How are you transforming basic webinars into captivating experiences?

#1

Share with the community your plans or how you’re already transforming your webinar marketing from basic to captivating digital experiences and in exchange, we’ll send you a new edition purple Webinerd t-shirt.
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Questions to help you get the wheels turning:

  • How are you considering the complete audience journey? Are you incorporating thoughtful CTAs and next steps?

  • How are you adding an element of fun or just a new level of authenticity? Are you incorporating video or having your presenters be more conversational? What else?

  • How are you integrating your programs into larger campaigns?

  • How are you wowing your audience? Is it next level branding that pops? Or interesting polls? Or interesting session formats?

  • Are you providing your audience with different ways to engage with your webinar content like a curated on-demand library or tailored landing page?

1 Like
#2

We’ve made some big changes this year with a lot of our program.

We’re moving to the idea of video podcasts and online multi-session events and moving away from the idea of slide decks and presentations.

Podcasts are so popular right now and having a video component is very common, so we’re trying to utilize the On24 platform to broadcast our video podcasts live and capture the recordings to extract audio and host across multiple podcast platforms.

We are still doing some traditional slide presentations as well because some of our audience actually does want this type of thing, but with the newer and more exciting markets we’re moving into new and exciting methods.

Video is our big move this year. We’ve got an entire studio set up; we’ve sound insulated the room; we’ve got a lot of gear coming in to improve our audio and video, and so far it has been performing very well.

We also are testing a new long-form multi-session (3 hours) event this week. We’ll be having 3 different groups of panelists or speakers on for 3 different 50 minute sessions with 10 minute breaks in-between. For the break we’re just going to mute everyone and work with text chat and only utilize the slide area to show the session we’re working on and/or a countdown till we go live.

5 Likes
#3

We’ve decided to use a shorter format and cameras, unless the speakers really object. (Some do.) We are definitely using CTAs and continue to put lots of info in the Resources List.

2 Likes
#4

We plan to do a lot of new things in 2020 that we haven’t done before with webinars. We tested a new lead generation channel with webinars last year that were a success and we plan to make them a big part of our plan moving forward. We want to incorporate lots of video elements. We are moving away from slides on the screen to having panels of speakers and video podcasts. We have also started a new call out campaign for those who attend our sessions. We plan to test playing a video for those who join the webinar early before we start. We want that to get them excited that they are on and engaged in our brand.

#5

We just launched a new process for involving customers in invite-only product betas, of which webinars are a huge part!
Customers who sign up to be part of our early access programs attend an orientation webinar with the product manager. Not only does it give them a feeling of exclusivity, but it also gives them a direct line of communication to people in charge of making the product better!

We have already done two so far in 2020 and they have gone over extremely well. Engagement was off the charts!

#6

We are taking a big step in 2020 with feature more of our customers who are our brand evangelists. We plan to try and get away from slides and utilize videos and product demonstrations that deal with real-time situations. We are generating content that is based on the customer that we are featuring for a leave behind.

We are launching a new website later this year and can’t wait for a place where we can promote our webinars on demand.

#7
  • We add a lot of engagement opportunities into our on-demand webinars. We use a lot of references to handouts. We also add in different video clips and reference other webinars that they might be interested in attending.
    We are contemplating how to integrate an element of on-site coaching and elearning together. We believe that goes hand and hand as a part of the educational journey and growth.
#8

Our webinars are definitely progressing as we continue to map the customer journey. We integrate videos, handouts with the presentation, polling questions, speaker bios, webinars often support email campaigns and product launches. For a significant product launch, we have a webinar to highlight key changes and then we follow up with an offer/link to purchase.

#9

We have been stepping up our webinar game with every webinar we do! First we added a client guest speaker who can give an insight into how they use our product and what made them start using us. We have also started using polls and surveys to get more engagement. We plan to try and get away from slides and utilize videos and product demonstrations that deal with real-time situations. We have also started generating content that is based on the customer that we are featuring for a leave behind.

We are launching a new website later this year and can’t wait for a place where we can promote our webinars on-demand.

#10

We just started using ON24 and we are excited to enhance our webinars with engagement features and move into an simu-live/on-demand model. As a start the resources, polls, and survey tools have been in our template and they provide great insight for our future webinars and topics. Next steps for us are to implement CTA’s to engage users at the end of the webinar, with multiple options (download materials, register for a new webinar, schedule a meeting). This way we can keep the conversation going with them in more than one way.

