Best Practices in using webinars to generate leads

Management Summary:
Webinars can be very effective and efficient small business lead generators. To maximize
your return on investment, target narrowly, develop rich and specific content that
addresses small business pain points, promote strategically, and react on the data
immediately. Expect leads in the tens and hundreds but anticipate the high relative
conversion to sales rates.

The Facts
SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS‟ PERSPECTIVE
According to Warrillow research, 23% of small business owners have ever attended a
webinar related to their business.
Owners of larger small businesses (20 to 99 employees) were 41% more likely to have
participated in a webinar. Younger (operating less than nine years) and higher-growth
businesses (revenue growth of at least 25% in the last year) were also twice as likely to
have attended a webinar.
Owners of “intellectual” services businesses (such as consultants and professionals in the
IT, finance and legal fields) are potentially better targets for a webinar lead generation
program. This industry-sector difference was confirmed by several marketers we spoke
with, who speculated that owners in certain sectors such as manufacturing and distribution often tend to be “old school” and technology-averse. Rob Solomon, CEO of Bulldog
Solutions, a top provider of lead optimization solutions, also finds it is challenging to
motivate physicians to participate in “live” webinars based on their work schedules, so
shorter content that is offered “on-demand” tends to be more effective. Also, in some
industries, such as technology, webcasting has become completely mainstream.
These significant differences in behavior based on industry sector may also explain why,
while 30% of male small business owners had ever participated in webinar, only 17% of
female owners had done so. (According to our data, male entrepreneurs are more likely to
own businesses in professional, business and technical services.)

B2b MARKETERS‟ PERSPECTIVE
In 2008, the majority of large enterprise marketers we surveyed planned on allocating at
least some of their small business budget to webinars. Just over one out of four did not
plan on using webinars at all this year, while only 2% planned on decreasing their spend.

The Benefits
Access to a broader addressable market (the majority of small business
owners are online)
A shortened sales cycle (registration forms and polling allow you to
measure the purchase interest level of your audience and rank your
prospects based on readiness to buy; real-time nature of the medium enables
quicker response)
A longer “shelf life” (webinars can generate leads for extended periods of
time, sometimes for 12 months or more after the event)
The elimination of out-of-office costs, such as travel
Greater flexibility (for “live” webinars, content can be tailored to the
audience based on registration profiles; webinars can also be formatted to be
viewed on portable devices)

FORMAT
A survey by the Aberdeen Group found that 70% of executives preferred “on-demand”
webinars which they could access at their leisure. Small business owners generally deal
with significant time management issues, so motivating them to show up for an hour-long
“live” webinar on a specific day and at a specific time may be challenging. Many of the
small business owners we spoke with advised that webinars would be more beneficial if
they “were downloadable so they can be reviewed again”, “were offered more than one
time, in the evening”, and “if we can click in when we want to get it.”
“Live” webinars, however, generate a sense of urgency, and as the medium becomes more
and more prevalent, creating excitement about your online event will become increasingly
important. Several marketers we spoke with recommended sending two e-mail reminders
with a creative, benefits-oriented subject line before the “live” webinar to keep the event on
the target‟s “radar screen”.
Another strategy to generate excitement is to focus on the “exclusivity” factor inherent in
“live” webinars in that attendees have a one-time opportunity to interact with the panelists.
This perceived benefit will be greater if the panelists include a well-known expert or a small
business luminary.

Return on Investment (ROI)
CALCULATING THE ROI
A simple way to calculate ROI from webinars would be to use the following formula:
Figure 4: ROI for webinars

Number of leads created x lead conversion rate to sales
x average dollar sale = Total dollars genterated / Cost = ROI

Return on Investment (ROI)
CALCULATING THE ROI
A simple way to calculate ROI from webinars would be to use the following formula:
Figure 4: ROI for webinars

The Challenges
Marketers we interviewed identified several key challenges relating to webinars as an
effective lead generation technique. These include:
Formate – do I need to produce a “live” webinar or can I simply record and
archive “on-demand” webinars?
Promotion – where should I go to advertise a webinar to maximize reach?
Differentiation – how do I cut through the clutter so that my webinar
invitation stands out, and how do I motivate small business owners to “raise
their hands” and provide key profiling information during the registration
process?
Content development and presentation – which topics resonate the most
with small businesses, and how should the content be presented?

© 2008 Warrillow & Co.
Warrillow & Co. specializes in helping Fortune 500 companies ‘get inside the head’ of a small business owner.
Visit: www.warrillow.com