Looking to host a webinar? We’re not surprised.
Webinars have become a cornerstone of the modern B2B marketing strategy because they help generate quality leads and drive audience engagement. They also give companies an opportunity to position themselves as thought leaders and even sell products and/or services.
In the fast-paced world of business-to-business marketing, the power of webinars can’t be overlooked. But hosting an effective online event isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Fortunately, we’ve got your back. Keep reading to learn why webinars are essential in B2B marketing and how to host a webinar that propels your business forward. Let’s go!
Table of Contents
Why Webinars Are Essential In B2B Marketing
As mentioned above, webinars are powerful tools in terms of B2B marketing. Hosting them will help your company generate leads, build brand credibility, and engage its audience.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these benefits:
Lead Generation Opportunities
Want more leads? Host a webinar.
Seriously, webinars are incredible lead generation tools—especially in the competitive landscape of B2B marketing. By offering solutions to common industry pain points, your business can capture the attention of potential customers in its target market.
Even better, the interactive nature of webinars allows for real-time engagement with prospects. This will help you learn important details about your audience, which you can then use to personalize future marketing and efforts, leading to a steady stream of sales.
Brand Credibility and Thought Leadership
Webinars won’t just help you generate new leads; they’ll help you build credibility. When this happens, it will be much easier for your company to close deals and drive revenue.
Think about it: which company would you rather buy from—the one that shared in-depth industry knowledge with you, or the one you just heard about. The first company has positioned itself as a thought leader, so it’s the obvious answer. Be that kind of company!
Showcase your expertise to your target audience and you’ll earn their trust. As every B2B marketer knows, trust is the foundation of every sale. Build it and enjoy more success.
Enhanced Audience Engagement
Last but not least, webinars will help you engage the audience you already have.
Unlike other marketing channels, webinars give viewers a dynamic and interactive experience, which has the power to captivate the mind and foster meaningful connections.
Live polls, Q&A sessions, and real-time discussions allow webinar attendees to participate in presentations. They help businesses gather feedback, too. This two-way communication enhances engagement and enables B2B marketers to tailor their messaging to their viewers. The result? More impactful interactions between brands and potential customers.
Make sense? Great, now let’s talk about how to host a successful B2B webinar…
How to Host a Successful B2B Webinar
You’re totally in on the whole “Webinars for B2B Marketing” thing. But how do you host one effectively? It probably requires years of experience, right? Not at all!
The six tips we share in this section will help you plan, host, and succeed with webinars—even if you’re completely new to this marketing channel. Here’s what you need to know:
Identify Your Target Audience
Before you do anything else, ask yourself, “Who am I trying to reach with B2B marketing?”
You need to have a detailed answer to this question. “People who buy [insert your product]” isn’t good enough. Instead, dig deep into the demographics of your target audience. What industry do they work in? Where do they live? How much money can they spend on solutions like yours?
Then dig into psychographics, like the challenges, needs, and hopes of your audience. You know, the things that make a person a person, rather than data points on a screen.
When you understand who you want to reach, you can develop B2B marketing strategies that cater to these specific people. This almost always leads to more success.
Craft Compelling Content
Now that you know who your target audience is you can craft webinar content they’ll like.
Compelling content is the heart of a successful B2B webinar. Without it, you’ll have a hard time getting people to attend your event, which will make lead generation nearly impossible.
Fortunately, compelling content isn’t out of reach. Just think about the problems your audience deals with on a regular basis. Then ask yourself, “Which of these issues can I solve?” Finally, put together a presentation that will teach viewers how to overcome your chosen challenge.
Speaking of presentations, make yours engaging with a mix of visuals, data-driven insights, and real-life examples. These things will help keep your audience engaged throughout the webinar.
Market Your B2B Webinar
You’ve worked hard to create top-level content. Now you need to market your B2B webinar so that people actually know about it and show up. There are plenty of ways you can do this:
- Send a message to your email subscribers
- Blog about the event on your company’s website
- Post about your webinar on your social media channels
- Ask your network and/or influencers to help promote the event
- Run paid ads to reach your target audience on Google, Facebook, etc.
When marketing your B2B webinar, answer the question, “Why should people attend this event?” If you clarify the benefits of your presentation, more people will show up.
Choose the Right Technology
You can’t host a webinar without technology. There are a bunch of options available to you in this regard. Some are free, some are paid—but all are unique in their own ways.
You need to choose the webinar platform that fits your individual needs and budget.
That said, if you’re serious about making webinars a pillar of your B2B marketing strategy, you can’t go wrong with ClickMeeting. Our solution is used by tens of thousands of people in 120+ countries around the world because it’s both easy to use and extremely powerful.
Try ClickMeeting for free for the next 30 days and access all of our custom branding, screen sharing, polls and surveys, moderated chat, and webinar recording features for yourself!
Engage Your Attendees
At this point, you know who your audience is and have crafted compelling content for them. You’ve also marketed your event and chosen a reliable webinar platform. Now it’s time to host your attendees, and ideally, engage them throughout your entire presentation. You can do it!
The easiest way to engage a webinar audience is to make them a part of the event.
Send them polls and surveys, use the chat functionalities at your disposal, and save time for Q&A. Then encourage viewers to follow through and interact with you in real time.
It doesn’t matter how good your content is if your audience doesn’t engage with it. Fortunately, the tactics above will help you stimulate audience participation, leading to a better event.
Follow-Up With New Leads
You hosted your webinar and it was a smashing success. Congratulations! Now what?
Now you need to follow up with your attendees. This will help you start the lead nurturing process and learn how to improve your online events in the future. Here’s what we suggest:
- Thank attendees for showing up. There are tons of other things they could have done but they decided to spend time with you. Show them you appreciate this choice.
- Send a recording of the webinar, as well as any additional resources you might have, so that your audience can reference them at a time of their choosing.
- Ask for feedback. What did your viewers like about your webinar? What did they find boring and/or off putting. Do more of the former and less of the latter.
- Personalize each of your follow up messages as much as possible. This will help build bonds between your company and its audience, and increase your reply rate.
- Add each lead, i.e. each attendee, to your lead nurturing funnel. Or hand the leads off to your sales team if that’s how your organization operates.
Take Your B2B Marketing to the Next Level
In conclusion, webinars are a game-changer in the realm of B2B marketing.
They offer a dynamic approach to lead generation, thought leadership, and audience engagement within the competitive B2B landscape—each of which will lead to business growth.
Of course, to achieve these things you need a reliable webinar platform. ClickMeeting is the answer. Once you’re set up with our tool you’ll have access to top features like custom branding, screen sharing, polls and surveys, moderated chat, webinar recordings, and more.
Start your free 30-day trial of ClickMeeting today and join thousands of other users in 120+ countries around the world. We’re confident you’ll love the experience!
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