Webinars are easy, right?? Especially for B2B marketers. You just need compelling slides about your products and services, a speaker who sounds like she’s awake, and some questions you wrote yourselves in case the audience doesn’t have any.
Wrong.
If the above sounds like your company’s webinar strategy, it’s time you learned about what webinars look like in 2019. If you’re already doing more than the above, the chances are there’s more you can be doing still. And if you’re doing everything possible, maybe you should be presenting our upcoming webinar — in partnership with?WorkCast. But in fact, I have the honor of doing that, assisted by Marjorie Romeyn-Sanabria, and we’re intent on adding value to your webinars, including discussing how they can form part of a multi-channel marketing strategy.
Let’s not give away the whole stash here, because we hope you’ll join us on September 19, at 1pmET (this is where you can register). But we’ll certainly be talking about:
1. Audience engagement?
- It’s not just the Q&A at the end
- Polling is easy
- So are group chats on many platforms
- And there’s no reason the Q&A needs to be at the end. Create easy, open, flowing engagement by talking through questions as they arise. (That’s what we did here.)
- You can also reach out to registrants prior to the webinar to find out what questions they’re hoping to get answered
2. Ditch the slide deck?
- Not necessarily; after all, it can be a concise vehicle for conveying information, including after the webinar when you share it with your audience (and with registrants who failed to attend)
- But remember, the audience is there to be engaged, not read the slides along with you
- Also, think of the role video can play — in place of slides, or even alongside them.
3. Exploit the long tail
- A webinar may not be forever, but its value doesn’t end when the live event is over. It’s a multi-channel gem
- Serve up hashtags and encourage the audience to share their thoughts on social media
- Make it available on demand on your website, of course, but also use it to give a fresh spin to landing pages, accompanied by the right call to action
- If you used video in your webinar, get extra value by cutting short clips for posting on your website or social channels.
4. Tell a story
- Of course you’re there to introduce an audience to your brand, or perhaps to push attendees further down the funnel, but that doesn’t mean the old A,B,C of “this is what we do, here’s how we do it, and here’s how to get in touch”
- One simple rule for turning a presentation into a story is to put yourselves in the audience’s shoes. They have a pain-point, and here’s how it gets fixed.
5. And tell that story across your channels
- Are your webinars, in effect, siloed? Do you tell one story to those audiences, and different stories on your website, in email communications, and on social?
- Your prospects are going to choose their own journey to conversion, including doing plenty of research on platforms you don’t control
- But at each touch-point with your own properties, there should be consistent, actionable messaging, informed by your knowledge of the prospect’s previous behavior.
We’re just scratching the surface here. The good news is that video platforms are evolving to make much of the above easier than ever. They can also push and pull information to and from other key parts of the stack, like your marketing automation and CRM.?
We’ll be sharing more than just five tips on September 19.?Again, here’s the registration page: we look forward to you joining us.
