Whether you’re a Marketer in accounting, law, management consulting or executive search, there are opportunities to utilize the webinar as a key component of your demand generation and awareness strategies. With experts estimating some 57% of the decision making process being complete BEFORE a buyer engages with your business development team, content marketing has never been more important. While each industry vertical inside of professional services has their individual nuances, the methodology behind professional services webinars is the same. Whether you’ve got a robust, current webinar program, or are strategizing how to get one off the ground, here are 7 Pro Tips to help you get to the next level:

1.  Video is King – Chances are you’ve already heard the following statement from Forrester’s Dr. James McQuivey: “a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words” on the internet. While currently, the vast majority of webinars are audio/slides format, in the past 12 months we’ve seen tremendous uptake in bookings at The Streaming Network studios – proof positive video is finding its way into more and more webinars. There’s no better way to make a quality impression than with a professional, thought leadership webinar, and a polished, studio environment is a must have if you truly want to stand out from the crowd.
2.  Plan Evergreen Content – The purpose of your webinars is to raise awareness of your organization and its thought leaders, and influence pipeline. When planning content, consider the “evergreen” component: 6 months, 12 months, even 18 to 24 months down the road, will your content piece still be working for you? Is my subject matter relevant enough that I can re-run this webinar every quarter to help drive increased registrants and attendees? How about an archive webinar on my website? Can I slice and dice short video clips from the webinar to post on social media and drive prospects to register? All of these are important questions to ask yourself when planning your content – the best content has the longest shelf-life.
3. Don’t Sell Your Service, Sell Your Expertise – The market is full of self-serving content – “pick me, pick me” or “we’re the best, no need to consider the rest.” And while this is certainly the internal attitude you need to have in a competitive market, educated buyers see right through this and prefer quality content. The best professional services webinars allow your subject matter experts the opportunity to do what they do best – talk about the things they’ve spent years mastering. The buyer wants to see your speaker in action, so a round-table or interview style webinar is the perfect way to show your understanding of vital issues in your prospect’s world. And don’t forget the cross-selling application – for example, maybe someone already working with your IP practice group is considering a cross-border move and needs Human Resource Law advice. Promoting webinars to your current clients is a great way to organically influence pipeline.
4. Let Your Participants Connect Direct with your Thought Leader – Here at The Streaming Network, our President Matt Ley handles the creation of our thought leadership content. And while people do reach out to him personally after every webinar, the vast majority of follow up is from people like myself in Sales. However, in Professional Services, the buyer quite often wants to be courted by the lawyer, the accountant, the consultant – not a business development rep. Giving your participants the ability to email or connect direct on LinkedIn with your thought leader is essential – especially when the buyer has an urgent need. They’re going to work with the first firm they can connect with who seems to have the ability to resolve their issue, so give them the opportunity to get in touch with the right person at their earliest convenience.
5. Ask Attendees Direct; Are You Ready to Speak With Us? – You’ve developed content and ran a webinar with the intention of driving leads. And while lead scoring, or engagement indexing is a necessity, with 35% of North American Marketing Webinar attendance between 200 and 500 last year, that’s a lot of data and a lot of follow up. The absolute best way you can ascertain your attendees interest in your firm is to flat out ask them – are you ready to speak with us? Set this up as a poll and watch the magic happen! The people that answer yes, pass their info along to the lawyer, or accountant, to follow up direct. The rest you send to business development to determine follow up, or you automate the process with lead scoring and your CRM/MA platforms. The key is your professionals get to speak with Sales Qualified Leads, without the need to filter through dozens of participants who do not need that level of engagement yet, and look to secure billable hours or a retainer.
6. Slice and Dice and Aggregate – If you read my most recent blog post, “Using a Meeting Tool to Deliver Your Webinars? You’re Leaving a lot on the Table,” this tip is not news to you. For everyone else, aggregation and promotion of your on-demand content is vital to your long-term success. Our top performing customers have over 1,000 viewers per webinar, and over 55% of their total audience comes from on-demand. It’s common for Marketers to be concerned that advertising their on-demand content will cannibalize live attendance, however, our top 9% are the proof in the pudding, and this is just not true. First off, create a content portal on your website to house all forms of digital content: long format webinars, short format videos, case studies, white papers, infographics, etc. You’ll drive the “Netflix effect” binge watching by aggregating your content in one easy-to-navigate content portal, like Video, Vidyard or Uberflip. Second, slice and dice your long-format webinars into 90 second teaser clips and post them to social media with a bit.ly URL in the video description to drive prospects back to your on-demand webinar registration. In short – plan evergreen content, make archives prominent, slice and dice and promote – you won’t regret it!!
7. Analyze Your Engagement Data – With ’s Elite webinar tool, over 24 pieces of data are available on each webinar attendee. While we talk at length with prospects about the value of lead scoring and automating your data flow, the secondary benefit to all this data relates to self-reflection. If you’re 3 months into your program and you’ve run 3 webinars, what is your average engagement score on each? What did you do differently on the webinar with the highest engagement score, or on the lowest? What should you repeat, and what should you change? One of our legal clients reached out to us after a particular series of webinars for our opinion on a problem – a high percentage of participants had only stayed for 3 to 5 minutes, a stark difference compared to their average viewership duration. We dove in to the data and quickly realized almost every single one of those participants had downloaded the PowerPoint deck and immediately left the webinar. They were providing such great content, but people were content (no pun intended!!) to review the content (really need to expense a thesaurus soon) themselves. We recommended they make the deck available for download at the end of their webinar, and their viewership duration numbers returned to normal.

Marketing departments at Professional Service organizations are rapidly evolving, and adopting traditional marketing strategies to drive demand for their services. Webinars are one of the most cost effective demand generation tools in your arsenal, but your ultimate success lies in the details: does my content stand out, does my webinar platform showcase my brand or theirs, how do I know who needs us now, and who needs us in 6 months, how do I drive Sales Ready Leads as efficiently as possible, how do I draw straight lines to show ROI, etc.

Whether you’ve already got a program going, or are figuring out where to start, myself and the entire team of Producers and Customer Success Managers at The Streaming Network are here to help get you where you want and need to be. Please feel free to email me at phowser@the-streaming-network.websitepro.hosting to discuss how we might be of assistance.