©2024 Bob Hanson, Must-See Webinar System, bhanson@mustseewebinars.com, Text 617-901-6886.
How can you cut through the social media and digital marketing clutter and get the attention of B2B decision makers that profile like your best prospects?
What is a proven way to convert connections to clients with limited time?
Surveys of B2B marketing teams regularly show webinars are one of the top performing channels in the marketing mix for generating qualified sales leads and marketing ROI.
Webinars can also supercharge your marketing with video and content that can be repurposed across all digital and social channels.
Sadly, most B2B marketing teams make common webinar mistakes including…If your program is currently experiencing one or more of these mistakes, listen up!
My name is Bob Hanson and I got my start at an event marketing agency and co-creating a system called Seminars for Results™. With this system my partner and I helped enterprise software companies reach and influence decision-making executives. One program alone generated over $1.45 billion in qualified sales leads.
In my first gig as head of marketing for a B2B SaaS firm I was presented with a limited marketing budget, high executive expectations for quick wins, and then business stopped on a dime with the 9/11 tragedy.
In desperation, I turned to a different kind of event marketing, webinars. My first webinar crashed halfway through almost ending my employment. After a lot of trial and error, I “nailed it and scaled it” with a weekly webinar series in all stages of the prospect and customer journey.
With webinars, our company of 60 people dominated an enterprise software niche, created a list of 75,000 opt-ins on a shoestring budget, and multiplied sales 4 times within 36 months.
Since then, I’ve worked “behind the webcam” to produce and promote over 2,000 virtual events, webinars, and videos for dozens of B2B SaaS, healthcare and financial services firms of all types including leaders like GotoWebinar, Trend Micro, Infusionsoft, Fidelity, and LPL.
Over this 20-year journey I designed and perfected my Must-See Webinar System™.
The goal along the way was simple -- produce flawless events and videos every time and attract the target decision makers so that my clients turn their webinar program into a content marketing machine to gain mind share and market share.
A CNBC thought-leader in financial services was using seminars successfully and tried webinars and only got 20 registrants, 12 attendees, and one single sales lead. This was a big fail by the marketing team and the company was ready to scrap the channel. The team turned to me in desperation…
We picked another presentation and dialed-up the promotional messaging including the title. (The title is the primary reason prospects attend a webinar.) With the same promotional plan we attracted 192 registrants, 102 attendees, and 12 MQLs and $3 million in assets in motion within 7 days of the event.
At the next company meeting, the sales manager stood up and declared, “I love marketing!”
The company had a winning webinar and video to leverage again and again, and we also created a lead magnet White Paper out of the slides and transcript to re-purpose this further.
When planning the next event, marketers often skip right to the tactics and ask questions like…
Which webinar broadcast platform should we use?These are valid questions. The answers can depend on the type of event selected and the specific circumstances. I know getting the tactics right makes any marketing strategy look good, but strategy should come before tactics.
With webinars, the strategy starts with selecting the specific objective of your webinar/B2B video and where that fits into your buyer journey.
In-person conferences allow you to engage cold prospects, nurture existing relationships to opportunities, connect with customers, AND shmooze potential strategic partners.
In contrast, online events and webinars are narrowcasts and almost all successful webinars have one thing in common – marketers select a single, specific objective and build the marketing campaign and event/video entirely around that objective.
I’ve produced a lot of virtual conferences designed to fill the marketing funnel with new opt-ins and position the sponsor as a leader in the marketplace. Little selling takes place. We often use a panel of outside speakers and co-promoters with target email lists with subscribers who fit our ideal client profile (ICP).
For example, I recently helped launch a healthcare firm division into a new niche and we did one of these Top-of-Funnel Programs.
We engaged a non-profit to sponsor the program, used key opinion leaders (KOLs) as presenters and generated 2,000 virtual event registrants and 20,000+ YouTube views.
The sales reps prioritized these leads in their follow-up and the company went from unknown to credible players and achieved an amazing $50 million ARR for the division within 30 months.
Here's a simple chart with some of my webinars and where they fit into the buyer journey.
A great place to start is to select a mid-funnel webinar that any B2B solution, product, or services vendor can leverage to get more leads from their social promotions and marketing lists. (Move contacts in the Nurture segment to sales leads in the Convert segment.)
Your company probably has one executive or salesperson who does a great presentation for your lead product or service.
This is a ‘Ted Talk’ which gets your best presentation by your best presenter in front of your best prospects is called a Forever Webinar. It offers the immediacy of a live webinar.
The video version of the Forever Webinar can be available on-demand 24/7/365, when prospects are looking to buy.
A Forever Webinar is an evergreen content marketing program that sits at the center of your marketing process and social connections, website traffic, sales rep outreach, and email contacts are all funneled to this presentation.
Like a magnifying glass harnessing the power of the sun, this will spark a wildfire of prospect activity and an automated way of driving new trials and buyers.
Your own Must-See Webinar System should include a Forever Webinar in the mix.
The common formats for webinars are live events, on demand videos, virtual-live webinars which is a broadcast of a recorded webinar, and video content with live Q&A.
Focus on live events first and foremost when building your webinar program.
This will force you to prepare quality content.
You will gain audience questions that can then be answered in future webinars/videos.
Live events that ask for a response from prospects at a specific date and time create urgency to REGISTER NOW!
Your speakers will be rehearsed and at their sharpest when presenting live and you will have a great on-demand video that could be among your most profitable marketing assets.
