Are webinars dead? Yes, we have actually put this provocative question at the beginning of our article. Why? Our inspiration came from Joel Erway, host of the popular podcast “Sold with Webinars”. He addressed this exact question to our Marketing Director, Agnes Jóźwiak, during his episode entitled “State of the Webinar Industry from the Aspect of Technology”. The answer is right here, in ClickMeeting’s State of Webinars report.
So, what’s the story? Are webinars really dying? Or is it the other way around – are they entering a new phase of growth?
Let’s find out together! We are super proud to introduce you to our latest State of Webinars 2019 Report. It’s an overview of webinars and online meetings based on ClickMeeting’s hard data and client analysis, powered up with exciting findings from expert reports and forecasts.
Are you ready to get a look at the industry from behind the scenes and discover how the webinar and video conferencing landscape is shaping?
Table of Contents
We have counted up all of the events that happened on the ClickMeeting platform in 2018 and the results are compelling:
We are talking about 604,488 online events compared to 595,095 events organized in 2017. That’s an increase of over 9 thousand events in a single year!
And how about webinar attendees? All of the 2018 ClickMeeting events combined gathered a total audience of 17,567,803 people (up from 16,903,631 in 2017)! To get a visual for that number, imagine the populations of Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle and Miami grouped together in one place!
OK, so we know for a fact that webinars are still on the rise.
However, that’s not all! There’s much more in our State of Webinars Report.
Let’s narrow down our insights and see how you will benefit from them!
In other words – what’s the purpose? Why do companies, start-ups, and solopreneurs invest their time and money in running webinars?
According to our report, here are the three main types of video conferencing events:
This comes as no surprise as these trends were easy to see in last year’s report. Marketers, sales managers, online teachers – they have all fallen in love with webinars. They find this form of video content to be a gold mine for expanding their marketing activities and generating more revenue.
We should also mention that more and more companies are deciding to cut their travel costs and time spent on traditional meetings. Instead of running old-school conferences, onboarding and training sessions or town-hall meetings, they are conducting them entirely online! This comes naturally for young start-ups and agile scale-ups and becomes a new approach to project collaboration in larger corporations.
In 2018, ClickMeeting transformed into a hive of busy bees, doing our best to produce more honey for our clients. To sweeten your sales and marketing efforts, we have released new features, including:
So, you see why we had to include these findings in our report.
If you are still hesitant about growing your digital business through webinars, you better brace yourself now.
Here comes the real deal:
Creating relevant and valuable content is more essential now than ever. Google algorithms, SEO ninja expert recommendations, marketing conferences highlights, articles written by marketing gurus – they all form a matrix.
In this matrix, long-form, highly-detailed, and problem-solving content is ranked very high. Video marketing in general fits here perfectly. According to Wyzowl’s Video Marketing Statistics 2019 report, 87% of businesses use video marketing and they put it to action at each stage of the sales funnel.
What you can also find in Wyzowl’s material is that:
Let’s go even deeper:
If you aim to build long-lasting B2B relationships, the middle stage of the funnel (consideration and intent) should be your primary focus. According to Statista, webinars play a vital role in the B2B buyer’s journey, especially during the middle stage:
Let’s put it this way – if two or three years ago video content was considered to be king, right now it should be called emperor. That said, other content formats are also doing pretty well — podcasts, white papers, blog posts, to name just a few.
B2B players take them all seriously, and when they are about to make a purchase decision, they dive into any content they can without hesitation.
What is the position of webinars among other content marketing formats?
According to the Demand Gen Report, B2B buyers dig into:
“Wait a second…” – you might say – “most of the formats have a higher percentage rate than webinars.” And you’re absolutely right. But take a deep breath and check out this finding, because it will change the way you see it.
The same Content Preferences Survey Report reveals how much time B2B decision makers spend consuming content. It turns out that 37% of them spend 30-60 minutes on a webinar! Only 12% of B2B managers spend that amount of time reviewing white papers and, still fewer, 7% listen to podcasts for that long. This means that webinars are beating out white papers by 25% and podcasts by 30%!
Why does this play such a huge role? As you remember, we pointed out earlier the importance of long-form and highly-detailed content. Well, that’s what webinars are all about: diving into the details of a particular niche. And, as you can see above, B2B clients really appreciate that!
Here’s the punchline:
According to this year’s State of Webinars report, webinar attendees spend on average 52 minutes consuming webinar content. To put that into perspective, the average American spends 50 minutes per day on Netflix.
This means that people are willing to spend more time watching relevant and valuable webinar content than relaxing in front of a Netflix movie or series.
Are you ready to take the challenge and make a difference for your business?
Are you ready to captivate and engage a room full of virtual attendees? After dedicating…
Looking to grow your network marketing business? Invest in an MLM webinar! MLM webinars will…
Are you growing your knowledge transfer business or just wondering if it's the right direction?…
Discovering the numbers behind your webinars is the crucial factor for measuring your webinar success.…
Looking to host a must-attend coaching session? Maybe you're a marketing consultant and want to…
If you're working alone, you'll have to accept this fact: you won't split yourself in…
View Comments
Great work, the data is very clear and precise. Thank you for sharing. Regards from Mexico.