SUCCESSFUL B2B LEAD GENERATION USING WEBINARS

Webinars. Since COVID-19 webinars are the alternative for organizing live events. We were able to switch quickly, but now the time has come to look back. Were our webinars successful? What went well and where can we improve?

WHEN IS A WEBINAR SUCCESSFUL FOR LEAD GENERATION?

One of the success criteria that we often find defined, is that the webinar itself is the goal. In doing this, we see marketers fall into the same traps they fell in when organizing live events (such as trade shows). The event is over and it was arranged to perfection. However, hardly any attention is paid to the follow-up. Is the number of registrations or attendees the measure of successful B2B lead generation?

Of course, it differs from organization to organization, if you perceive your event or webinar as successful. We believe that you should always link the success of B2B lead generation to your sales and marketing goals:

1. Generate leads that are really ready to be followed up by sales.
2. The contribution to the revenue (and pipeline) attributed to the event.

HOW DO YOU ENSURE SALES & MARKETING ALIGNMENT FOR YOUR WEBINARS?

Organizing a webinar is not very difficult. But being really successful with B2B lead generation is. And this starts with good collaboration between marketing and sales. That is why we share with you 5 tips in this blog to improve your marketing and sales alignment for webinars.

P.S. these tips are suitable for all forms of collaboration between sales and marketing.

1.      Determine a common approach. Organizing a webinar is a team effort.

What you often see when organizing a webinar is that both sales and marketing have their own role. On itself, that’s a good thing. Where marketing is very good at organizing and communicating the webinar, sales can tell the story very well (selling) to prospects. It is therefore good to be aware of everyone’s strength and to use that.

What you do want to prevent is that everyone does their own tasks (even with the best intentions). It is therefore important that you go through the entire process together and divide the tasks. Sales and marketing have their own role, but you do share the responsibility for the entire result. So both for getting registrations for your webinar, giving the webinar, but also following up on the webinar.

2.    Set common goals with shared responsibility.

In order to make this shared responsibility really concrete, it is important to agree on common objectives. Where sales are more focused on bringing in the euros, marketing may focus on getting new names. Both goals do not have to get in each other’s way but discuss what you want to achieve. Arguments can be made up of both goals, but look for the ultimate combination between them. So you create the 1 + 1 = 3 effect.

Don’t let the success of your webinar depend on one goal, but use multiple key performance indicators (KPIs) for this. For example:

• Number of registrations
• Number of new names
• Number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
• Number of quotations
• Number of deals

When measuring your success, also take the lead time of the buyer journey into account. If your buyer journey is relatively long, it will take longer before there are deals.

And when the number of deals is your ultimate goal, then calculate back based on your conversion rates. Then you know how many quotations, MQLs, registrations, etc. you will need to achieve your goal.

3.      Involve customers or experts in the webinar.

You are sales or you are not. One of the qualities is that you are capable of selling your solution. But this does not mean that sales will have to present the whole story. It is even more credible if you can involve a customer or expert in the webinar.

Some examples you can think of:

• One of your customers who shows what your solution has delivered for them.
• A guru in the market who talks about the latest trends and developments.
• An independent consultant who tells his story.
• An expert from your organization. For example, someone who has made the solution and can tell about it in an inspiring way.

4.      Work together on a sales-oriented follow-up. Integrate CRM and marketing automation.

Do you really want to get success from your webinar? That starts as soon as the webinar is finished. And that doesn’t end with sending a thank you email. Before you can start with the follow-up, it is important to ask sales:

What does an ideal lead from this webinar look like for you? What information do you need to know?

Once you have that information, you can start thinking together with sales about how to we gain that information. Is this information available in our CRM or is it already in our marketing automation? Don’t have this information yet? You can ask this information before the webinar, but also during the webinar with polls.

Do not underestimate the use of polls. Polls can provide very valuable data as long as it contributes to the follow-up.

Once you have received all the data, combine it with the lead scoring in your marketing automation. Then you can distinguish between the registrations:

• Leads that are interesting for sales. These leads are directly transferred to sales through CRM integration.
• Leads that are not yet ready for sales. You will nurture these leads in marketing automation based on the interests they have shown. This way you ensure that you are as relevant as possible and you do everything possible to transfer these leads to sales at the right time.
• Tip: It also provides insight into the leads that are not interesting anyway. It is a waste of your time to pay attention to these leads.

5.      Make a report for the results (and the improvements).

You arranged the entire process. The leads that are interesting are forwarded to sales. The shared responsibility does not stop here. Make sure there is a dashboard that provides insight into the entire webinar. From the number of registrations to the number of deals made by sales.

Is it going as expected? All right, but keep looking for improvements.

Are you not meeting your goals? Look at each part for improvements. Do this together with sales and marketing and think together about possible solutions. In the end, you also work together on the same goal.

Do you want to learn more about how to get the maximum ROI from webinars?

Watch the recording of our webinar ‘Let your webinar be the ultimate lead generation machine‘.