Drive Interactivity and Engagement in Your Webinars

Transcription

1 FROM PRESENTATION TO CONVERSATION Drive Interactivity and Engagement in Your Webinars 1

2 AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT IS ESSENTIAL Webinars have become a top-tier marketing tool, with an ever-growing number of companies leveraging this powerful medium to generate and qualify leads. While highly effective, the use of webinars as a leading marketing tactic means that audiences have many webinars to choose from. Companies must therefore capture the imagination and attention of attendees or risk losing them to the competition. From 2012 to 2013, average webinar viewing time jumped nearly 40%, from 38 minutes to 53 minutes, according to ON24 benchmark research data. Our analysis suggests the increase is due to the growing use of tools aimed at delivering a more interactive and engaging audience experience. Increased levels of audience engagement result in longer viewing times and higher lead values. This correlation means companies must transform their webinars from presentations into conversations. Top Tactics to Fill the Funnel How effective are the following marketing tactics for you at generating new leads? Top Tactics to Accelerate Sales Cycle How effective are the following marketing tactics for you at cultivating leads to sales-qualified status? 100% 100% 100% 100% 90% 90% 90% 90% 80% 80% 80% 80% 70% 70% 70% 70% 60% 60% 60% 60% 50% 50% 50% 50% 40% 40% 40% 40% 30% 30% 30% 30% 20% 20% 20% 20% 10% 10% 10% 10% 0% 0% 0% 0% Webinars, Webcasts Telesales/Telemarketing Webinars, Webcasts Sales Enablement Telesales/Telemarketing Website Sales Enablement Seminars & Other Events Website Content Marketing Seminars & Other Events Search Engine Optimization Content Marketing Marketing Search Engine Optimization Marketing Telesales/Telemarketing Sales Enablement Telesales/Telemarketing Webinars, Webcasts Sales Enablement Content Marketing Webinars, Webcasts Seminars & Other Events Content Marketing Analyst Relations Seminars & Other Events Analyst Relations Highly Effective Highly Effective Somewhat Somewhat Effective Effective Not Very Effective Not Very or Effective Ineffective or Ineffective Highly Effective Highly Effective Somewhat Somewhat Effective Effective Not Very Effective Not Very or Effective Ineffective or Ineffective 2

3 54 MIN AVERAGE VIEWER TIME Webinars are ideal for creating an interactive environment, as audiences tend to be more comfortable online than they are in person. Attendees who might remain quiet in a live seminar are more likely to ask questions, share opinions, post ideas and answer poll questions in a webinar. This level of interactivity has multiple benefits: It broadens the reach of your messaging at no additional cost. Longer viewing times mean longer exposure to your content and messaging. 38 MIN PREVIOUS BENCHMARK Source: 2013 ON24 Benchmarks Report *Webinars averaged minutes in length The more engaged audiences are with your material, the more they will retain the content. It increases the number of marketing touches per event, enabling companies to offer more information to a customer or prospect in a single exposure. Increased interactivity provides richer data for lead scoring, enabling more targeted and effective follow-up. There is no right or wrong way to drive interactivity and engagement. The key is simply to do it. How? There are many tools available today to help you. In the following section we will examine four categories of tools available on most webinar platforms that will enable you to shift your webinars from one-way presentations to lively, engaging, interactive conversations. 3

