Webinars: along with white papers, they’re a highly effective means for B2Bs to communicate complex material and/or establish thought leadership. They can be used either as “lead bait” (i.e., as an offer behind a landing page) or as a nurturing step for existing prospects.
So why is it that relatively few small B2Bs make use of this outstanding, flexible online tool? Well, it could be that much of the advice “out there” on the subject tends to scare smaller-company execs off. For example, one clearly consultant-generated 31-page (!) white paper recommends all of these steps:
- assemble cross-functional webinar teams
- invest in a webinar project plan
- involve third-party vendors
- purchase pay-per-click advertising
- involve telemarketing firms to follow up with attendees
Most readers should recognize this type of advice as appropriate only for fairly large enterprises. No self-respecting small company would do a project plan for a webinar; they’d “just do it”! And if you think you need a cross-functional team to do one …well, maybe instead you should think about providing more whole-company communication opportunities, which would smooth out lots more tasks than a pending webinar. And most small companies probably don’t have the lead volume to justify outsourcing their phone follow-up to a TM firm.
Now, we’re a pretty small company ourselves; but eMagine has managed to do several webinars over the past couple years, and I really never thought they were all that big a deal to put on. So it was good to run across a post on The Small Company Blog by Eric Rudoff, who’s clearly of the same mindset. The post dispels four (“ridiculous”, Eric labels them) webinar myths…
Myth 1: You have to spend a ton of money.
As in most every market, there are a couple of large webinar platform providers who require year-long contracts and $30K down payments; but that’s because they’re mostly serving those larger enterprises, for whom such fees are chump change. But if you look around, you’ll also find smaller providers offering essentially the same features and service for a fraction of the cost and commitment. One that Eric uses is iLinc Web and Video Conferencing, which gives him automated registration, reminder emails, free recording, unlimited events, etc., for a quite reasonable $400 per month.
Myth #2: You need an entire team of people.
In a small company, this is just absurd; Marketing should be quite capable of creating a valid message here, as it must do with all other vehicles. In fact, to host a webinar you really only need a presenter – who creates the slides and delivers the presentation – and a coordinator, who works behind the scenes to set up the webinar software, monitor the webinar while it’s running, and handle the recorded version once it’s done. Simple.
Myth #3: You need to sell something in your webinar.
In fact, you really shouldn’t be trying to sell anything; that’s what you have a salesforce for, isn’t it? With a webinar, you’re trying to either capture new interested names (and contact info), or move some prospects further along in the cycle; and both of those aims are better served by an educational bit of thought leadership than by a sales pitch.
Myth #4: A webinar is a failure if a large number of people don’t show up.
It’s true that on average, about 40% of webinar registrants will make absolutely no effort to actually attend the event. But the good news is, as long as you still have a sufficient-size audience for lively feedback and questions, your no-shows don’t really matter. Why? …because you put on the event primarily to get new prospects, and you captured their contact information at registration time!
Plus, if you believe it’s critical for your no-shows to have that content, you can always record the webinar event (a free service provided by most webinar platforms) and send them a link to the recording in a subsequent nurturing email.
Now… will your webinar – done on the cheap, without benefit of a large cross-functional team – be any much worse than one done by a large firm with all those “advantages”? Perhaps… but I’m betting it’ll be much less so than your attendees will make allowance for, given your company’s size.
As Eric sums up, “The fact is, for a few hundred dollars and four hours’ worth of time, any company – regardless of size – can run a successful webinar.” We couldn’t agree more.
