Hi, I'm Kristen from HubSpot.
And today, I'm going to talk to you about how
to get started with webinars.
If you enjoy this video, don't forget
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Post any questions or suggestions
you have in the comments below.
Let's get started.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to host a webinar.
All you need is a webinar checklist,
and we're here to provide it.
Today, we'll go through everything
you need to run a webinar, from the early planning
stages to the big day itself.
First, leverage your sales team for content topic ideas.
When it comes to building a successful webinar strategy,
it comes down to sales and marketing alignment.
If the marketing team is creating content
that isn't helping their sales conversations,
it won't be a successful effort to driving high quality
leads to sales.
Luckily, you have experts at your disposal
for coming up with content ideas that will actually
complement and aid the sales conversation,
the reps themselves.
Instead of guessing what your sales team might want a webinar
to be focused on, ask them.
Get reps' buy-in for a webinar before you plan it.
Set up a meeting to discover new content ideas
and to find out what pain points they need to help solve.
This will go a long way for ensuring
sales follow-up with registrants is
seamless once the webinars over.
Next, nail your promotion strategy.
Once you've come up with relevant content
topics for your webinar, it's your job
as marketers to get that webinar in front
of as many eyes as possible.
With webinars, it's not just about generating
initial excitement.
You have to build excitement and encourage engagement
once the webinar goes live.
Here are a few tips for doing both.
Try your hand at co-marketing.
One of the best ways to get new expertise,
generate interest for a piece of content,
and expand the reach of a campaign
is to run a co-marketing webinar.
Instead of running a webinar with speakers internally,
try working with another company that's
going after a similar buyer persona,
and bring their expertise into the conversation.
Doing so creates more interesting content
and gives you the opportunity to get
your webinar in front of another company's establish audience.
Create automated email reminders under each sales rep's name
that will be sent to prospects who have been invited
but not yet registered.
Create manual email templates reps
can send in their one-on-one communication with prospects.
Set up an automated email to notify reps
when one of their prospects has registered for your webinar.
This will help them engage and close
those prospects down the road.
Once you've gotten registrants, that
doesn't mean they'll show up.
After all, if you promote your webinar one
to two weeks in advance, a portion of your registrants
are likely to forget when the life date comes around.
Remember to send out reminder emails the day before and date
of the live event, to ensure a high live attendance rate.
Remember, don't just stick to a PowerPoint
and talking head format.
The format of slides with a person speaking on screen
has been done time after time.
Don't feel the need to stick to the script, literally.
Instead, think about ways to mix up
how the information in your webinar is presented.
At HubSpot, we've found unscripted,
discussion style webinars to be quite effective at engaging
our audience.
In many of our live events, we've
forgone the slides completely, and instead
brought two speakers together and had a host
ask live questions on air.
It's effective for both encouraging Twitter
participation via a hashtag and keeping the content
conversational, but informative.
Try building a webinar around your prospects' questions.
Send a call for questions to be answered live on air.
This will help build engagement and excitement
for what's to come.
Hopefully, the people asking questions
will be more likely to show up day of, too.
You can also use a landing page that
includes a voting feature for people
to upload their top questions.
This will also help you prioritize
the material your audience is most interested in.
Next, deliver necessary information to sales.
A huge part of the pre- and post-webinar process
is making sure the right information gets
delivered to sales.
That's why GoToWebinar and HubSpot recommend
creating one webinar hub that's easily accessible by sales,
with the following information--
on demand recordings of all webinars,
a calendar with past and future webinars,
documentation that details the webinar's goals, title, target
persona, funnel stage, key points, speakers and logistics,
promotional and follow-up emails,
collection of graphic and text CTAs sales reps
can drop into their communications,
a mechanism to collect suggestions
from sales reps for new topics, and general feedback.
Once the webinar is done, it's time
to make sure the sales reps are ready to close their leads.
Send a follow-up email to your reps and include the following
information--
leads who registered, leads who attended,
leaders who registered but didn't attend,
leads who never registered, new SQL leads
from post-webinar lead scores, and any other relevant webinar
data.
Putting in the extra effort will go a long way
toward making sure the webinar is successful from both sales
and marketing standpoint.
Remember, it's all about alignment.
Webinars as a marketing tool aren't dead.
They're also an effective sales tool,
but only if your sales team has the information, content,
and resources to use them to move prospects down the funnel
and close deals.
Thanks for watching.
If you enjoyed this video, be sure to Like it and Subscribe.
Let me know how you're doing in the comments below.