4 TOOLS FOR DRIVING INTERACTIVITY AND ENGAGEMENT Q&A CONTENT DWNLD TWITTER SHARE > WEBINAR 81.20% 48.80% 35.50% 31.40% The adoption of interactive tools into the webinar experience has come slowly. Some tools like live Q&A and polling are fairly common, while other tools like social sharing and collaboration are still rarely used. > WEBINAR FACEBOOK LINKED IN GROUP CHAT SURVEY WIKIPEDIA IDEA GENERATOR YAMMER SALESFORCE CHAT 17.10% 9.80% 7.60% 7.20% 6.50% 2.80% 0.50% 0.20% 0.10% Usage of Interactive Webinar Tools Source: 2013 ON24 Benchmarks Report 1] SOCIAL SHARING TOOLS These tools enable audience members to share your webinars, with their social media networks. This greatly enhances the reach of your webinars by leveraging the power of your audience s social and professional networks, amplifying your message and content. SHARE THIS TOOL. The share this tool lets attendees choose from a number of social media applications to share your webinar s title, description and URL with friends and colleagues. Social sharing tools can be imbedded both in the webinar console and on registration landing pages to provide multiple opportunities for your audience to share your events with their peers. This increases the number of people exposed to your webinars. SOCIAL MEDIA. In the age of social media, people are habituated to broadcasting their every thought. If an audience member wants to highlight something said in your webinar, they will typically turn to social media to do it. By integrating social media applications like Twitter and Facebook directly into the webcast experience, attendees can share their thoughts about your content without leaving the webinar console. This keeps your audience members engaged with your webinar while enabling them to amplify your message and further promote your webinar. 4

5 QUICK TIP When using Twitter, choose a pre-determined hashtag, to encourage a focused social conversation. This also enables you to easily track and respond to audience comments. Retweeting audience comments can be a great way to increase your social connection with your attendees. 2] AUDIENCE INTERACTION TOOLS Engagement is highest when audience members are contributing to the conversation and interacting directly or indirectly with the presenters and each other. There are several tools to help enable this interaction. POLLING. Polls are a great way to capture the voice of the audience. Not only do they provide marketers with important information about attendee interests, they also enable the audience to compare their own experiences with those of their peers attending the webinar. Polls also provide valuable data for promoting on-demand webinars. When you get an interesting poll result, you can blast it out via social media channels and include a link to the archived webinar to draw in additional viewers. Live polling keeps your audience engaged. Provides useful data on the interests of your audience. Increases lead scoring capabilities. 5

6 Q&A. Enabling audience members to submit questions to the presenter during a live webcast is one of the most widely used tools, with more than 8 in 10 webinars incorporating it. With the ability to see who is asking each question, presenters can refer to people by name, making the interaction feel more personal. One new Q&A trend we are seeing is presenters answering questions throughout the presentation rather than waiting until the end, thereby increasing the level of interactivity during the webinar. APPOINTMENT SETTING. Enable highly engaged viewers to set an appointment with your company right from your webinar console. This is the pinnacle of marketing effectiveness. Our research shows that appointment attendance is higher when a prospect self-selects the appointment as opposed to appointments set from sales calls. SURVEY. Surveys are an ideal way to gather more information about each attendee, providing for better quality follow-up. They also help presenters consider the effectiveness of their webinars. Was the content on target? Was the presenter effective? Was the presentation beneficial? The more feedback you get, the better you can adjust your presentations going forward. 6

7 Survey Tips Keep your survey limited to just a few questions. The longer the survey, the fewer people will fill them out. Include a text box for attendees to add additional comments. There may be issues that you are not aware of that will get mentioned. Avoid survey questions that query for additional attendee data. Your audience wants to feel like you care about their opinions, not that you are just interested in their potential as customers. In addition to the commonly used closing survey, it can be helpful to push out a pre-webinar survey during the registration process. Surveys can be imbedded onto registrant landing pages, providing registrants with an opportunity to share their expectations of your webinars. This not only drives interactivity from the start, but it also helps presenters ensure that they are meeting audience expectation. 7

