We all know that webinars are a great way to engage prospects and further guide leads down the sales funnel. And, with digital interfacing becoming more and more the norm for the global workforce, webinars to support sales are an essential tool to include in your tactical toolbox. But what other ways are webinars effective in a sales and marketing strategy?
Across multiple industries, webinars produced for B2B engagement are the most frequent, accounting for 61% of all hosted with B2C at 17%. SaaS and tech platforms make up a total of 29% of all webinars, and the pharmaceutical industry is the runaway leader with a 63% attendance rate. Bottom line, webinars work.
A recent report on 24.com shows an average of 55% of webinar registrants convert to attendees, with data, training, and communications webinars seeing the highest conversion rate. As the average conversion rate for webinars varies on the type of webinar being offered that same report shows communication webinars received an average conversion rate of 68.78%, whilst webinars on continuing education averaged 36.82%.
So, what different kinds of webinars are there? I think we’re all familiar with the common product or service demo with a hard sales pitch tie-in. “Check out these features, benefits, and advantages of… yada yada yada” Or, “If you sign up today, we’re prepared to give you an XYZ% discount” That format is antiquated and ineffective. Webinars, now more than ever, are used in just about any and every communication opportunity. Corporate communications, thought leadership, and employee onboarding and training webinars are now common vehicles for education and information. Even in the areas of customer service and support webinars focused on common “help” topics can reduce help tickets for your team while improving customer experience.
More conversion-driven webinars like lead generation and lead nurturing are more geared toward supporting marketing and sales goals. In fact, 58% of B2B marketers use webinars in their content marketing strategies. Typically promoted through a targeted email campaign, a well-crafted webinar can engage an audience of key decision-makers, pinpointing exactly the personas and titles a marketer is looking to communicate to.
Yes, we all want to impress and convert the decision-makers and ultimately the ones who sign the checks but what about engaging the teams that will be in the field selling or the ones writing all the messaging and copy? There’s a ton of value in developing webinar strategies or including content in your webinars to engage sales and marketing teams.
Let’s say you are a manufacturer of a line of tools for the construction and building industry. Your tools are top-of-the-line, you’ve launched an aggressive marketing campaign to promote your tools into the market, and you have quite a few retail leads that are almost ready to place an order. As part of your marketing strategy, close to the bottom of the sales funnel, you’ve incorporated a webinar to help nudge those leads down to conversion. Who is your target audience? Are you engaging the Director of Marketing and the Director of Sales? You should be and here’s why.
As marketers, sometimes the product comes second to the brand. If you have the buy-in of a marketer of your brand, the product messaging should be spot-on. That marketer will have a holistic understanding of the product's position and purpose under that brand and should be able to further establish the brand’s identity through the promotion of the product.
Are people typically brand-loyal or product-loyal? Brand loyal, of course. We tend to stick to what we know and trust, and brand loyalty holds a lot of value! It’s that brand loyalty that allows companies to venture into other areas and develop new products that we will inevitably try.
Back to our tool manufacturer scenario. Including content in your webinar specifically geared to marketing leadership will help with that important buy-in that will:
So, what kind of content should you include in your webinar to engage marketing leadership? A good marketer is obsessed with data. All tactical and budgetary decisions are metrics-driven and analytics is the fuel that powers that vehicle. Come with numbers! Show data on an increase in sales as a result of a killer campaign. Show an increase in website visits and social followers. If starting from scratch, include a simple framework or map of social media, website, and other tactical strategies to be developed.
How does it work? How do people react to it? How do I sell it? Maybe a gross generalization but those are the super high-level questions that will engage a sales-oriented persona. Messaging around how a product works and how it solves a user’s problem is what sales will drill down to find out. If those factors are a core part of your product messaging, you’re a step ahead. By doing this, you’re giving your sales team the bandwidth to build rapport and nurture relationships with their prospects and clients.
B2B sales are all about relationship building and nurturing. A great sales rep is a partner to their clients and has a line-of-sight into what is coming down their pipeline. They’re proactive and support their clients’ departmental and corporate goals.
Back to our manufacturer scenario. Including content in your webinar specifically geared to sales leadership will help with that important sales buy-in that will:
So, what kind of content should you include in your webinar to engage sales leadership? Give the sales leadership your 2-minute elevator pitch. What does this product do and how does it solve customer pain points? Speaking of, include customer product feedback including pain points, an overview of testimonials, and reference use cases. Show that your business has a defined structure by walking through an organization chart and pointing out your sales and fulfillment departments. Lastly, include a pricing breakdown of wholesale and retail and how sales can formulate and customize deals that best fit their clients.
There is a lot to think about when incorporating webinars into your marketing and sales strategies. The ultimate goal is to provide specific valuable information to very targeted personas. In doing that, keeping your presentation conscious, focused, and with a good flow of information is difficult. It really takes an acute understanding of targeted content and persona profile development. That is where LAIRE comes in.
We are experts in content marketing, specifically Account Based Marketing or Key Account Marketing. We are a group of inbound marketing and operational marketing experts who can not only help incorporate webinars into your marketing mix but can also help build the assets and workflows to promote the webinars and all other tactics in your campaigns.
Let’s schedule a FREE 20-minute consultation to see how LAIRE can help you reach your marketing and sales goals.