We’ve previously discussed the importance of forecasting revenue with realistic goals. As we know, revenue is calculated by subtracting your costs from your profit. How else can you increase webinar ROI?
Simple. Reduce the costs of your webinar production and implementation.
I’ve put together a few simple strategies you can follow in order to get the most out of your webinar strategies.
1. Increase Webinar ROI With Automation
Look at what you’re doing manually. Is there anything that can be automated?
List out the tasks you do manually, then review your CRM or webinar platform and see what can be automated using the platforms you already have.
For example, we’ve discussed promotional strategies such as email marketing. Most email marketing platforms, such as ActiveCampaign offer a ton of automation options such as:
- Invites
- Confirmations
- Reminders
- Follow-ups
Think of the time you’re already saving using multiple automations for your email marketing campaigns. You likely shave off 8-10 hours of labour for every webinar event you market.
Think of the ROI that you’ve earned your business.
2. Develop Simple Processes
Similar to automations, you should have a process in place wherever you can. This way, you and your team won’t be starting from scratch every time you plan a webinar.
For example, have a basic plan or conversational template for your speaker to follow. It reduces the planning time for individual webinars and keeps everything on track, including answering helpful questions for interested leads.
What about planning out your webinar? Do you want to start from scratch every time? That’s just not profitable.
Instead, have a week-by-week plan to stay on track and within budget.
Get some inspiration by checking out our 8-Week Guide to Planning A Webinar.
3. Focus On The Profit Equation
Are you using the same webinar for every stage of the funnel? If so, then your business is missing an opportunity to nurture leads effectively.
Leads fall into one of three stages in a marketing funnel:
- Top (the awareness stage)
- Middle (the consideration stage)
- Bottom (the decision stage)
Those leads progress through the funnel (also known as the Buyer’s Journey) with proper nurturing, evolving into market-qualified and then sales-qualified leads.
In order to increase your webinar ROI, each webinar should provide value relevant to the leads’ stage in the funnel.
Always promote the on-demand webinar to your webinar attendees and registrants who didn’t show up. It gives both parties a chance to view your content on their own time.
You can read our blog on generating webinar viewers to understand how you can sound as relevant as possible.
Don’t follow the same webinar styles used over 10 years ago.
Switch it up with speakers in an interview setting, ask questions, offer lead magnets. Find new ways to keep your viewers engaged throughout your webinar.
4. Where is the Actual Value for Viewers?
Let’s say that you have already created your brand awareness content at the top of the funnel.
What’s next?
Now that they know who you are, they want to see how you can help them. If you’re not sure what your webinar content should entail, talk with your business development or sales team.
They are a wealth of information as they deal with prospective leads all the time.
Your friends over at the business development department become very good at identifying and addressing pain points. Most likely, your webinar attendees share the same pain points and obstacles.
Sit down with them to curate a list of webinar topics you can discuss over your production timeline (aim to have a calendar with at least three months of webinar planned out).
Alternatively, look at what your most popular lead magnets and assets are. Maybe you have a few case studies that resonate well with your website visitors.
Turn that content into a webinar.
5. What Are Top Performers Doing?
It is understandable that large enterprises with bigger budgets are able to produce quality webinars that attract 1000+ live and on-demand viewers per event.
However, that’s not their only advantage. Start implementing two of their tactics in order to increase your viewership and increase webinar ROI:
- The Netflix Effect: Combine all your webinar content in a playlist for your hub, website, or YouTube channel so that leads can access everything in one place and start binging your webinars.
- Snackable Style: Identify parts of your webinar that have relevant and evergreen content. Repurpose these sections into a promotional social media video that you can share among your leads.
Use our Multimedia Hub to house and edit your webinars for snackable content.
Let’s Recap:
We want to get the most from our webinar strategies, and especially want to increase webinar ROI. In order to do that you have to look at what you can do differently.
- Your highest webinar costs will be labour and production: Automation and processes help you to spend fewer marketing dollars on manual tasks and more time preparing for a successful webinar.
- Is your webinar content resonating with what your leads are looking for? Spend time with your sales team and outline all existing pain points within your prospective leads and address them in your next webinar series.
- Leverage tactics used by enterprises such as The Netflix Effect. Combine your content in an easy-to-view playlist, then create snackable bites to repurpose and promote your playlist.
Follow these strategies in order to reduce labour and production costs while increasing your ROI.
Interested in learning about how to optimize your webinar program?
Download The Smart Marketers Guide To Webinar ROI and start getting in front of as many marketing-qualified leads as possible.
