Face-to-face communication is one of the fundamental ways in which to build a relationship with customers. However, what if you could interact with a client in just the same way as visiting them, all from the comfort of your own office? It is now possible to generate close relationships with customers, who could even be on a different continent. Thanks to the web, fast Internet connections and desktop applications that bring the idea of the videophone to life, every B2B enterprise now has the chance to reach new customers. Although, more importantly, the webinar – as it has become known – offers the chance to reinforce existing relationships with clients, which as every enterprise knows is the bedrock of a sustainable business.
Unlike the webcast that streams its content and marketing message to an audience, the webinar – or web conference – takes the concept of the webcast one stage further. The webinar enables two-way communication to take place between the presenter and audience. Now broadband is almost a commodity, more businesses are seeing the benefit of using the web as an interactive marketing tool. In the B2B arena, the webinar is particularly attractive as it enables a concise, highly targeted marketing message to be delivered.
What’s the advantage?
Internally, the key benefits are interaction between offices or even individual personnel with minimum disruption and cost. Colleagues can hold meetings, pass new ideas, be updated on issues and become motivated. Externally, webinars can educate an audience about more of your businesses services or products.
However, using webinars for external marketing activities requires that you understand what a webinar can and cannot do, as Hugh Bishop, CEO of Meteorite, says, “There are immense benefits to businesses holding webinars. Businesses that create and host their own webinars to external recipients have a great opportunity, not only to showcase their product or service, but also to use them for lead generation. These can be linked to good prospect management and tools also to help lead potential customers down a purchase path. However, webinars can only fulfil their full potential if they are used as part of a multi-channel integrated campaign. I am just as unlikely to attend a webinar that has had no marketing attached to it as I am to answer a telephone call from an unknown company.”
An attribute, not a replacement
Webinars must also take their place in your overall marketing mix. A webinar – no matter how well it’s produced – cannot exist in isolation. Think about how you’ll place the webinar in a wider campaign and integrate its strengths to give your message an extra facet. “Don’t try and do everything within a webinar,” states Alex Brayshaw, account director of DNX. He says, “People aren’t interested in sitting at their PC for an hour. Use it as a part of the comms mix, maybe as an introduction to deliver dynamic content, leaving enough meat for the follow-up. We tend to have a series of invitations to a short webinar, then a follow-up via the sales team or direction to a microsite.”
Brayshaw claims that it is important to analyse the statistics in order to not lose the people that are interested. You will know from the stats who sat through the whole thing, who asked questions and who completed the feedback form (if used).
Who to trap in the web?
The market sector you aim your webinars at is an extremely important question. The webinar is a new concept in marketing, but business-to-business enterprises are finding that it is marketing to their existing customer base where the webinar can be particularly successful. Brand reinforcement is key for many businesses: the webinar is a superb tool for keeping the lines of communication open with your most lucrative clients.
This point is echoed by Christophe Asselin, marketing manager for Ad Tech. “The acceptance of invites to a webinar suggests a loyalty to the brand from existing customers. I say ‘existing’ because it is to these customers that the webinar works particularly well. In the UK the emphasis from marketers always seems to be on attracting new customers. The successful use of webinars, in being an effective tool in maintaining existing relationships, requires a change in attitude from the B2B marketer themselves.”
The webinar may be the new kid on the marketing block, but for the B2B sector they are still the poor cousin of other more established channels. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring other elements of your marketing. Webinars certainly have their place, but as Asselin of Ad Tech continues, do not forget email. “Webinars are not the hot tools within online marketing. Recent research by the IAB has shown that, whilst B2B marketers still lag way behind B2C marketers in terms of online marketing adoption, it is email marketing that they favour.”
He continues, “This could be because when marketing to other businesses there tends to be much more of a no-nonsense approach: the message needs to be quick and direct, and perhaps more importantly, in print. Some would argue that the webinar provides most of this, but the take-up suggests otherwise.”
Studio secrets
To use a webinar successfully you must understand its key components. Often, the most successful webinars will use a personality. Recent examples include webinars featuring Bill Gates and Richard Branson who were promoting their respective companies. “Although the main reason for using webinars is to market your product and services,” states Stuart Wheldon, client services director of Eloqua, “combining the message with a third-party, industry-recognised thought-leader speaker will drive registrations, re-emphasise your message and provide a great webinar experience for attendees.”
The slow take-up of the webinar may be in some part due to a misunderstanding of the technical aspects of designing and delivering the event. Bandwidth is clearly still an issue for some businesses. There is still a PC/Mac aspect to this as well, with most webinars being designed for the PC environment only. Ironically, a recent webinar from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) that looked at search engine optimisation (SEO) was only available to PC users.
Planning and preparation
Creating a webinar must be considered carefully. IT consultant Graham Oakes outlines how to produce an engaging presentation, “When creating the content, remember that you’re not going to have eye-to-eye contact with the audience and won’t be able to see their body language. So the presenter will have less audience feedback than in a face-to-face seminar. They may also have to deliver their content a little more slowly and clearly than in a face-to-face event. This all means that creating online content needs a slightly different emphasis and you will have a learning curve to get this right.”
He claims that if you are already creating content for seminars, this should not be too daunting, but if you want to hit the ground running – and especially if you want to convey an ‘upmarket’ impression – then it may be worth working with a specialist to create the content.
Marketing your webinar is of paramount importance as you must ensure that the investment you’re making is returned to you with new leads or better relationships with existing clients you can see a long-term future with. Wheldon of Eloqua, outlines how your webinar marketing activities should begin right at the inception of your campaign, “Ideally, promotion of a webinar should start six weeks before the event. Many customers use email only to market their webinar with good results. However, for maximised results we recommend multi-touch campaigns involving email plus other mediums such as direct marketing, banners (where/if appropriate) and telesales.”
Pricing matters
There is also the question of cost. Graham Oakes outlines a few options, “This depends a lot on which tools you want, the size of the event, etc. WebEx’s prices start at approximately £0.19 per user per minute. So a one hour webinar delivered to an audience of 50 people will cost you approximately £600. That’s £12 per qualified sales lead, which doesn’t seem like a bad rate to me. This cost is directly proportional to the number of leads. Remember however, that your main cost will probably be in creating the content, not delivering it. Creating an hours’ worth of high quality content could easily take several days, if you’re doing it from scratch.”
It is clear that the webinar is in its infancy. As with all marketing techniques, it is still finding its niche in the marketing mix. Quality at the moment is giving way to quantity, but Brayshaw at DNX thinks this will change. “We believe that as marketers begin to assess webinars more objectively we’ll see webinar numbers reduce and the quality of content increase, particularly in the medium/large enterprise sector. ‘On-demand’ archives are going to become more crucial – those people that want to download a podcast of the webinar and listen in their own time will increase.”
Costs can be high if you’re aiming for a very polished finish as the webinar has more in common with television production than print or web advertising. Think carefully about the message the webinar embodies and always ensure that you engage with your audience. As Asselin of Ad Tech says, “Remember, the webinar needs to be dialogue, not inane monologue.”
