delivered (6% hard bounce, 5% soft bounce)

• 25% open rate = 13,500 emails opened (average across three emails)

• 15% click-through to registration page = 2,025 visits

• 32% conversion = 648 targets complete and submit registration form

• 520 total webinar views


Following Up: Converting Webinar Attendees To Customers

The complexities of webinar preparation, content creation and presentation are more complex than many other forms of marketing, because webinars often carry higher expectations from the sales team regarding number of leads generated. Though logical, those expectations can fail when follow-up strategy is inadequate.

The good news for marketers, however, is the interactive functionality of webinars helps to qualify and prioritize which attendees are the best prospects. Converting attendees to qualified leads should begin with looking at which attendees were most engaged during the live session (Chatting, hand-raising, Q&A participation, etc), and then extend to post-event follow-up using incentives and nurturing emails.

“You have to start with a clear objective before you can begin classifying whether we’re generating leads or looking for up-sell/cross-sell opportunities to an installed base,” Lewis said. “Too few marketers give enough thought beforehand about what kind of respondents they’re going to get from specific webinars, and what to do with those respondents afterwards.”

“If you don’t currently have a process for nurturing leads, develop webinar topics on the assumption that attendees are in the market to buy what

you sell,” noted West. “If you do have a lead nurturing solution, a simple Thank you or Sorry we missed you email just isn’t enough. You need to keep fine-tuning messages to get closer to a sales discussion. Adjusting messaging based on how prospects respond to each successive post-event communications is a recognized and effective nurturing tactic.

Post-Event Qualification Lead Checklist

Use registration and webinar poll questions to score/prioritize leads;

Conduct a post-webinar survey, gathering questions and attendee information for lead qualification;

Immediately follow up with attendees who asked questions, as these prospects exhibited interest in your product/solution; and

After the webinar send a follow-up to attendees with a special offer and a link to download the slides. Make sure this email comes from a salesperson that can field any immediate inquiries.


Conclusion

The value of webinars to educate, engage and generate leads has been well established. The barriers to hosting effective webinars tend to be in the content, promotion and follow-up phases. Setting objectives; developing the right content; and doing thorough post-event attendee/lead qualification can help organizations address these challenges. The following checklist notes primary considerations to help marketers create better webinars:

Webinar content should be educational, laced with ‘big picture’ ideas and strategic titles to fill the top of the sales funnel;

Once prospects are engaged, webinars should drill down on pain points with tactical information and useful how-to examples;

Webinar functions like Chat, Polling and Q&A should be used to galvanize audiences, provide insights in real-time (for sponsors and attendees) and sustain a dialogue with prime prospects;

Not all webinars need to be an hour long. Experiment with 30-minute and other formats, depending on content depth;

Social media is increasingly useful in webinar promotion, engagement, and to drive consumption after the live event; and

Marketers should offer both live webinars and recorded “on-demand” versions, as each appeals to different prospect types.


About GoToWebinar®Webinars Made Easy®

GoToWebinar is an easy-to-use do-it-yourself webinar tool designed to increase market reach by enabling presenters to connect with up to 1,000 attendees online. With GoToWebinar, you can reduce travel costs, generate more qualified leads at a lower cost and enhance communication with customers, prospects and employees. All You Can Reach® – for one low monthly flat fee.

About DemandGen Report

DemandGen Report is a targeted e-media publication spotlighting the strategies and solutions that help companies better align their sales and marketing organizations, and ultimately, drive growth. A key component of our coverage focuses on the sales and marketing automation tools that enable companies to better measure and manage their multi-channel demand generation efforts.

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