How should you structure your webcast strategy? What are some best practices to plan a successful campaign?

1. Webinar Preparation and Measuring ROI
PREPARED BY BORIS JOVIC

2. Highlights
Developing a webinar promotion strategy requires an understanding of your audience. The best way to generate high
attendance is not to sell the audience on your product - you do not want to do an explicit sales pitch - instead, you want to
educate the audience on an industry problem, trends and forecasts, and how problems can be solved. Identify what is
most relevant and craft webinar content based on that.
Before you begin planning you have to establish KPI’s you will measure and track, KPI’s are important indicators of
success and will enable you to track success and improve future webinars.
In the planning stage, there are many considerations to make. Three such considerations are:
• Topic - is your topic relevant and timely? Will your audience engage with the topic?
• Logistics - what is the best time and date for your webinar? What platform are you using?
• Promotion - how will you promote your webinar and what channels will you use? Ensure your email, landing page,
website and third-parties employ best practices for the most effective promotion.
Following the webinar you will need to evaluate the campaign. Three considerations to include are:
• Re-Evaluate Objectives - did you meet, exceed or fall short of your objectives? Was the topic and speaker relevant?
Did you inform/educate your audience?
• Metrics - Analyze the metrics you identified were most important. This information should be used to improve future
webinars.
• Follow-up - perhaps the most important step post-webinar. An effective follow-up strategy included clear call to
action, audience takeaways, and following up 24-48 hours after the conclusion of the webinar. Additionally, leads will
come to watch a recorded webinar (on-demand), so making your webinar available on-demand is essential.
Brands need to focus on being a thought-leader by delivering the right content to consumers. Building trust is the best
way to retain loyal customers.

3. Webinar Best Practices
Plan
Properly planning for your webinar is vital to your success. Make sure you are using the correct platform that meets your needs.
Educate
The best webinars are ones that educate your audience on the topic you at hand. Use industry experts and good content to
engage your audience and encourage attendance.
Set objectives
What is the purpose of your webinar? To educate? To inform? To announce an event? Knowing what your objectives are will
ensure your message is crafted to your audience.
Set Expectations
You have to set measurable expectations from your webinar - how many participants, retention rate, attendance, and post-
webinar engagement are you expecting? Base your expectations on past performance to make it more predictable.
Promotion
What is the best channel of promotion for your brand? If you rely on partners to market and sell your offering, use your partner
channel to promote. Social media, website and third-party publishers need to be used to ensure the highest attendance rate.
Email and Landing Pages
Email is the best way to promote webinars, with a 48% success rate. Creating compelling emails with a catchy title, content,
expert speaker, and a clear call to action will encourage conversion, Landing pages should not require more than 4 form field to
register. Offer your audience a take away, such as a white paper or case study following registration.
Measure ROI
Did you meet your objectives? What KPI’s are most important? What can you do to improve? Analyze the data available and
improve your next webinar using past performance.
BEST PRACTICES

4. Webinar Timeline
BEST PRACTICES
Plan
8# of weeks 6 4 2 Webinar Follow up
Schedule
and
preparation
Promotion
and begin
audience
registration
Rehearsal
and content
finalization
Track metrics and
analyze data

5. 1 2
Post-Webinar
Re-Evaluate Objectives
Metrics
Follow-up
Table of Contents
Plan
Topic
Logistics
Promotion Channels
WEBINAR PROMOTION AND MEASURING ROI

6. 1
WEBINAR PREPARATION
PLAN

7. Objectives
Interaction of OTTO, industrial robot
Generate quality leads using a webinar
Webinar preparation 4 weeks from webinar day
3 consideration in the planning phase
3 evaluation criteria following the webinar campaign
PLAN

8. Educate, Don’t Sell
Webinars with the highest registration click-through-
rates (CTR) focus on educating the audience on an
organizational problem, the industry, trends, and
forecasts. Tailoring your webinar topic to be
educational will yield better CTR and a higher ROI,
saving you marketing dollars and time.
PLAN

9. Topic: Relevant and Timely
Relevant topics engage the audience. Analyze what is happening
in the industry - is there a particular problem customers are
facing? Is the industry experiencing changes?
Determine what your topic will be, but keep in mind your end
result - generating leads for your product or service. At the end of
the webinar, relate what was said to what your company offers
and provide a clear call to action that leads to your website.
Customer engagement post-webinar is important because it leads
to engaged leads that the sales team can follow up with.
PLAN

