Getting it right – Webinars

When it comes to webinars, it’s all about talking to the right people. Highland Marketing founder, Mark Venables, wonders why so many people end up talking to their competitors and colleagues instead?

Targeting is everything.

We all know that, in marketing, segmenting and selecting your audience is priority number one. For the kinds of products our clients offer, the scattergun approach just doesn’t work. You can’t simply broadcast the message wide and hope an interested prospect hears it. You’ve got to find people who want what you’ve got, want it now, and have the budget to buy it. Then it’s down to raising awareness, generating desire, and closing the deal.

What about webinars?

Webinars are a great way of raising that awareness and generating that desire. I saw some stats from the US recently that suggest 73% of marketers see them as the best way to generate qualified leads.

Webinars are an efficient route to prospects you’ve not spoken to before. Much more efficient than big events, where you see the same people time and time again. No wonder that more and more clients are adding them to their marketing mix. And no wonder that busy prospects value them – just sixty minutes at their desk and they learn something new.

Of course, you need to get them right. Those US stats claim that 20%-40% of webinar registrants become sales-qualified leads, and 15% of attendees ultimately become customers. Well, that can only be true if you’re talking to a well-qualified audience, with messaging and content that are relevant to them. You don’t want to waste precious marketing budget talking to your competitors, your own staff, or people who want to sell to you.

A tale of two webinars… again.

Back in March 2023, I wrote about how you measure marketing value and used webinars as an example. You can read the blog here.

In the last couple of months, I’ve spoken to a number of companies who’ve been trying out webinar services offered by specialist healthcare media outlets, and their experience has made me even more convinced that you need to tread carefully.

I’ve heard about audiences packed with competitors looking for commercial intelligence, rather than the target audience.

I’ve heard about webinars with no planning, rehearsal, or follow-up, which reflect badly on the client and the brand.

I’ve heard about projects where the client has been given no meaningful support on targeting, messaging, content, or presentation skills.

Most worryingly, I’ve heard about prospective clients getting disillusioned with webinars, which means they’re potentially missing a great marketing opportunity.

The specialist media webinar proposition seems to be, we’ll create a banner in our newsletter, we’ll send an email-shot to our diverse (read “non-targeted”) database, the rest is down to you. In reality, the large majority of people you reach won’t be your target audience, and you’ll get very little help on content and style. I know from Highland Marketing’s webinar projects that it can be so much better than this.

Getting it right?

So, how do you get it right? Well, it’s straightforward, but not simple.

Here are my tips: work with a specialist who can help you segment and target, who can put together an expert and informed panel to voice your message, who can build the right audience, who can work with you on content, who’ll support you at every step, and who’ll care as much as you do about the outcome.

But, if you want it simple, contact Highland Marketing, take a look at this case study to see what we can do.