First of all, what is a Webinar? The word Webinar is a neologism, and indicates a conference (or online seminar, workshop, online course, symposium, round table) or a simple presentation that takes place on the Internet , and allows participants, located in different places, to see and hear the presentation, ask questions, etc. Let’s see now how to make one successful.
When Marketing and Sales work together, there’s a good chance your event will deliver the best content to the right customers (or prospects).
Below you will find some useful tactics and tools, and you will discover why webinars are among the most effective marketing tactics.
1. The Winning Strategy
The potential of a live webinar depends a lot on the format : it must be an engaging experience, in real time, perhaps with educational sessions, full of multimedia content and personal interactions, so that it is a better experience than reading the same content on printed documents. So propose the right topics in the best format , having clear (first!) the objectives .
A webinar is an event that must always:
have measurable results : before defining the topics, you need to be clear about your objectives and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators, i.e. the most significant metrics to analyze (and how you will measure them).
provide value to attendees : the webinar must provide real value to the audience. Important topics that interest your audience, conveyed in a compelling format (with the help of videos, infographics, 3D animations, etc.);
offer a follow-up action : too often webinars are a dead end, with a mandatory CTA on the last slide… instead you need to plan, at the end of an online event, a continuation, a subsequent activity , important and possibly unmissable.
2. Salespeople must reveal their secrets to you
To produce high-impact webinars, you need the input of your sales team. Salespeople are a goldmine of insights that too often go untapped. It only takes a few minutes to find together what content really solves your prospects’ biggest problems.
Here’s a prompt with some specific questions to answer.
. To define your goals:
Why aren’t prospects becoming customers? How can the problem be solved? Is there important information your customers (or prospects) aren’t getting or that you’d like them to have before a potential sale?
. To choose your topic:
Make a list of topics that would provide real value to your prospects, and also think about how you’ll present them: through infographic panels ; with live Q&As; with a product/service demo . . To decide what to do next: What’s the next step you want attendees to take? How can your sales team help you?
Examples of CTA (call-to-action) : “download an eBook”, “subscribe to the blog”, “participate in the next webinar”, “read this case study”, “visit the FAQ on the site”, “request a demo”, “request a quote or a free consultation”, etc.
And here are some questions to ask yourself:
Is the CTA appropriate for this event attendees?
3. Create a “Webinar Hub” with all your event content
One of the best ways to make sure your sales team has the information and materials they need is to create a “ Webinar Hub ”: a resource where they can find all the info about the events held, the documentation and the materials used for marketing and sales.
A shared directory between Marketing and Sales and well organized (or a Trello card ).
If you consistently produce new webinars on different topics every month, it might also be worth creating a real portal , solid and easy to manage.
In your “Webinar Hub” you can insert the recordings of all those held, the calendar with past and future ones, the documentation that describes them, the emails , the CTAs and the graphics used.
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4. Collaborate to promote the webinar
Promotion is key to a successful webinar .
Get your sales team involved special resource and help them spread the word online through their social networks and groups. You can also include the link to the webinar buy lead recording in your email signature . You should start promoting it at least four weeks in advance, and continue until the big day.
Create and distribute the following materials , two weeks before the promotion begins:
a webinar information sheet (objectives, targets, key points, speakers and CTAs, …);
the list of customers and potential customers to invite;
email templates for personal invitations and reminders (save-the-date);
social media post examples (with links and images) to copy and paste;
With this information, salespeople can answer questions from their customers and prospects, and identify invitees who may not be on their marketing email list.
5. Post-webinar communication
The event is over, now what? This is where things get interesting.
People who attend an event are a valuable sales opportunity, so the post-webinar is an extremely important communication moment.
First, you need to analyze and share the event data. Send an email to your colleagues specifying the following:
information about the questions asked during the event.
Most of the steps can be done manually, but a CRM ( Customer Relationship Management ) makes the process much easier. We use HubSpot , the CRM that includes all the features for the activities listed.
Here is a simple webinar follow-up plan , in four steps:
Send the emails with the information seen in the previous point;
Create templates for follow-up emails ;
Provide relevant content that salespeople might share in the coming weeks (such as dedicated posts, infographics, ebooks, etc.);
Plan and send everything to follow-up contacts. The first email should be sent within 24 hours of the event and include the link to the recording and the slides presented.
6. Once the webinar is over, it’s time to measure its success.
Track KPIs related to the goals you set when you designed the event. The most common are:
creating new opportunities (deals) for sellers.
Be sure to share these numbers with your sales team.
If you want to automate these processes, a good CRM (we use HubSpot combined with the Zoom webinar platform ) works perfectly, and allows for a quick exchange of data between Marketing and Sales teams.
7. Putting it all together
Webinars are not only effective marketing tools , they are also effective sales tools : if salespeople have the right information, content and tools, they can really close good deals, through shorter sales processes that increase productivity.
Marketing today has all the tools to create this content and automate its distribution internally and externally to the company.
Now that you know what you need to include in your webinar strategy, you can download our templates and see how to best organize the points explained above. The file opens in Microsoft Word, so you can edit each section as you see fit.
