GETTING TO KNOW THE WEBINAR

Transcription

1 WHAT IS A WEBINAR?

2 GETTING TO KNOW THE WEBINAR When you hear the word webinar, what comes to mind? If you re picturing a clunky-looking online slideshow with a speaker calling in on a static-filled phone line, get ready to be amazed. opportunities for the audience to engage. And the best webinars track those moments to give you clear insight into who is coming to your webinars, what they want to know, and which ones are your highest-quality leads. Modern webinars are media-rich events that combine branded environments with quality content and We d like to re-introduce you to what a webinar can be, and everything it can do for you. 2

3 EXPRESS YOURSELF You ve got big ideas and bigger plans and webinars are the best way to share them with the audiences that matter. The first step to building a better webinar is branding your console. Design an environment with your corporate colors and feature your logo prominently. You can even integrate your high-level messaging into the console design. the brand. If you have access to a full broadcast studio, you can add an extra level of professional polish to your already amazing content. But even if you can t afford an expensive studio, you can still get the benefits of a video presenter. A decent webcam can transform any office space into a webinar studio. You can even drop video clips into your audio presentations to spice them up. The second step? Put your presenter in front of the camera! Video has been proven to increase audience engagement, contribute to higher levels of content retention, and foster a connection to the presenter and With these pieces in place, you ll be perfectly positioned to deliver your thought leadership content to a receptive audience. How receptive? You ll be surprised. 3

4 GO AHEAD, TAKE YOUR TIME When you look at your marketing channels, how much time do you really get in front of your prospects? A couple minutes for a blog post or video, maybe a few more minutes for a white paper or an in-person event? On average, people who attend a webinar stick around for nearly a full hour 55 minutes, according to the recent ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report. surveys, and live Q&A make your presentation feel more like a conversation, and give your audience a chance to have their voices heard. Idea storming, chat, and social tools turn your webinars into hands-on working sessions or networking events. And by providing materials for download or links to additional resources, you can make your webinars feel like an immersive learning experience. There s a very good reason people are willing to spend so much time in webinars. Unlike that white paper or blog post, a webinar gives your audience multiple opportunities and different ways to engage. Polls, Audiences love interactive webinars. But, as we re about to show, there s an even bigger benefit to webinar engagement. 4

5 DATA, DATA, AND MORE DATA Everyone s talking big data. But, with webinars, you can finally do something about it. It s easy to think about lead data in terms of form fills: name, , company, phone number. But that kind of simple demographic data isn t enough to power a complex modern marketing tech stack. What you need is behavioral data. And that s exactly what webinars deliver. How? All those interactive moments built into webinars are also trackable data points. When an attendee downloads a resource or asks a question, the webinar knows. And as your webinar platform tracks those data points in real time, they contribute to powerful prospect profiles of everyone who attends the webinar. Then, once that data has been collected, you can set your webinar platform to pass the data directly to your marketing automation and CRM (customer relationship management) software. And that s when the fun really starts. 5

6 FIND YOUR BEST LEADS We know that not everyone who attends a webinar is the perfect lead. The typical webinar audience has its share of lookie-loos, curious amateurs, and people who would really love to buy your products if they had the budget right now. So how can you identify the really strong leads? The way people engage with your webinar will tell you a lot about how interested they really are. Did they watch your webinar all the way through to the end? Did their poll responses indicate a high level of sophistication? Did they download a datasheet or case study that suggests they re doing evaluation research? Then you know you ve found a hot lead! In traditional marketing, it takes multiple touches before you can even begin to build a behavioral profile on a single prospect. Webinars give you a shortcut that packs a whole campaign s worth of engagement into a single event, letting you qualify leads in just an hour. And because you know so much about these leads, you ve made sales job easy for them. 6

7 LET S TALK! Sales outreach can feel impersonal. We ve all had that experience: your name gets on someone s marketing list, and, next thing you know, you get an with a typo or a phone call that mispronounces your name. It s irritating for the consumer and frustrating for the sales rep, who just wants to champion his products. But that story changes when you arm your sales force with rich, personal information from your webinars. If someone asks a question, let sales call them back with a personal response. If they downloaded some product documentation, the sales rep can follow up to see if they still have any lingering questions. If they responded to a survey, sales has a wealth of conversation-starters. And, if you ve set up integration with your webinar platform, all that information can be found in the lead record in your CRM. Just like that, you ve transformed a potentially awkward sales interaction into a helpful, personal conversation. 7

8 ON TO THE BIG TIME But wait there s more! Because they let you reach an audience of any size, anywhere in the world, live, ondemand, or simulated live ( simulive ), nothing lets you scale your marketing as effectively as webinars. international traffic to your on-demand webinars. You may want to tweak the message slightly to make your promotional materials more appealing to the local market. Webinars let you reach into new markets, serving them content that feels relevant, and moving them through the sales cycle smoothly. To reach your global audience, craft regionally specific s and banner ads to drive With a single webinar, you can spend a full hour in front of hundreds or even thousands or promising prospects from all over the globe. Imagine how much it would cost to do that with an in-person seminar! 8

9 THE NEW FACE OF THE WEBINAR Remember that mental picture you had of a boring, grainy slides and a hard-to-hear presenter? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Webinars today are professional, powerful events that appeal to your target audience like nothing else. and qualify leads, to support your sales force, and to extend your reach around the world. In short, it s the most powerful strategy in your martech arsenal. Isn t it time you were doing more webinars? A webinar isn t just an online presentation. It s a way to build your brand, to engage your prospects, to generate 9

10 ABOUT ON24, INC. ON24 is the leading webinar marketing platform for demand generation, lead qualification and customer engagement. Its award-winning, patented, cloudbased platform enables companies of all sizes to deliver engaging live and ondemand webinars. Providing industry-leading analytics that can be integrated with all leading marketing automation and CRM platforms, ON24 enables marketers to optimize demand generation, enhance lead qualification and accelerate sales pipeline opportunities. Additional applications for the ON24 product portfolio include virtual training, talent development and town hall meetings. More than 1,000 enterprises rely on ON24, including IBM, CA Technologies, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, Credit Suisse and SAP. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout the world. For more information, visit ON24.com. ON24, INC. 795 FOLSOM ST., FLOOR 3 SAN FRANCISCO, CA ON24.COM 2017 ON24, Inc. For more information on the benefits of the ON24 virtual environment, contact us at or visit