It’s no secret, webinars are an incredibly effective marketing and sales tool! According to our State of Webinars 2019 report, 87% of businesses use webinars to help market their products. However, 79% of the people surveyed admitted that a brand video (like a webinar) convinced them to purchase an app or piece of software.
It doesn’t matter whether your company hosts training sessions, conducts live product demos, or runs other projects. You’ve already experienced the amazing marketing and sales power they provide to your business. But have you ever stopped thinking about the best ways to measure webinar success?
If so, this article is perfect for you! First, we’ll discuss what webinar success really means to you and your company. Then we’ll outline six metrics you should measure to evaluate the success of its webinars. Sound like a plan? Let’s get started!
What Does “Webinar Success” Mean to You?
Before you measure webinar success, determine what success looks like for you and your organization. Why are you hosting webinars? If your goal is to raise brand awareness, measuring sales after each event won’t give you a good idea of success. Instead, you’d want to track metrics like registrations, attendance, and social media mentions.
Once you’ve identified you goal for each webinar, you can then choose the right metrics to measure.
6 Webinar Success Metrics Worth Measuring
Now that you’ve determined what webinar success looks like, begin to choose metrics that showcase the success level.
The six metrics listed below are important no matter what goals you’ve set. Whether you’re hoping to enhance brand awareness or sell more product, the following metrics will tell you if you’re on the right track.
1. Registrations
Registrations in an important metric for all webinar hosting companies. There are many reasons for this. First, if no one registers for your event, no one will attend it either. And if no one attends, what’s the point? You might as well spend your time on other company initiatives.
Second, when a person registers for your webinar, they have to provide their credentials. You can then use them (as long as you follow GDPR guidelines, of course) to market to them in the future. Even if they don’t actually attend the live event they registered for. A registration is a lead, regardless of what a person does after registering.
And third, the number of registrants will give you valuable insight into your event promotion tactics. A low number of registered attendees could be caused by many different factors, chief among them being a poor marketing strategy.
If your company is having a hard time marketing its webinars, don’t worry! We have a few tips to help you develop a solid promotional strategy and boost registrations.
How to Boost Registrations
Ready to generate more leads and boost registrations? Then you need to learn how to market your live events effectively. Here’s a quick rundown of everything you need to know:
Social Media. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are excellent places to promote your upcoming webinar. Make sure you use these social media networks and let your fans know about your live event.
Email Marketing. An email is another fantastic tool in any webinar marketer’s toolkit. Message your contacts and let them know about your live event. Email is also a perfect “reminder” avenue for registrants. Once a prospect registers for your webinar, make sure to send them periodic reminders about the actual event.
Paid Advertising. Depending on the purpose of your webinar, paid advertising can help boost registrations. Both Facebook Ads and Google AdWords will allow you to craft targeted messages. Be sure to track the results and only invest in winning strategies.
In general, the right balance between social media, email marketing, and paid advertising will help your company effectively market its webinars and boost registrations.
2. Attendees
Like we mentioned earlier, you can’t have a successful event if no one shows up for it. That’s why tracking attendance to your webinars is so vital. So have a look at important webinar statistics like your conversion rate. In this context, it refers to the number of people who attended your event compared to the number who registered for it.
The statistics can be found by dividing your attendees by your registrants and multiplying that figure by 100. For example, if 50 people registered for your live event but only 20 attended, your conversion rate would be 40%. Divide 20 by 50, multiply by 100, and express it as a percentage.
How to Increase Attendance
If your attendance numbers are subpar, there are a few things you can do to improve them:
Email Marketing. An email is a great tool to use to remind registrants about your upcoming webinar. Life gets busy and people will forget about your event if you don’t send them email reminders.
Company Branding.The branding of your webinar registration page can have an effect on attendance as well. Just because someone expressed an interest in the webinar topic and signed up for the event, it doesn’t mean they will attend. A lousy looking webinar registration page may make them believe your company is unprofessional. If registrants get this feeling, they’ll be much less likely to attend. Fortunately, ClickMeeting platform makes it easy to craft beautiful registration pages as well as webinar waiting rooms, and even post-event thank you pages.
Webinar Timing. Lastly, a disappointing conversion rate may be the result of poor webinar timing. If your company is hosting its events at the wrong time, determine how many folks are viewing your On-Demand Webinars. If a high percentage of registrants views your events on-demand rather than live, you may want to consider hosting your webinars at a different time of day.
3. Survey Results
Attendee feedback is one of the best ways to measure webinar success. An engaged audience will be more than willing to answer the questions on your polls and surveys. If they’re not, you could have targeted the wrong group of people or that your attendees just didn’t find your content interesting.
When you do receive responses to your polls and surveys, make sure to take that feedback into account for future webinars. What did your audience think of your event? Did they learn what they hoped they would? Do they have suggestions about what you can do better? Which parts of your presentation did they really enjoy and connect with?
