7 Key Areas To Maximize Your Webinar Program:

1. Growth of Webinars
2. Webinar’s Role in the Lead Gen/Saies Pipeline: Measuring the Success of a Webinar
3. Integrating Social Media and the Webinar
4. Winning Webinar Strategies (Speakers, Formats, Incentives)
5. The Benefits of Interactivity Before, During and After Broadcasts
6. Improvements in Webinar Technology – Best New Features
7. Post -Presentation Reporting, Follow-Up and Marketing

1. Growth of Webinars

If you search the words “webinars’ and “webcast” on Google, a combined total of 112 million links are returned. By comparison, “oil spill” brings up 99 million. Point being, webinars are top-of-mind and growing in popularity. (By the way “lead generation” returns 14 million links).

A number of factors have contributed to the growth in webinar use. First, the technology has continued to improve, offering more consistent transmissions, better quality audio and web viewing and an increasing number of features that help to improve the effectiveness and measurable results gleaned from each project.

The research confirms this. With 95% of survey respondents stating that they currently host webinars, 82.6% of that total said they have increased the number of webinars they hosted in the past year. The greatest percentage of that group – 37.8% – has increased the number of webinars hosted by more than 21 %. Looking forward, 74% at companies surveyed report that they will increase the number of webinars they host in 2011, with the largest percentage – 34.5% – planning to increase the number of webinars hosted by 1-10%.

CHART
Looking forWard to 2011, how do you anticipate your schedule for webinars wil/change?

… We will increase the number of webinars we host by 1-10% 34.9%
… We will increase the number of webinars we host by 11-20% 24.6%
… We will increase the number of webinars we host by < 20% 14.3%
… We will decrease the number of webinars we host 4.0%
… Our volume of webinars will remain flat vs. the prior year 22.2%

2. Webinar’s Role in the Lead Gen/Sales Pipeline: Measuring the Success of a Webinar

Is a webinar successful if it has more attendees, if it elicits a lot of post -presentation chatter or if it generates a lot of sales leads? Yes, yes and yes. To some degree. it depends on whom you ask … what the goals of the webinar were for that particular company. The highest percentage of survey respondents cited Number of New Sales/Marketing Leads Obtained (44.1 %) as the most important measure of success, while Quality of Attendees (reaching the target audience) came in second at 32.5%.

One could argue that Quality of Attendees is directly related to Leads Obtained, which begs the question: Are webinars and webinar technology meeting the needs of companies’ sales/marketing departments?

“I think the real key is finding the right balance between thought leadership and the ability to incorporate the soft sell product stuff” into a webinar, noted Loren McDonald, VP of Industry Relations for Silverpop. “No one should feel like that they were part of a commercial during a webinar broadcast,” he noted, “but when a salesperson phones up a prospect, they should be able to have an angle they can hang their hat on” as a result of the webinar.

In order of cited importance, other measures of success for a webinar are (rating average on a scale of 1 to 7 – 1 being most important): Number of Attendees (3.69 rating average), Number of Registrants (4.72), Ratio of Registrants to Attendees (5.08), Number of Registrants to View Recorded Webinar (5.21), Number of Minutes Attendees Stay Online (5.27), and Conversation Created in the Q&A and Chat (5.39). These statistics make it clear that the registration process is important and businesses should make sure they are paying attention to detail before the first invitation goes out. “It is your job to communicate a sense of importance for your event,” said Ken Molay, Founder and President of Webinar Success. “Let people know why they should be interested and enthusiastic about attending,” he noted in a presentation titled “How to Engage Members With Compelling Virtual Events – 2010 Style.”

“You need to go back to your identification of audience benefits and make sure they are always highlighted,” Molay continued. “Exclusivity also helps motivate people. Highlight the fact that they are part of a select group to receive this invitation because the content matches their interests. Remind them that they only have one chance to see the live event and interact with the speakers.”

When the target audience message is clear and clearly stated, the next step is making sure the message reaches that audience. “Companies need to make sure they are leveraging all channels to promote their webinars,” McDonald said. “Make sure every group in the company is in sync and promoting the project whenever possible,” he noted, including social vehicles, naming the project in email signatures and including an article about the webinar in the company’s monthly newsletter. While the bulk of registrations will likely come from the repeated email invites, “by going beyond the core email invites there is an opportunity to increase registrations and attendance by some decent number. It is multichannel reinforcement. “