Lead Generation Basics: How to Connect with Webinar No Shows

One of the many benefits of working in the digital age is the convenience of using webinars as part of your lead generation tactics, online traininginitiatives, or collaboration efforts. Webinars are a great way to reach audiences of any size and in any location the world over. These live, online presentations, seminars, video conferences, or meetings allow real-time training and collaboration, no matter the location of the participants or the time of the meeting.

The Benefits of Webinars for Your Lead Generation Efforts

There are many benefits of webinars, in addition to the convenience they provide from a collaboration or internal training standpoint. One of the primary ways B2B companies use webinars is as a part of their corporate demand generation and lead generation efforts.

Webinars allow companies to present information on topics their customers and prospects are interested in as a way of developing a reputation for thought leadership and subject matter expertise. Webinars are also extremely useful for helping companies increase brand awareness, draw prospects to the company, and assist in the development of relationships that bring these prospects into the sales funnel for further nurturing.  Here are some key benefits of webinars for B2B lead generation:

1. Webinars are some of the most effective B2B lead generation tactics around, helping to build your sales pipeline and build relationships with prospective customers.
2. Webinars are incredibly cost effective, compared to other business development initiatives.
3. Webinars allow businesses to present information in a highly interactive, customized environment.
4. If desired, a webinar platform can provide the ability to share confidential documents and applications in a secure environment, with global participants.
5. In addition to giving your B2B lead generation efforts a boost, a webinar platform can afford you the ability to announce new products, expand PR and analyst relations, offer sales demonstrations, and perform important training.

Webinars are Awesome, But They Are a Lot of Work

Although webinars offer a quick and easy way to bring people together, and are an important part of B2B lead generation tactics for businesses today, there can still be a lot of work that goes into setting one up. A webinar organizer has much to focus on before the actual event takes place. There is messaging to develop and landing pages to design. There are invitations to send, registrations to collect, and event reminders to schedule. There is set-up, testing, production, and recording of the session itself and, of course, the distribution of a recorded session and any follow-up communication with the audience that might be necessary.

How a Professional Webinar Platform Partner Can Help

One way to handle all this work and to make your webinars the most successful they can be, is by using a professional webinar provider. This can relieve the pressure on you and your team and ensure the very best finished product or outcome every step of the way. When you partner with a pro whose job it is to handle all the little details to not only make you and your company look good, but to make sure your events are successful, it can eliminate a lot of headaches along the way. With a webinar platform partner, you can focus only on developing the very best content possible for the webinar itself, fine-tuning messaging, and hitting the important notes that will ensure a prospect sees an invitation to register for your event and can’t resist doing so, so as not to miss out.

Why Would Someone Miss a Webinar?

Speaking of missing out, it’s not at all unusual for someone to sign up for a webinar but miss the live broadcast of the webinar event itself. Studies show that out of everyone that registers for a webinar, approximately 34% will show up live. Why would anyone take the time to sign up for a webinar but then skip out on it?

While it might be discouraging when you have no-shows, the fact is, in most cases, it’s not because the person didn’t care or weren’t interested. It’s more likely because work got in the way and it wasn’t possible to take time to sit through your webinar event, no matter how compelling the content might be. We talk with customers all the time who sign up for a webinar with every intention of attending, but who simply weren’t able to make it. The great news is that those prospects are just as valuable to you before the webinar event as they were during the event itself, so don’t get discouraged. The beauty is knowing how to connect with those webinar no-shows and continue developing a relationship with them.

How to Connect and Follow Up With Webinar No-Shows

When it comes to how to connect with webinar no-shows, remember that they were interested enough to register to attend in the first place, which makes them almost as valuable as the folks who actually did attend the webinar. The key to success with these webinar no-shows is knowing what to do after a webinar—and again, that’s where working with a webinar platform partner can be incredibly valuable. They are pros at this, and can help guide and advise you along the way, ensuring success, with both webinar attendees and no-shows.

Here are some ways to connect and follow up with webinar no-shows:

1. Send a post-event email with the recording. After any webinar, send an email to all registrants, whether they attended or not. This will serve as a reminder to attendees of what they learned, and a reminder to those who weren’t able to make it of the topic they were attracted to to begin with.
2. Distribute webinar content on social media. A great way to follow up with both attendees and those who don’t show up is via your social media channels. You can do this in several ways, including running targeted ads. Be sure to encourage social sharing as well, by placing easy-to-see and easy-to-use social sharing buttons in your posts and/or on your webinar landing pages.
3. Keep the conversation going. Getting a prospect to register to attend a webinar event is but a first step in your relationship. You know what they are interested in, or at least you have an idea. Invite them to future webinar events, find and connect with them in social media channels, add them to your email nurture program and keep in touch.

Webinars can be an extremely valuable part of your B2B demand generation and lead generation efforts. But there are a lot of moving parts, and a lot of little details that go into making a webinar deliver the ROI that you seek. If you’re looking for a partner who can deliver the very best in webinar experiences, our team at Onstream would love to put our expertise to work for you. We provide the very best in webinar platform management and can help ensure your webinar events are successful in every way.