The B2B Marketer's Guide to Webinar Lead Generation

Any experienced B2B marketer knows that lead generation is a crucial part of running a successful business. While B2C industries are beginning to catch up with the concept, it is no surprise that the strategy continues to be the bread and butter approach used by any business that sells its products or services to other companies.

Many components of your overall marketing platform, such as your social media strategy and website features and format, can be optimized to boost your lead generation stats. But one approach remains underutilized, despite being consistently named one of the most effective tactics for B2B lead generation: webinars.

WHAT ARE WEBINARS?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with webinars, they are web-based seminars, often one hour or less, that seek to educate audiences about specific subtleties and trends operating within a given industry.

Ideally, the main focus of webinars is to increase the expertise of participants within the particular industry—not to promote the company who is hosting the digital gathering. As such, webinars are an important part of content marketing: they establish the hosting company as a thought leader among its core target audience, which leads to increased brand awareness and credibility.

WEBINAR LEAD GENERATION

Webinars are set apart from many other forms of content marketing and thought-leadership marketing thanks to the unique lead generation process that they enable.

Have you attended a webinar about your industry? If you have, you know that doing so requires you to register before the event, ostensibly to allow the company holding the webinar to plan for how many attendees will be present. But this registration page also registers you as a contact in the host's database.

By attending the webinar, you clearly indicate your membership in the company's target audience, along with the interest to be kept up to date with industry trends. That makes you a highly qualified lead.

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DO WEBINARS REALLY WORK?

Of course, webinars come with a big caveat. Unlike most other forms of content marketing, they require more than just a few agency writers sitting down for a bit and simply coming up with great content for a blog post or white paper. Webinars need to be planned carefully, with a landing page and a registration page set up well in advance, rehearsals with the presenter and potential guests, and well-designed slides that capture and retain your audience's attention. These many moving parts compel the question: is all the effort really worth it?

According to research, the answer for B2B marketers is a resounding "yes." Marketers consistently rate webinars among the top five most effective marketing tactics, thanks to their personal touch, inherent association with the hosting company, and convenience for participants.

That last part is especially crucial. Research has shown that only 16 percent of B2B consumers prefer to watch webinars live, meaning that a recorded version will extend the overall reach of your webinars well beyond the first live broadcast. In other words, the many steps we outlined above will not just be for the purpose of a single live webinar. Instead, the recording will live on, generating leads well beyond its initial air date.

Since the web's early beginnings, webinars have been an important tool for B2B marketers because they cater to their audience's buying journey, which is often more prolonged and involved than that of its B2C counterparts. But the webinar’s most tangible benefit remains the lead generation process that it fosters, which can make a significant difference in your marketing strategy.