Webinars are one of the most effective methods for digital lead generation. Not only are they a vital source of digital data capture, but they can provide you with highly valuable insights into your target market, and provide a cost-effective way to engage with a truly global audience. This is why they’re such an intrinsic part of every successful online marketing campaign.
We have found that the most successful digital marketing campaigns all have a structured webinar programme in place; utilising different methods of content delivery, and providing different levels of information. The delivery methods and levels of information should be tailored to align with how far along your leads (your audience) are in the customer journey.
For example, brand new leads could be targeted with pre-recorded video content, available on-repeat and on-demand, as you need to nurture your new audience and progress them along the customer journey; it’s good to provide content that they can access in their own time, rather than expecting them to invest their attention at a specific time and date before the relationship has fully-formed.
By utilising a Q&A function and Downloadable Resources (such as product spec sheets and whitepapers) you will still encourage them to engage with your content – and your brand – enabling you to capture data and learn about their specific commercial interests.
If your audience is further along the customer journey, or if you already have a highly-targeted list of potential attendees, then you should be looking to incorporate fully live webinars with direct interaction and audience questions, or pre-recorded content that ends with a seamless switch to a live Q&A session.
This is a great method for capturing more in-depth information about your individual audience; such as their reason for interest in your content, their place in the market, their level of existing knowledge, and how far they are along the purchase-journey. It also provides a great opportunity to book a follow-up meeting when the webinar closes, and is an essential step in building lasting relationships with your leads.
The above webinar approaches are, of course, free of charge for the audience to attend, as you are looking to nurture them as leads, and progress them along the customer journey. Many organisations only ever promote free-to-attend webinars, seeing them as a vital tool in their marketing outreach, and a highly-effective way to raise brand or product awareness, and generate sales.
But what if there were a way to not only use your webinar programme to expand your marketing reach, raise brand awareness, and capture audience data; but to also use webinars and virtual events to directly generate revenue?
Pay-Per-View Webinars (commonly abbreviated to PPV) are a fantastic choice for those companies who regularly engage with industry thought-leaders, have a very high level of industry expertise within their company, have a network of industry-renowned customers and partners, or provide online training or CPD accreditation.
Another increasing use of PPV Webinars is for hybrid events; these are where you are hosting a live, in-person physical event, and those invitees who are unable to travel to the venue can pay for a ticket to watch the event virtually.
Whether you are running a PPV series of training webinars, live-streaming a hybrid event, or have organised a panel of industry thought-leaders to speak on a chosen topic, the content delivery (the type of webinar itself) works in exactly the same way as with all webcasts; where your content will be streamed direct to your audience via the fully-branded and custom-built console.
The difference is that, rather than signing up via a general registration page, your audience will be required to sign up via a gated registration page; which will have a payment system integrated into its set-up, so your audience can pay to view your content, safely and securely.
We can provide full integration with your payment registration system via API development, or you could choose to manage the payment process yourself, and simply send us the details of your pre-paid and pre-approved registrants.
Whichever payment route you choose, once an attendee is confirmed as having paid and been approved, then the webinar sign-up process flow would continue, and their access details and event reminders usual reminders would be emailed. What’s more, our highly-evolved reporting tools would then track their entire webinar journey, and capture each and every click, question and interaction – all available to view in real-time or for post-event download – to enable you to identify hot leads, to aid your post-event marketing, and steer your future engagement strategy.
Following your live (or pre-recorded) PPV event, it is important to keep the on-demand recordings gated as well. The most common way to do this is to provide your paying attendees with a user-specific password; this will allow them to access the on-demand recording at any time, but will remove the risk of the password being shared, or posted online for non-paying access. It is also common practice for the on-demand version of your PPV webinar to be made available to viewers who did not attend the live event, for a reduced ticket price.
With a 247 Webcasting webinar, you will receive a full 12 months of On-Demand hosting for your event, free of charge with your booking.
All in all, as long as your content offers your audience a reason to pay to attend your event, then Pay-Per-View Webinars can be a fantastic addition to your Digital Marketing Campaigns, and both enable you to generate additional revenue while strengthening your brand, and show you to be a true thought-leader in your industry.