If you can get answers to these questions, you can use them to craft better webinars in the future and (hopefully!) propel your business forward faster.
How to Get More Survey Responses
In-webinar polls are a great way to engage attendees in your presentation and make sure your content is right for them. But post-webinar surveys are important too. Here’s how to ensure your surveys are successful:
Keep Your Surveys Short. Your attendees don’t want to answer a mountain of questions after your webinar. Present only a few queries and if you use multiple-choice tests, limit the number of answers to four or less.
Ask the Right Questions. You want to ask questions that are both easy to answer and provide valuable insights. Queries like “How did you find out about this webinar?” “How did you enjoy your webinar experience?” and “What other subjects are you interested in?” are good questions to ask.
Include a Comment Section. Conclude your survey with a comment section that allows each attendee to share their unbridled thoughts and ideas. This unedited feedback can be very valuable.
4. Chat Interactions
Another clear indicator of attendee engagement and overall webinar success is chat interactions. If your webinar software of choice includes a private chat feature, you’ll have access to a wealth of potential knowledge!
You’ll be able to tell if your audience is engaging with your content and if it makes sense to them. You’ll also be able to better understand your audience and the questions they have about your webinar subject. You can then craft more informed content in the future.
How to Encourage Chat Engagement
Chat statistics can be a great way to measure webinar success. But not every attendee will jump at the chance to chat with you or your team during your webinars. You may need to encourage them to do so. Here’s how:
Let Them Know About the Chat Feature. At the beginning of your webinar, inform attendees they can use the chat feature to ask questions.
Offer Incentives for Active Participants. You may decide to offer a small incentive to anyone who uses the chat feature during your webinar. This will encourage attendees to voice their opinions or concerns during your broadcast.
Host a Q&A Session. A Q&A session towards the end of your webinar is another great way to encourage the use of the chat feature. It will also give you valuable insight into what your audience wants to learn more about.
5. Performance Ratings
Really want to measure webinar success? Ask your audience to give you a performance rating after your event. It’s similar to a post-webinar survey but is structured more like an Amazon review.
Attendees can rate the webinar host’s performance by giving one or five stars. Make sure to ask them to leave a comment addressing their likes, dislikes, and suggestions. It will let you learn about your audience and how to improve your presentation, and an overall feel for your webinar success.
Boost Performance Ratings
There are many, many things you can do to boost your performance ratings. But each of them rests on these three foundational concepts: great content, a smooth delivery, and an intuitive interface. Let’s briefly look at each of these:
Great Content. In the end, it all comes down to quality content. If your audience doesn’t care about the subject matter and/or topics you cover, it will be impossible to score a high-performance rating. So, put as much effort as possible into crafting exceptional content.
Smooth Delivery. Yes, great content is the most important thing. But your delivery of that content also plays a significant role. Make sure you know your webinar topic like the back of your hand. Don’t be afraid to practice your delivery before going live. The more presentations you give, the better your delivery will get.
Intuitive Interface. It’s important that you choose a quality webinar software that both looks great, has all the features you need, and is easy to use for your attendees. ClickMeeting is a highly rated tool and can be used for free for 30 days. Give it a try and see if it meets your company’s needs.
6. Actions Taken
You can measure webinar success by assessing the actions that attendees take (or don’t take) after viewing your presentation. What’s an “action”? It could be anything — purchasing an online course, connecting with your company on social media, downloading an eBook or completing a survey.
The point is, every webinar should include a Call-To-Action (CTA) of some kind. And you can measure webinar success by calculating the percentage of your audience that took the action you asked them to.
Encourage Attendee Action
Simply including a CTA in your webinars isn’t enough. You need to make it as enticing as possible so that your audience feels compelled to click on it. Here’s what we recommend:
Know Your Audience. It will be extremely hard to craft a high-converting CTA if you don’t understand the people you want to click on it. Get to know your target audience— what they like and dislike, the way they think and talk. Write your CTA in a way that will entice them to take action.
Always Offer Value. What will your audience gain by clicking on your webinar CTA? It needs to be something valuable for them to even consider clicking on it. To up the value factor, consider offering a special incentive for those who follow through and take the desired action. For example, you could give away a free eBook to everyone who likes your company’s Facebook page. Or offer a limited 20% discount on your product if attendees purchase within a certain time frame.
Test Your CTA. Lastly, you need to test your CTA for effectiveness. Is it connecting with your attendees? If not, make changes. Sometimes even the smallest things can make all the difference. But you won’t know unless you test different CTA variations.
Your Turn
It’s important to measure webinar success. If you don’t, how will you ever know if all the effort, time, and money your company invests in them is worthwhile? Answer: you won’t. Fortunately, now you know exactly how to measure webinar success. Just take a look at the six metrics outlined in this article: registrations, attendees, survey results, chat interactions, performance reviews, and actions taken. Good luck!
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