Your Forever Webinar video can be your best salesperson available 24/7/365.
Videos of on demand webinars are the start of your content marketing machine.
With B2B marketers supporting twice as many channels as only five years ago it is critical to re-purpose winning webinars into new content in new media.
Here are seven examples of how webinars re-purposed can fuel digital/social marketing:
- Condense a 45-Minute Webinar into Shorts, Social Clips, and Website Videos
- Leverage the Transcript of Your Webinar into Social Posts, Blogs, White Papers
- Create FAQ Document of Audience Questions so Sales Handles Common Objections
- Re-Purpose Winning, Polished Webinars into Conference/In-Person Presentations
- Turn Successful Webinar Offers into Marketing Campaigns in Increase Conversions
- Re-Purpose Video Segments like Customer Testimonials in Other Webinars/Marketing
- Turn a Winning Webinar into a Series with New Audiences and/or New Content
This last insight is key. Most organizations think of a webinar series as new content to the same audience.
Savvy “webinarians” know our best webinar series for prospects follows the “Same talk, different audience” model like our Forever Webinar.
An evergreen webinar for prospects can get in front of new audiences, attract buyers for your product or service like a magnet, and skyrocket MQLs and webinar ROI!
In surveying, interviewing, or working with over 1,000 organizations over the years, one predictor of webinar success became obvious.
Success came from having one individual on the campaign, series, or webinar who was responsible, accountable, and (at least somewhat) skilled at the activity.
Webinar funnels have a lot of moving parts and require managing content, speakers, promotions, video editing, technology platforms, the audience, sales follow-up and conversion, etc.
Building a winning webinar funnel or series is not brain surgery, but we often throw an overworked, inexperienced marketer at the problem with little to no training and expect lighting in a bottle.
For example, most live webinars don’t have an assigned or experienced producer so they are hit or miss, speakers often appear unprepared, and the audience leaves early and/or fails to follow-up on the offer.
Sometimes I act as the “day-of” producer for a client’s webinar series and these events tend to go very well. In fact, one client said the events I produce were “as smooth as a hot knife through butter.”
Smoother process, bigger crowd, better presentation, engaged attendees = Instant Webinar ROI!
Now, you could try to hire a “webinarian” like me but most of the folks who have achieved webinar mastery have gone on to executive and marketing leadership roles so are not hands-on practitioners. If you can find someone, FTE is $150,000 to $200,000 all-in annual compensation.
Consider a fractional marketer like myself to support and/or train your team.
Here are three ways of engaging me as a coach or fractional marketer to jump-start your video and webinar results.
Option #1 is Must-See Webinar Training for Your Marketer
Individual training and coaching and support. Marketers gain my proven strategy and promotion frameworks, tools, and production checklists to jump-start their program. I also get hands-on in the marketing, planning and production of their next event to almost guarantee success.
Option #2 is Must-See Webinar and Video Production Services
Outsource your next webinar with fully-managed services. We usually start with the pilot event or project and build a series from there. Speakers will be prepared and give their best performance, attendees will be attentive, engaged, and take action. ROI on one of these programs can be 30% to 300% more registrants and leads than most companies can do on their own.
Option #3 - Your Own Perpetual Content Marketing Machine Fueled by Webinars
I have limited availability for a few fractional, ongoing clients 5 to 10 hours a week. I help create the program as the dedicated webinar team member and through a series of flawless events and videos. We also build winning promotions and re-purpose the content for you.
These are fun and companies have multiplied ARR fueled by these digital programs. Like...
With one of my ongoing relationships, we were out of budget at the end of the year, but we wanted to re-seed the list for the next year. The marketing manager selected the very topic that ended up being like hosting the annual iPhone launch for Apple users.
We recruited an outside speaker and five co-sponsors and generated 2,456 registrants without a dime spent on promotion. That new list of new opt-ins drove a 70% increase in sales for that product over the next 12 months and the veteran CEO said, “that program was the most successful marketing program I have ever seen in this market.”
Game changing benefits achieved with your own Must-See Webinar System can include:
Avoid the trial and error that we experienced creating a proven, step-by-step process developed and perfected over 20 years and 2,000+ webinars for over 100 companies in a dozen industries and has helped generate over $1 billion in B2B sales for a single company.
Jamie Dooley, VP Profitero, said, “We increased webinar registrants 38% with one simple tactic.”
David Patchen, SVP at Raymond James said, “Bob Hanson produces some of best content in our industry. Firms who follow his process will grow faster than their peers.”
Brian Symmons, SVP Marketing and Patient Experience at Natera said: “My sales team increased lead flow 300% in one week with Bob’s initial marketing campaign. He helped scale our webinar program in the pandemic by increasing attendance 12x within 90 days.”
Experience digital marketing results the easy way with the proven Must-See Webinar System framework and supporting promotions, videos, and webinars with the support of hands-on marketer and webinarian Bob Hanson.
Contact system creator and revenue marketer Bob Hanson by text, 617-901-6886, or email bhanson@mustseewebinars.com for a no-obligation consultation.
PS. One more thing, it may be important. Did you know that the typical B2B marketing team is supporting twice as many marketing channels as only 5 years? Do yourself and your team a favor by contacting Bob to see if B2B webinars done right might be the fuel you need to grow sales.
To request a No-obligation Consultation with system creator Bob Hanson, go here now!