Webinars Before Podcasts

There's a lot of hype about Podcasts as the new "thing."  I think podcasts are great.  However, I'd like to counter the Church of the Customer post that agrees they will effectively replace webinars. 

Here's the thing for me.  Marketing is about interaction.  Webinars give you that.  If you can get between 33% and 50% attendance, then webinars are pretty effective at getting your message out.    Instead of tossing away webinars, I think there are values attributable to both webinars and podcasts.

Podcasts are a complement to webinars.  A choice of how the customer or prospect can gain delivery of the value in the information.  But I also think there's something to be said about context for that information.

Consider this scenario:

• You host a webinar
• After the webinar, you invite everyone on your registration list to participate in the online "conversation area" for that webinar subject.
• The "conversation area" contains the podcast for download, the slides for download, articles you or your company have written about complimentary subjects.
• Discussion Forums that the users can join to participate in further dialogue with others who are interested in extending the conversation - including you.
• A survey that allows you to learn what people think about the subject under discussion.
• Links to articles, white papers, eBooks and other stuff that's relevant to the conversation
• A Share Your Thoughts option for people to post their own articles or ideas in relation to the topic and a way for users to comment on those posts.

Now you have something worth talking about.  Even if the podcast is preferred initially, there is a way to generate follow-on interaction with the user.  A reason for people to not just download the information and go off to listen to it during drive time, maybe never to be heard from again, but a way to extend and develop conversations, transfer knowledge and grow a community of involvement around your topic.

Personally, I think this makes a lot of sense.  I think that instead of being so quick to label something 1.0 vs. 2.0 (that was Brian Critchfield), we should look at how ideas can evolve and complement each other and build interactions.

Anyone tried this?

Comments

[Jackie Huba]

Ardath,
I agree that interaction in a webinar is its best value. Unfortunately, I don't see alot of webinars who do this well if at all. Many webinars seem to be just flipping through PowerPoint slides with an expert narrator.

[Ardath Albee]

Jackie,

I agree with your assessment, but think of the potential. What kind of difference could be made if webinars that produce a WOW factor are produced? Definitely a possibility for breaking out from the crowd of webinar presenters. It's somethig I'm pondering in my thinking about how to initiate better "conversations."

Ardath

[Brian Carroll]

Ardath, you asked if anyone has tried this so I thought I'd post a response and share what I've learned from promoting dozens of web events.

Webinars compete for your audience's most precious commodity - time. Don't for get your audience wants information that is relevant and meaningful. Don't waste their time with a sales pitch.

Also, I've seen many marketers ruin their lead generation performance by rushing an unqualified list of attendees to their sales team.

Don't try to "sell" me - I'm not ready!
Most Attendees are not leads! On average, 5% to 10% of attendees are sales ready opportunities. Plus most sales people will only call 15% to 20% of that list anyway. This presents a great opportunity for those companies who want to be positioned as thought leaders and keep their audience coming back.

Super Relevant Content - a catalyst for big attendance
High quality content can dramatically build webinar attendance. Why? Relevant content builds credibility, generates positive word of mouth (wom) and creates a buzz for future events.

The results...
By following this basic truth, InTouch, increased webinar registrations by 255% with out changing any webinar promotion tactics.

Here’s the registration results for a quarterly event series: Event 1 (280 registrants), Event 2 (495 registrants), Event 3 (995 registrants).

Industry average webinar attendance is around 30% but by focusing on, "thought leadership", our attendance was at 41% of registrants and the total number of attendees grew by 583%.

Using your archive properly boosts attendance
Don’t forget to archive your webinars/web casts and make sure they are visible to your website visitors.

Thanks to my webcast sponsor, NetBriefings, we've generated an average of 1664% more archive attendees compared to our live events! For example, our first event had just 85 live attendees but 14-months later that same event has tracked over 1500 unique archive attendees.

Collect and Use Feedback
Make sure you collect feedback both during and after the event via on-line survey tools like surveymonkey. The real-world feedback we've collected helped us make each event better.

Let your audience self qualify themselves with a "request a sales person contact me" box on your post event survey. Those who don't qualify yet need to be added to your lead nurturing program.

[Ardath Albee]

Brian,

Thanks for your comment and for sharing the possibilities for increased attendance with powerful content. It's good to have confirmation from someone so involved.

Have you done any kind of follow-on online interaction in relation to webinars? I'm wondering what kind of further interactions as a knowledge transfer and relationship building experience you or your clients may have tried? Without necessarily focusing on a "sales" conversation.

Ardath

[Brian Carroll]

Sure, content is still king with on-line follow-up. I wrote a post, "Using thought leader content as a lead generation tool,"on my blog but here's the gist.

The modalities you’ll choose to share, promote and distribute your content will depend on your market and your target audience. As a general rule, you will select less intrusive methods of capturing people who are just at the awareness phase of the buying process. Then you can use more intrusive methods like phone calling to see where they are at in their process and learn how you can be more of a resource.

I’ve found that creating good content doesn’t require a lot of budget but it definitely requires time, a desire to learn, and a willingness to teach others what you’ve learned. Your actions demonstrate your thought leadership. I wrote a post on my blog called

Some content rules of thumb:

It must be relevant to your target audience or their sphere of influence
It needs to be timely and address the issues faced by your target audience
It needs to demonstrate your value and tie into your value proposition
It needs to give more value than the time it takes to process and digest it

I hope this helps.

[Ardath Albee]

Brian,

Thanks for your ideas about content, but what I'm looking for is the nurturing of interaction, not just providing additional content. The "less/intrusive" modes that you mention.

The idea that a topic/webinar can be a catalyst to dialogue and building a relationship - whether or not the prospect is in "buy" mode. In a way that's not intrusive to the prospect.

Too many webinars are glorified sales pitches and lack value unless the attendee is ready to buy. So, I'm interested in exploring what can be created to provide additional value and extend the relationship beyond the hour of the webinar.

The opportunity to pull in others and their ideas on the subject so a true knowledge exchange happens is most often overlooked. Like the webinar is the big deal, when it only scratches the surface.

I think the webinar is an invitation. Where it's often been thought of as the entree, I'm thinking it's more of the appetizer. An event with untapped future possibilities.

And I'm wondering what companies are doing post webinar to engage prospects and customers and build relationships?

Providing content is one thing. Providing valued interaction that leads to relationship is another.

The idea is to build a "network" for potential business that provides value to all parties involved.

Ardath