Thought-Leadership
Webinar Program
Project Origin
Leads were streaming in, but the average sale cycles remained 6 months or longer. After reviewing lead handling and qualifying processes, I identified a lack in opportunities for the lead to stay engaged with our brand separate from conversations with a Sales Rep. We needed a strategic program to help increase conversion velocity for both new leads and customer upsell.
Strategic Approach
With lead conversion as my focus, I needed to create an effective program that could engage mid-sales funnel prospects. As I investigated the idea of live online events, or webinars, I found it would naturally allow us to continue a prospect's journey and help showcase real-life application of our technology.
By presenting valuable topics that empower our target audiences to achieve their own professional goals, these webinars could not only highlight our team as experts in the industry but also model how our products solve the daily problems prospects face.
Target Audiences for Webinar Topics:
-
L&D professionals creating online training programs
-
International teams seeking effective online collaboration tools
-
Marketing teams seeking integrated webinar platforms
My Role
I lead the team in developing a proposed solution to this issue and built the strategy and milestone goals for the proposed webinar program. Once launched, I became a key producer for bringing events to life, choosing topics, training speakers, building media partners, and producing interactive content to continue prospect engagement.
Overcoming Early Obstacles
Budget
The vision and strategy of the webinar program was clear, but without established metrics, applying the budget necessary to begin the program was perceived as risky.
By using internal tools and leveraging network relationships, I was able to minimize required budget to kick-off the first webinar in order to prove ROI and secure more funds to achieve the next big milestones in the program's expansion.
Building a Webinar Program from Scratch
Finding Speakers
Finding good industry speakers was a BIG early blocker in the program's development. Without previous webinars to showcase the potential of the program, I lacked compelling examples and proven results that could appeal to quality speakers.
Instead, I relied on conveying the vision to potential speakers through presentations, well-written program overviews, clear goals, and the promise of superb content creation our speakers could also leverage after the event. Today, many of our speakers seek to produce webinars with me due to the value of the quality co-branded content I create.
This approach proved highly effective. Over 5 years I have been able to work with top influential thought-leaders without the need to invest budget in substantial speaker fees.
The company staff had no prior experience producing webinars, let alone setting up an entire program for success.
I relied on research, practice inside the platform, a clear understanding of how it all should tie together for tracking, and plenty of dry runs before the live events. After each event, I gathered survey feedback and immediately applied it. Knowing my team's weakness in webinar knowledge made me eager to perfect it.
Program Successes
Webinar Program Results
Since the launch of the webinar program in 2016, my team has developed 15 original thought-leadership webinars with a range of speakers.
Webinars are run once a month. Certain topics are strategically scheduled to align to target personas' calendars, such as EDU semesters, federal and state budget end, and local or international holidays.
Each live webinar has a one month promotional campaign including the production and promotion of:
-
Marketing email announcements
-
Sales Rep engage email invites
-
Individualized social channel posts
-
Digital ads
-
3rd party advertisements and promotion
-
Blogs - pre and post webinar
-
Partner promotions
-
The creation of a digital takeaway in the form of an ebook, infographic, or interactive worksheet
Gaining Influential Partners
Quickly becoming known in the industry for great topics and quality webinars, I successfully secured partnerships to expand the program. Adobe, Carahsoft, and the eLearning Industry regularly feature our webinars on their websites and email promotions and have supplied industry influencers as speakers.
2018 - 2019 Results:
920
%
PROGRAM ROI
MINIMAL COST TO RUN DUE TO IN-HOUSE PRODUCTION
79
%
INCREASE TO AV. LEAD CONVERSION RATE
32
%
DIRECT CONTRIBUTION TO TOTAL NEW REVENUE
$35,000
Average Return
$3,800
Av. Webinar Cost
Strategic Long Lasting Content
By converting live webinars to interactive On-Demand recordings, the webinar program quickly provided my team more digital content to use in marketing efforts long term.
In addition, my team created ebooks, whitepapers, blogs, and infographics that were used to compliment these live events and were often used as interconnected long-term campaigns.
To see more webinar examples, contact me!
