Research indicates that webinars drive the best results of any content marketing asset: They help generate an average of six new content pieces, they’re cost-effective, and they’re a qualified lead generation tool that creates great opportunities for sales teams.
In fact, an ON24 report showed that there’s been a 56% increase in requests for a demo in webinars since 2022.
So how can B2B marketing teams build their own effective webinar programs? Here’s how some of the industry’s best marketers approach this thriving marketing channel to drive reach, engagement, and bottom-line impact all year long.
1. Finding Ideas and Collaborators
The foundation of any great webinar is finding a compelling speaker and topic that really clicks with your intended audience. The topic should also apply to your product or service in some way. And remember, webinars should serve the goals of your business, but you still need to create strong content to see positive results.
Generic messaging will get lost in the echochamber, and masking a thought leadership webinar as a sales ploy will not go over well. Your attendees will be able to suss this out immediately.
“We look at webinar programming through two lenses,” says Becca DeBortoli, a senior demand generation manager at ZoomInfo. “One, what audience are we looking to attract, and two, what type of content is needed to engage that audience. We’ve created a structured tiering process to categorize and assign purpose to our webinar program.”
Here’s a high-level breakdown of this tiered approach:
- Tier 1 involves thought leadership topics, trends in the GTM market, and executive strategy. This tier really resonates with leadership audiences.
- Tier 2 has more tactical takeaways. These sessions include speakers from managerial positions who are more hands-on with day-to-day execution.
- Tier 3 webinars typically involve sponsor partnerships. While we’re not necessarily creating all of the content and deliverables, we can share our unique perspective and expand our reach.
- Tier 4 is our bottom of the funnel content that is often more product focused and ties directly to product launches and updates. The purpose of these webinars is to educate our audience on ZoomInfo’s product innovations.
These tiers were designed to foster alignment across teams, ensuring a unified mission and messaging that connects marketing, sales, brand, partnerships, product, and more.
Reviewing past webinar performance metrics like marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and engagement can also inspire new topics.
“If we see that a broad, evergreen topic performed well, we’ll dig into new angles,” DeBortoli says.
We also tap our partners — which includes official partnerships, friendlies, partner organizations like Women In Sales and 30 Minutes to President’s Club, and external thought leader collaborators — to generate topic ideas and find opportunities to work together.
“We like to choose speakers with day-to-day experience in the topic because they can provide actionable examples, which attendees appreciate,” said DeBortoli. “While senior leaders bring strategic insights, mid-level managers or individual contributors often provide more tactical, hands-on advice, so we definitely try to balance that.”
2. The Best Webinar Formats for Engagement
Another decision your team should think about is the format. Is the topic big enough to run a series? Should you have one speaker or a panel? Should you run a live webinar or is a pre-recorded discussion the better option? These are all elements that DeBortoli considers with every webinar.
Each option has its respective place in your webinar strategy, so it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. Here are some of our favorites at ZoomInfo:
Panels
Webinar panels are often more casual and less scripted, which offers flexibility in conversation and allows presenters to share personal anecdotes. They typically include several speakers from diverse backgrounds or companies, and a moderator that asks questions. The speakers on the panel answer questions, feeding off one another, and hopefully share varying perspectives. This keeps the discussion dynamic, promotes viewer engagement, and can really help to diversify the audience.
Workshops
These types of webinars focus on hands-on education with real-life, tactical examples that audience members can take back to their business. Practical and procedural formats are increasingly popular across the B2B webinar scene because people are really craving actionable takeaways that they can apply immediately, DeBortoli says. Workshops provide concrete nuggets of information that can be implemented ASAP.
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
This format drives engagement because attendees can, well, ask hosts or guests anything, often via a chat channel. “People love the opportunity to ask their questions live or submit them ahead of time,” DeBortoli says.
To kickstart the conversation, she recommends beginning with a couple of prepared questions.
“People get really excited about the opportunity to ask their question and have it answered live. It ensures that they’re engaged throughout the whole presentation,” DeBortoli says. “We’ve seen such great engagement on these that in many cases, our speakers have had to follow up with questions that didn’t get covered, which also creates another great avenue for conversation and trust.”
We have an on-demand AMA that you can reference as you set yours up.
Pre-Recorded Webinars with Live Q&A
This hybrid format is great when schedules are tight, DeBortoli says. Wrangling a panel of execs can be a challenge at the best of times, so getting a pre-recorded session on the books before the event, and then hosting one or two folks for a live Q&A after helps to alleviate that.
“It’s efficient and gives presenters flexibility while still allowing attendees to engage live,” she says.
3. Engaging Your Audience: Pre, During, and Post-Webinar
DeBortoli considers engagement to be the most important element of a webinar. To make sure there’s plenty of it at all stages, the webinar team works cross-functionally with product marketing, content, and marketing ops to create compelling content and effective advertising.