8 3] CONTENT DISTRIBUTION Your target audience is busier than ever, and competition for their attention is fierce. Marketers must therefore find ways to increase the number of marketing touches in each interaction. Content distribution tools are a great way to accomplish this. Here are two tools that do it well: QUICK TIP By strategically choosing the resources that you upload into the webinar console, you can ascertain the interests of your audience by examining which content pieces they did, or didn t, download. This could be useful in determining the next logical step in the customer journey. RESOURCE LIST. This is an easy-to-use yet critically important tool for marketers. With a resource list you can upload additional relevant content and make it available directly from the webinar console. Upload white papers, datasheets, case studies or anything that supports the topic of the presentation. Every piece of content is an additional marketing touch as well as a way to better understand and qualify leads. It is important that content be carefully selected and well targeted to the presentation; too much content will reduce the effectiveness of the resource list. VIDEO. Video increases both engagement and viewers retention of content. It also provides an opportunity to add additional content to a webinar. There are countless ways to incorporate video into the webinar experience everything from professional studio recordings to streaming of a live seminar to simply setting up a webcam, which can add value and help presenters better connect with audiences. Pre-recorded videos such as company overviews, product demos or other thought leadership content can be integrated directly into a webinar presentation to enhance your story. Video integration of any kind is a compelling way to increase the engagement with your audience. Webcams, live event streaming, studio and demos. Video = higher attention and responsiveness. More dynamic presentation of content and ideas. 8

9 4] GROUP COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION TOOLS Today s audiences are accustomed to sharing ideas and seeking feedback from their peers in real time. If they are engaged with your topic they will want to talk about it with other attendees a capability enabled by several powerful communication and collaboration tools. GROUP CHAT. Group chat allows audience members to interact directly with one another during a presentation, either anonymously or by name/ organization. Since comments are unfiltered, we recommend someone from the presenter s department monitor the chat to keep it on topic and clarify any misconceptions. There will always be one or two naysayers; a colleague can help re-direct the conversation into more positive territory. IDEA GENERATION. The idea generation tool enables group brainstorming, feedback and collaboration. Presenters can pose a question or topic to the audience; audience members can then answer the question, share their own ideas on the topic, comment on ideas from other attendees and/or rank the ideas and comments. Idea generation differs from group chat in that it is a more authoritative, focused forum for sharing ideas and getting feedback. 9

10 THE VALUE OF WEBINAR INTERACTIVITY Improved interactivity and engagement lead to increased webinar viewing duration, content retention and, through social media channels, broader reach of your content. Ultimately, more interactive webinars enable marketers to deliver better qualified leads to the sales department. By analyzing each attendee s viewing time, responses to polls and surveys, questions asked, content downloaded and comments made on social media or group collaboration tools, marketers can create a behavioral profile to better understand the interests of all webinar leads. Attendee profiles can then be scored to determine the next step in the marketing prospect cycle. Intelligent webinar lead scoring, based on interactive data, results in higher qualified leads and increased sales conversions. Create Behavioral Profiles Of Your Attendees Registration data. Viewing time. Social media engagement Questions Submitted. Interaction with polls, surveys and chat. Content download. SUMMARY. Delivering highly interactive and engaging webinars increases the value of your events for both you and your audience. Your attendees will retain more of your content and value your webinars as a trusted source of information. As webinar presenters, you will gain much more insight into the needs and interests of your prospects, resulting in a significantly higher lead conversion rate. There are many interactive tools to choose from. Figure out which engagement tools work best for you, and turn your presentations into conversations. 10

11 ABOUT ON24, INC. ON24, the virtual communications platform for the global enterprise, provides interactive, impactful cloud-based solutions that drive outstanding results. ON24 offers a broad and innovative product portfolio, including webcasting, virtual events and virtual environments, accessible from any device and supported by robust reporting and analytics. Applications for the ON24 platform include demand generation, partner enablement, virtual talent development, product launches, company town hall meetings and user conferences. More than 800 organizations, including IBM, CA Technologies, Merck, Unilever, JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, Credit Suisse, Ernst & Young, Amazon and SAP, rely on ON24. ON24 is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout the world. For more information, visit ON24, INC. 201 THIRD STREET SAN FRANCISCO, CA ON24, Inc. For more information on the benefits of the ON24 virtual environment, contact us at or visit