20 Aug
There is no better way for showing your leads that you mean business than hosting a good, informative webinar on a relevant topic. Here are our 10 quick tips for success.
Whilst revenues may have dropped for many companies throughout Covid-19, marketing budgets as a percentage of revenues are at an all-time high of 12.6%. This is a strong indication that during this pandemic companies are turning to their marketing teams with the mission of retaining customers and maintaining brand awareness.
Of course, savvy marketers have always been like Ninja’s. Agile enough to pivot when they come face-to-face with enemies. And in a world of social distancing, it is little surprise the swing to virtual events has been their best tactic.
Webinars are a great way to create high-quality, interactive content. From generating leads to on-boarding, webinars give marketers the power to have real two-way conversations with their audience. In fact, the technology sector is the highest producing industry for webinars so we may be telling you something you already know.
However remember there is many ingredients to hosting a truly successful webinar including personalisation, interaction and post event follow up.
If you’re planning a series of webinars here are 10 quick tips you should know.
1. 45% of marketers see emails as the most effective webinar promotion tool.
Emails are a great way to promote webinars. Recent surveys show that solicitations through email account for 73% of webinar signups. Also, consider your company website and blog since they too could deliver you up to 14% of the registrations. Webinar attendance statistics further indicate that social media such as LinkedIn could get up to 15% of webinar registrations.
2. 24% of all webinar registrations happen on a Tuesday.
Lure them in on a Tuesday but do not even think about bothering them with registration emails on weekends. Wednesdays and Thursdays come after Tuesdays with 15% and 16% of registrations, respectively. As far as Mondays go, even the best of us cannot really say we are crazy about them, though they are somewhat better ranked than weekends.
3. Send out your webinar emails early in the morning.
Surveys show that people rarely register to attend webinars, or any work-related event for that matter, in the afternoon. The best time of the day to send your webinar emails would be between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. If your goal is to score, aim for 9 a.m. which is the “happy hour” of webinar registrations with a 14% success rate.
4. 35% of attendees sign up between 1 and 7 days before the webinar.
The best time for webinars to be announced is two weeks before the official date or even earlier. The greater the promotional cycle, the better the results. 28% of attendees register 1 to 15 days before the webinar date, 26% register 8 to 14 days prior to the webinar and a total of 11% of attendees will register on the actual day of the webinar.
5. Thursdays are the best days for webinars.
Mondays are generally busy days at work so they are probably not the greatest day of the week to host an event. Thursdays are ranked as the most popular days of the week for organizing webinars with 19%. Wednesdays are a good choice since they are ranked lower than Thursdays by only 1%. Basically, any day between Tuesday and Thursday will potentially get you the traffic you need for your webinar.
6. 11 a.m. is the golden hour for webinars.
What makes webinars amazing is that you can connect to people from across the globe. Setting the best time to host a webinar, however, can be tricky, especially if you have participants from different time zones. It was traditionally believed that webinars should be held around noon. Recent statistics defy these numbers with rankings as high as 26% for 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. hosted webinars, with 11 a.m. webinars ranked at 32% as the absolute winner.
7. 60-minute webinars attract more attendees than 30-minute webinars.
General belief points to an hour as the optimal duration, some reports suggest that the longer the webinar, the bigger the crowd. In essence, 90-minute webinars are more suitable for sharing
presentations to attendees who wish to broaden their knowledge. 15 to 20-minute webinars have proven very successful, especially for start-ups aiming to integrate them on a more frequent basis.
8. Attendee viewing time is 61 minutes.
Webinar stats do not apply equally for live and on-demand webinars. Live events are viewed 55 minutes longer compared to on-demand webinars which are viewed for 42 minutes. The good news is that with the growing reputation of webinars, attendee viewing time is also increasing. More good news is that 94% of webinar hosts solve many of their problems by turning live webinars into on-demand webinars just by recording them.
9. Almost half of registrants convert to webinar attendees.
Webinar conversion rates show an average of 35% to 45% registrant-to-attendee conversion rate and believe it or not, this has been the steadiest benchmark for years. If your attendance rates are around 40% or higher give yourself a pat on the back and keep up the good work.
10. Most marketing webinars have up to 50 attendees.
Marketers prey on attendance rates like owls on mice. But even if they do their job perfectly, attendance rates may disappoint. 66% of marketing webinars have fewer than or 50 attendees and only 1% of marketing webinars have over 500 attendees.