The main goal of the use of engagement features is to track which elements a user interacts with and score the actions accordingly (importance to our business) and sync these scores into an existing model that we feed to our sales team for quality leads. This allows us to tailor our discussions with our customers to the content we know they are interested in.

Video is also on our radar for 2020. We have traditionally only used slides audio only. We will be testing to see if video is a more engaging experience for our audience.

#11
#12

We are integrating webinars into our full nurture cycles. This is helping us provide the right messaging and the right type of content at the right time to the right people.

We are also pulling more people into our webinars as subject matter experts and advisors. This helps speak the same language as our audience and gives more value to participants.

We are starting to add in surveys and plan to add in polls to more webinars to get a better idea of how well we are delivering our content.

We use live webinars and on-demand webinars to give our participants more options. We are also creating campaigns specifically for getting more on-demand views.

#13

Hi Miles,
I would love to hear more about your video podcasts

  1. avg duration
  2. avg # of speakers/talent

Also for your long form sessions …do these sessions offer any continuing education credit ?

1 Like
#14

One of the things we are doing is making 2 CTA’s a permanent part of every webinar

  1. Giving the viewer the opportunity to subscribe to upcoming content
    2.Giving the viewer the opportunity to contact us

Both CTA’s have been customized to fit our brand guidelines

#15

We started using ON24 only about a year ago, but we have evolved our webinars in just that short time. We have integrated our webinars into our customer journey flow, and have found them to be a great lead generator.

Our events are branded with our organization’s look and feel so that they feel consistent with our marketing campaigns. We don’t currently offer an on-demand library, but we are considering creating a specific landing page for all of our webinars. :+1:

#16

The newest creative webinar tactic we’re going to start testing is a “webinar-a-week” program for our major product line, where we will leverage simulive webinars to run the same lead gen or thought leadership webinar 4 times per month. During these webinars, we’ll also be testing different post-webinar engagement tactics, like surveys and polls. We have limited speaker resources, and this is a way we are trying to maximize our content and speaker time, and better reach our global audiences.

1 Like
#18

Love this Erica! Getting creative with limited resources :slight_smile: Can’t wait to hear how this goes!

#19

@miles.szkoda.1 I’d love to learn more about the video podcasts as well!

#20

Hey Vince,

For our podcasts right now, 10-15 minutes. We’re still early on in these and we’re not recording on On24 right now because it’s all kind of a test; I think if we get a bigger name person on or have a big-value one we’ll use On24 for it because I want to ensure a perfect recording and session. We normally just do a 1:1 with 2 members of our team, but we’re a publisher, so it’s like our editorial director talking to a chief editor from one of our portals. We also do some with a single remote speaker over a video conference with one of our chief editors. For now we’ve gotten them all on video, but we’re going to start out testing audio only.

The shorter podcasts are still a new thing for us and we’ve got about 15 different ones across different topics ready, but they are still running through the production process and scheduling based on their content and our media calendars.

For the online long-form events, we have one of our first ones on On24 coming up tomorrow! We did a few before using Zoom, but they were hard to manage and it wasn’t the best for what we were doing. It’s a 3 hour, 3 session event focusing on patients in the clinical trial industry. Each sessions is 50 minutes long and we’re having the speakers hop on/off quietly during the 10 minute break between each one. There are about 15 total panelists/speakers from some big-name pharma/clinical companies speaking. I may have a heart attack before or during the event as I’m acting as the producer/director for the whole thing :expressionless:.

We will likely do some type of certificate eventually, but for now most of our attendees are looking for the insights and education to help their businesses; many are small pharma/clinical business owners or industry players and are trying to improve their own business versus get training for a specific area.

We’re running 12-3 tomorrow, I’d post a link, but our attendee list is restricted to industry people and my team is pretty strict on it… but once the video of each session is put together I can certainly share that.

Hope this helps!

@tiffany.beddow.1

#21

We’ve drastically improved our engagement rates over the last few months by adding polls into our webinars and using that information to follow up with prospects with more relevant information. We also see great engagement with the additional resources we link to, and the ability for listeners to forward the webinar to others in their organization during the presentation rather than having to wait until they receive the recording the next day.
In 2020, we’re hoping to move into testing video teasers of the presenter recording a short clip of what they’re going to be talking about during the webinar. We’re also in talks with Parmonic, a software that breaks webinars into smaller, snackable bits, and using those short videos in emails, social, etc. Excited to see what this year brings and love seeing all the ideas here!