Webinar User Trends

Outstanding! The start of a new year, and this year is going to be big for online events and webinars.  How can I be so certain? Well I can’t, but here at WTG Webinars we have been seeing a dramatic rise in the demand for webinars in terms of both attendance figures and companies who are using webinars for demand generation and brand awareness campaigns. Interestingly this demand has come from not your typical sectors, with more pharmaceutical and energy companies using webinars to engage with their potential customers.

Having had over 10,000 people register for our webinar series in 2010 we decided to ask our audience about their webinar behaviour. Our audience is predominantly made up of C-level and above, directors and senior mangers across all major industries including HR, manufacturing, energy, pharma, technology and media. We have attendees from all over the world with the majority from UK and Europe followed closely by North America.

We had just over 1,000 responses to our survey and here are results…

Not a huge surprise here with email still dominating, but interesting to see nearly a quarter of people using LinkedIn to find webinars. Also, relatively low numbers using webinar listing sites – with specific webinar listing sites still rather new to the market can we expect to see an increase in 2011?

Reinforces one of the key principles of holding a successful webinar, set out to educate and inform your audience and do not a use it as an extended sales pitch. Worth noting that nearly a quarter use webinars to find out about new technology in their industry, nicely complementing the demand generation model.

Again, no surprises with topic taking the biggest slice – it’s the fist piece of information people will see and you win them or lose them with it. Good to see people wanting more from their webinars with additional materials and other ways to access the information taking the second biggest slice.

Very interesting to see large numbers of people attending 5 or more sessions per month. We have seen a large increase in returning attendees and people signing up for multiple sessions at once.

A lot to take in here, most notable the increasing demand for webinars to provide more. Be it white papers or editorials, attendees are looking for relevant and engaging content. Complementing the last chart, attendees want a simpler process to register for more then one session increasing the potential for building a stronger relationship with attendees.

More of a look ahead to emerging trends here with a strong emphasis towards online training. Although already fairly well established we have been seeing a strong demand for online training courses and accredited webinars,  (such as the CPD accreditation) strengthening the idea of attendees wanting real value from online sessions.

Nothing shocking here, I think most could have guessed LinkedIn would be the winner. However it’s good to see the relationship between webinars and social media and the increasing convergence of the two.

So in typical webinar tradition, my closing remarks…

With the technology and the people behind webinars becoming more established and attendees wanting an increasingly more engaging experience, I believe we are in a period of substantial change within the webinar and online event market.

I think the days are numbered for blatant online sales pitches in the guise of webinars, as attendees and companies alike become savvier to webinars as a professional development and marketing tool. There will be a merging of webinars and online training sessions with greater demand for whitepapers and course material to complement the online element. This in turn will be supported by officially accredited sessions and more sessions from recognised academic or business authorities.

Finally, and although never replacing face to face; webinars, online training and virtual events will become a primary business tool for professionals allowing them to learn, promote, network and develop their skills while maximising their time and with the increasing convergence with social networks and the mobile markets  it will provide access to anything, anyone, anywhere.

A big thank you to all our attendees that took the time to complete this survey!

James Robertson
07/01/11
www.wtgwebinar.com