10. Promotion and Back-linking
Owned
Website
Blogs
Email
Paid
Paid Social
Syndication
Email programs
Search Marketing
Earned
Social
Media pickup
Influencer mentions
SEO
Promotion can be done using any number of channels. Email marketing, website and
blogs, the owned media channels, are the least expensive option. The paid option such
as social and SEM yield a higher CTR and increase website traffic if done correctly.
PLAN

11. Webinar Logistics
The best days to host your webinar are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Why?
Customers are typically busiest on Mondays and Fridays are spent playing catch-up on
what was missed during the week.
In North American, you should schedule your webinar for 2pm EST (11am PST), that way
you catch the audience after lunch in the EST time zone, and before lunch in PST.
The day and time do depend on the audience, however. If, for example, most of your
audience is in Europe, you have to be sure to host the webinar during business hours.
That means you would have to host the webinar early in the morning, or, in some cases,
late at night.
The platform you use it also important. Ensure the webinar platform can handle the
number of registrants. If you are presenting a slide deck, or doing a demo, you will need
a reliable internet connection. Make sure to test everything before the live webinar.
PLAN

12. WEBINAR PREPARATION
WEBINAR FOLLOW UP
2

13. KPI’s You Need to Track
Conversion from page views to registrations
Registrations
Attendance
Engagement scoring
Recording views
Post-webinar next step
Content consumed live
Social shares
Thought-leadership advancement
Sales
FOLLOW UP
The mentioned KPI’s are not exhaustive.
Depending on the objectives you set you
could track different metrics. Set
benchmarks objectives, and realistic
expectations to ensure your webinar
achieves what you set out to do.

14. Average Webinar Metrics
FOLLOW UP
34-50%
25-33%
<25%
Excellent
Undeperform
On Target
CTR Performance Avg. Live Attendance
Rate
35.1%
Registrant to Attendee
Conversion
42%
53 minutes
(avg length)
25% of registrants
watch on-demand
Source: http://www.rightmixmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ON24-webinar_benchmark.png

15. Re-Evaluate Objectives
What objectives did you set? Did you meet or exceed those objectives?
Did you fall short of them?
To be effective, set objectives that are measurable:
Attendance rate
CTR
Conversions
Did you inform/educate, or did your webinar come off as too “sales-y”?
FOLLOW UP

16. Re-evaluate Objectives
Objectives should be set so that you are able to easily track and measure them. If you
are expecting 90% Attendance vs. Registration, you will likely fall short of your
objective. Moreover, your expectations should align with your objectives - depending
on how you’ve segmented your customer base, webinar topics will range and will
attract a range of attendees. Knowing your expectations and objectives are achievable
will give you better results.
Know the industry benchmarks and webinar benchmarks. These will help you get a
better sense of what to expect.
Realistic expectations mean that you can cater your webinar message to your
audience better. Working with the presenter and communicating the objectives is
instrumental to success.
FOLLOW UP

17. Metrics
What metrics are you tracking?
Attendance Rate, CTR, Registration, Conversion and Revenue are all measurable.
Using past metrics to forecast current ones will help you with preparing for the
webinar.
The objective of a webinar is to gain brand recognition and loyalty while delivering
high value to the audience. This benchmark can be regarded as High Performance-
High Impact.
FOLLOW UP

18. Follow Up
What do you want the audience to do after the webinar,
and what are you going to do in order to ensure this
happens?
On-demand viewing metrics indicate post-webinar
interest and this is where the biggest opportunities for
content marketing come. You can maximize by drip email
marketing to your audience for greater brand awareness
and interaction. Being present in the customer’s journey
FOLLOW UP

19. Summary
Webinar marketing strategy consists of planning correctly so the webinar runs
efficiently and you generate the highest ROI. Because the webinar is for OTTO, a
new industrial robot, creating an engaging topic that does not overtly sell to the
audience is fundamental in retaining a high participation rate. Employing an
industry expert that analyzes a current problem and provides solutions - in the
form of OTTO - is beneficial.
Planning your topic, logistics, and promotion channels will lead to webinar
success.
Following the webinar you have to track your metrics and re-evaluate the
objectives you set out. Use the available data, the attendance, registration,
retention rate, in order to formulate strategies for your next webinar. Look at
industry benchmarks and work to achieve those, or to exceed. If you fall short,
the data will enable you to improve for the next webinar.
SUMMARY