Before the Webinar: Promoting Your Webinars Effectively
Knowing your target audience and where you can reach them is step one, but there’s plenty more that can be done to make sure your webinar is a success. “Collaborating with partners with credibility in the space is a great way to increase participation, as they often have strong followings and can amplify the webinar’s reach,” DeBortoli says.
Whether a partner is actually speaking on the webinar or not, you can still tap them to promote through their newsletters, social posts, and direct outreach. “There’s likely a lot of overlap in you and your partner’s audiences, so this is an easy win for both parties,” she says.
And partnership doesn’t only extend to those outside of the company. DeBortoli and team partner closely with marketing ops to run A/B tests for promotions and ads across channels like email, social, and paid. They monitor performance using UTM tracking codes to see where registrations are coming from and what’s driving them, and adjust promotion schedules depending on the personas they’re targeting.
During the Webinar: Maximizing Engagement & Lead Generation
To keep people engaged throughout your webinar, it’s important to have interactive elements and areas for questions. What’s more, you can turn these into opportunities for follow up once the webinar has concluded.
“Our surveys and polls are built into the webinar console to gather real-time feedback, which gives attendees a seamless opportunity to share their thoughts during and after the webinar,” DeBortoli says. This feedback can also be shared with sales after the fact so they can have relevant conversations with attendees.
Opening with a couple of poll questions to help spark participation is another way to ensure attendees are getting the most value out of your webinar. And once you’ve proven you can run a great webinar, there’s no better time to promote your next event. That way, those that found your content insightful can look forward to the next one — and spread the word to their teammates and peers.
“We promote other upcoming sessions in our console for attendees as a thumbnail tile image and a redirect after the current one concludes, as well as in the follow up emails,” DeBortoli says. “This continues moving them down the funnel and engaging with them. We’re always thinking of the next best thing our audience is going to receive and respond to.”
After the Webinar: Post-Event Follow-Ups
Don’t miss out on the momentum just because the webinar is over. Create thoughtful and engaging follow-up content that will keep the conversation going.
Detail the best quotes, most impactful takeaways, and attention-grabbing elements of your webinar to folks that attended, and those that may have missed it. Include a recording so they can revisit in the future.
“We’ve started including ‘handouts’ for attendees in the follow-up emails so that attendees can reflect on the content and bring it to their teams,” DeBortoli says. “This gives them something tangible to take home, and to anyone who didn’t attend, entices them to watch the session and follow along with the handout.”
It’s a good idea to repurpose webinar content, whether that’s creating social clips of the can’t-miss moments, writing a blog post, creating an infographic — or all of the above. These assets can be forwarded to registrants, and used later on by your sales team in separate conversations.
4. Develop a Lead Scoring Process For Webinar Leads
Webinar data provides valuable insights into lead quality. Before handing off leads to your sales team, be sure to use a webinar-specific lead-scoring model to qualify leads.
When scoring webinar leads, take these important factors into consideration:
Registration data:
The webinar signup information reveals basic details such as job title, department, company size, location, and industry.
Behavioral data:
Behavioral data — also known as engagement data — shows how each lead interacts with your webinar. Ultimately, this data reveals each lead’s interest level in the topic. Behavioral data includes things like questions, viewing history, viewing duration, content downloads, demo requests, survey results, and social media engagement.
Miscellaneous data:
Consider other data points that indicate sales readiness including technographic data, firmographic data, or purchase history. Remember to consult your buyer personas during this process so you don’t forget to include an important data point in your lead scoring model.
This lead-scoring model can help you with the next portion of your webinar strategy: determining your success.
5. Measuring Success and Optimizing Lead Generation
The ZoomInfo webinar team looks at the following metrics to inform future plans and calibrate success:
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): Are you generating leads that convert into opportunities?
- Demographics: Understand which job levels and segments are engaging most with your content. Target this segment harder with follow up content to really make sure you’re capitalizing on their interest.
- Conversion Rates: Track how many attendees book demos or move further down the sales funnel (i.e. pipeline generation to closed-won revenue associated with the webinar campaign)
- Audience Feedback: Use surveys to identify potential topics and assess session quality, and leverage this feedback into other areas of the business as applicable.
Creating a feedback loop is a great way to make sure your initiatives are as effective as possible. ZoomInfo’s webinar team, for example, meets with the sales team weekly to discuss performance and get feedback on how follow-up and conversations with prospects and customers are going.
Additionally, the team provides sales with summary slides for key sessions. They can skim these and have the context needed for follow-up conversations, and take these notes into one-off meetings with prospects as well.
The team also shares key lessons in a monthly standup with sales, content, and marketing to showcase their efforts and broaden the feedback loop. “It’s a time for us to question why things did well, why they went not-so-great, and highlight big wins,” DeBortoli says.
Webinars are a tried and true marketing tactic, proven to garner new sales leads — but only if they’re executed properly. Test out these tips to take your webinars to the next level, and watch your leads pour in.