An analysis of 12,000 webinars (mostly B2B) facilitated through the BrightTALK platform provides marketers with exceptional insight into webinar benchmarks:
- Webinar length. B2B webinars average 39 minutes in length, though attendees stay logged on for slightly less – 37 minutes.
- Registrant conversion. A little more than one-third of those who register – between 36% and 39% – actually attend the live session. Some are pre-disposed to wait for the recording. “In fact, 69% of on-demand views occur more than 10 days after the event,” according to MarketingProfs.
- Most popular days for a webinar. Roughly 70% of webinars take place on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, with Thursday earning a slight edge among the most popular day for B2B to play online host. About 13% of B2B webinars are hosted on Monday and 11% are hosted on Friday. Surprisingly, 3% host webinars on Saturday and 4% host webinars on Sunday.
The Value that Leaks from B2B Webinars
When webinars provide authentically helpful information rather than marketing hype, these can transform into exceptional programs that contribute to several business objectives:
- Connect with customers and prospects
- Build awareness and credibility as a leading industry resource
- Drive registrations for the nurture stream
Those are all respectable objectives, but webinars can also help B2B marketers solve their biggest content marketing challenge: producing engaging content. Some studies suggest 60-70% of content produced in B2B goes unused:
A few searches on the company website will demonstrate if this is true in your organization. It’s easy to find white papers and other assets that a team probably invested a lot of time and effort into developing – but it’s been more or less hidden from public view on a landing page buried several levels down and long forgotten.
Webinars often fall into this category too. A ton of effort goes into lining up speakers, publishing registration pages, sending out emails to drive attendance. At the end of it all, after a mad dash over 3-4 weeks, the webinar is forgotten.
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5 Ways to Get More out of B2B Webinars
B2B marketing shops can get a whole lot more value out existing investments in webinars – while also producing more engaging content that customers and prospects will find useful. Here are five ways to get more out of B2B Webinars.
1. Pre-Webinar: Improve Organic Promotion
Many companies rely on a registration page, email blasts and perhaps a bit of PPC spend to drive registration. An additional way to promote a webinar is to publish a blog post several weeks before – but here’s the key: Don’t just make it shameless plug that echoes the registration page – add a little value along the way:
- Q&A posts. Interview your speaker for a quick post with a plug to the webinar – this is especially valuable if he or she is from outside your organization. Chances are that person will share the post too and by extension invite their audience to join yours.
- Webinar roundups. If your business produces several webinars a month, chances are there’s no one single web page a customer can visit to see what’s on tap for the month (chances are good your own salespeople don’t have that asset either). Create a roundup blog posts that curates all events for the month. This is a great process because not only does it condition your team to write and publish – its conditions your community or audience to expect it from you.
- Curation roundups. Create a monthly post that curates interesting links from around the web, or of interest to your market and community. Include a plug to your webinar in that roundup. Those external links will attract attention, help build relationships, and you add value for readers rather than simply asking people to sign up for your webinar with yet another email.
2. During the Webinar: Stimulate Conversation
During your webinar have someone curate snappy sound bites on social media. These can be statistics, clever quips or other points of worth sharing as presented by the speaker. These posts have more than just driving engagement in the moment: social media updates can be easily embedded in follow-on content to provide visual assets.
If your webinar hosts a Q&A session, take good notes on the questions asked and answers given. Certainly, the dialogue makes for easy content to publish blog post or email follow up after the webinar – but it’s the questions that are so valuable. Answering customer questions is a great source to develop future ideas and guide a content strategy.
A good content marketer can get several blog post ideas out of a single webinar Q&A session. All you have to do is listen – prospects and customers are literally telling us what they want.
3. Post-Webinar Wrap Up Post
To extend the shelf-life of webinar content, have someone listen, take notes and use those to write a report on the subject matter. By “report” we mean just like an article a reporter might write, but you post it to your organization’s blog.
If you’ve sent the slides out as attendees invariably ask – this is an opportunity to upload the slides on SlideShare and embed these alongside your post. This is especially effective if you a follow-up asset to pitch – a white paper or another webinar like the 2nd one in a series.
4. Use the Recording Effectively
The webinar recording presents several additional opportunities. Some marketers like to keep the recording as gated content, which is a choice. My experience has led me to believe it’s far more effective make the content freely available on a site like YouTube several weeks later and then embed the video as another blog post.
But wait! We’ve just published 2-3 posts on the topic are we doing too much?
Not really. First, the whole world hasn’t seen your first few posts. Most visitors to your blog are probably new, versus returning – and even those that are returning probably aren’t clinging to your ever word.
Second, you should add value along the way. I can’t emphasize this enough because it’s a defining difference between lazy marketers that just slap cheap content up on the web – and those that craft content with care. Your market will notice. Find a new angle you haven’t already covered, curate related statistics or in some way present additional relevant content.
5. Develop a Contributed Article
If a particular blog post stemming from the webinar seems to be getting more traction than others – this is may present a genuine news opportunity. This is where PR professionals excel as they have an eye for news and may be able to roll the information up into a contributed article in a 3rd party publication.
It’s important to note again, you can’t simply recycle content – you have to add value – especially for a 3rd party publication. This means, for example, exploring a topic in greater depth, conducting additional interviews, or tying the concept to credible research.
Marketing Integration: Bringing it all Together
It’s important to note that every publishing opportunity presents new and fresh content for both organic and paid social media opportunities.
If this all seems overwhelming, then think about it this way: stop trying to do more marketing things – and focus on going further with what you already have. With this perspective in mind, these ideas begin to become operationalized.
Does your PR agency make your job easier or harder?
Many B2B agencies are good at content. Others are good at earned media.
It’s rare you find one good at both and that makes things harder!
We are great at both! Drop us a line to see how our services can help you.
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Photo credit: Flickr, Armstrong White, Aztec calendar stone, (CC BY 2.0)
