Gain Maximum Revenue from Lead Generation Webinars

Webinars are a great demand generation tool for companies to grow revenue by acquiring new customers. All too often though, companies approach webinars with a fix it and forget it approach and then wonder why they aren’t getting quality leads. To maximize the revenue from webinars there are three main things to consider.

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1.????Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy

Webinars are part of a larger strategy and as with any tactic, they should support reaching the overall marketing KPIs. It takes a clear strategy, solid preparation, and known successful processes to get the most revenue from new customers that attend a webinar.

Preparation is also key to leveraging webinars to meet your overall business goals. Planning a webinar covers many aspects – is it a series or one-off, who is presenting, target registrations, and more – but often these decisions are made with blinders on and not with the overarching marketing strategy in mind.

Webinars that have been planned well, with a strong speaker and a solid plan to promote it to your ideal customer profile (ICP) perform better. Throughout my career, I have leveraged webinars to reach new ICPs. Most of my webinars have resulted in double-digit quality leads that were either placed in a nurture campaign or provided to sales depending on where the customer was in the buyer's journey. Those webinars that didn’t perform as strong, were due to not following the process I know works. These mistakes include not selecting a strong co-presenter, not allowing for enough time to market the webinar to the ICP, and not having a solid follow-up plan after the webinar.

Why would I deviate from something that I know works – lots of reasons. Sometimes the timeline gets compressed, a co-presenter backs out at the last minute or for several other reasons that are too many to mention and would take up the rest of this article. However, at the heart of the reason that it didn’t work is not following a solid process. Following a successful preparation process ensures that a webinar will produce the results that you want. With that being said, a process should never be so rigid that there is no room for adjustment. Things happen and as marketers, we have to adjust and adapt the process to the circumstances.

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2.????Provide value to the ICP

Producing a webinar can generate quality leads as long as it also provides value to the ICP. Webinars should address a common pain point that future customers are facing. What are those pain points, you ask? Current customers know and have probably already shared it with the sales, customer success, product, or marketing teams. Solving these pain points is why they purchased the software.

Listening to your current customers, future customers, and sales teams provides a treasure trove of ideas for webinars. Companies who continue to listen to what customers are saying during sales calls, QBRs, regular check-ins and more can continue to stay ahead of the dreaded webinar topic brainstorm. However, those same questions that current customers have can also provide value to future customers that may be experiencing the same situation at their company. Remembering this can fill a pipeline of sales and marketing collateral, including webinar topics, that is unending.

Depending on which part of the buyer’s journey the webinar is taking place is another way to provide value to future customers. Customers who are in the awareness phase are figuring out which products can solve the problem they are encountering. ?Later in the buyer’s journey, a webinar could answer why product A over product B. Or even how to get the most out of the software selected. ?

Determining which part of the buyer’s cycle is part of the overall marketing strategy and webinar planning. However, ensuring that value is provided each step of the way is a key to increasing revenue with webinars. These small adjustments are what can make a difference in the revenue generated from webinars.

Also, we’ve all attended webinars that were one-way avenues of sharing information. Step out of the boring and make webinars interactive and engage the audience. Some companies get uneasy with an open forum and want to control the situation as much as possible. A seasoned presenter and moderator can handle almost anything thrown at them and help break down the barrier of company vs customer. Companies that remove the barrier and demonstrate that customers are collaborators and not just a contract to close have a much higher close rate as well as retention rate. ??

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3.????Leave them wanting more

Lastly, leave the ICP wanting more information about how your product can solve their problems. This is not to say that the webinar should be overly sales-y. Many times, companies try to cram every bit of information about their product into a webinar. The idea is that if 80% of B2B customers make a decision before speaking with a salesperson, the more information that is shared the better.

The webinar should provide value and address a pain point for the ICP. However, as most people know, there are usually more questions after that first pain point is solved. The webinar should help set the stage for future customers on what to expect when interacting with the company. ?If there are known follow-up questions that are regular asks of the sales team, maybe this webinar should be a series that is mapped to each part of the buyer’s journey.

Developing a comprehensive marketing strategy and thoughtfully figuring out which channel to leverage to gain the maximum amount of revenue from new customers. That applies to all marketing channels, including webinars. Providing value to future customers during each phase of the buyer’s journey is also key to converting future customers to current customers. Lastly, don’t cram every bit of information into one webinar. Leave the future customer wanting more and if it makes sense, make a webinar series out of it. These are three keys to maximizing revenue from future customers through webinars.

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Rhonda Giedt is a marketing executive focused on solving challenges to spur revenue growth in companies. She has experience marketing companies in SaaS, manufacturing, and 3D printing. She is also an avid sports fan of college football, golf, premier league football, and many others.

She is also an ambassador to the PEAK community and mentor to marketing and business professionals.