Considering that most webinars address a very specific topic relevant to a niche audience, they almost always attract high-intent leads. And when the quality of leads generated is high, converting them into paying customers should be a cake walk for any sales team.
But it isn’t as straightforward as attracting leads and immediately converting them into customers, is it!
The typical sales cycle involves another crucial aspect known as lead nurturing, which follows lead generation, and this is where the potential to convert them is tested.
In this blog, we will first walk you through what webinar lead generation is, the fundamentals of lead nurturing in webinars, and some of the best tried-and-tested webinar lead nurturing strategies, that will help you close more deals from your webinars.
Understanding Lead Generation: A Key Element in Webinar Marketing
Before we get into lead nurturing strategies for your webinar leads, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of what webinar lead generation is, so we can take appropriate measures to ensure effective lead nurturing.
Webinar lead generation refers to the process of attracting and capturing interest from potential customers (otherwise known as prospects or leads) for your products or services, by hosting webinars that address issues faced by your ideal customer profile.
Webinars play a vital role in this process by offering a platform to engage with your target audience and provide valuable content that addresses their issues.
Effective webinar lead generation strategies include several aspects like identifying your ideal audience, creating content that delivers value to them, inviting speakers that create impactful webinar experiences, and the incorporation of interactive elements during the webinar to increase engagement and encourage attendee participation.
Attendee engagement is crucial as it also helps in identifying leads, based on their level of interest and amount of interactions during the session. Identifying the most engaged attendees and the manner in which they interacted with your webinar content will help you nurture them accordingly, guiding them through the sales funnel towards conversion.
By understanding and implementing the right webinar lead generation tactics, you can effectively capture and nurture leads, ultimately increasing your chances of converting them into paying customers.
Importance of Webinar Lead Nurturing
Delivering an impactful webinar that grabs your audience’s attention and encourages them to participate in it is only half the job done. Nurturing the leads you generate by hosting the webinar can play a crucial role in maximizing your event’s returns.
If you are on the fence about implementing a post-webinar lead nurturing strategy, here are some reasons why you should look into it seriously:
1. Engage the Non-attendees
Post-webinar lead nurturing efforts help you re-establish communications with those registrants who signed up to your webinar, but couldn’t attend it for whatever reasons. It enables you to inform them that their absence was noticed, and that you wish to provide them with value despite them not being present at the webinar.
This, in turn, encourages them to build trust and credibility in your brand, to attend subsequent events you host and engage with your brand more actively, increasing the chances of them becoming a customer, eventually.
2. Prompt Prospects to Take Action
A solid post-webinar lead nurturing campaign empowers you to inspire decisive action from warm or hot leads. A reliable webinar platform will help you identify the warm/hot leads effortlessly based on engagement metrics- These are the attendees who showed maximum engagement and participation in a webinar, asked questions and interacted with the speakers, and leveraged multiple interactive tools on the platform to communicate their views and feedback, etc.
Your post-webinar lead nurturing campaign allows you to target these high-potential leads exclusively, and inspire them to take action towards becoming customers. Without a lead nurturing campaign after the webinar, you miss out on this golden opportunity to increase your webinar’s conversion rate!
3. Helps Build Brand Credibility
By following up with webinar attendees post-event and continuing to provide them with valuable resources, you stand out from the crowd.
Lead nurturing is all about helping prospects build a relationship with your brand in a way that they will choose to bring their business to you, instead of looking for alternatives.
Finding innovative ways to engage with them even after the webinar, in a way that adds value to them, can be a game-changer in boosting your brand image and encouraging them to think of you when they are ready to take action.
4. Increase Conversions Rates
Quite often, people attend business webinars when they have a certain pain point that is being discussed or addressed at the event. They relate with the topic and are looking for solutions that they can implement to overcome their challenges. This is why webinars are considered potent lead generation sources, because most attendees are high-intent prospects, who can easily be converted with the right follow-ups.
By engaging with them in a meaningful way and offering immediate solutions to their professional challenges, you can expedite the conversion process, and increase your revenue. With other marketing sources, the sales cycle can be much longer since you will have to build intent at every subsequent touchpoint.
Webinar Follow-up Strategies – Top Lead Nurturing Techniques
Ensuring that the leads you generate from a webinar are catered to properly, and nurtured in a way that they move along the sales cycle towards conversion seamlessly, involves a well-designed strategy.
Lead nurturing, when done correctly, can streamline your sales process and maximize conversion rates.
Here are some of the most effective webinar lead nurturing tactics for you to follow.
1. Audience Segmentation for Targeted Follow-ups
Sure, webinars are more effective than some other sources in attracting the right audiences, but it doesn’t automatically guarantee that every attendee will become a customer.
In fact, like with most marketing initiatives, it is wise to aim for the best outcome but to also be prepared for anything.
When it comes to post-webinar lead nurturing, always segment your audiences into separate buckets before sending out your follow ups. This is not only important to ensure a personalized experience for your attendees, but to also make sure that your follow up messaging is in line with their expectations and needs.
For instance, segregating your webinar attendees on the basis of their engagement levels during the webinar, will help you push the less active ones towards gaining a deeper understanding of your brand and your offerings. On the other hand, the more engaged audiences should ideally receive a follow up that encourages them to either get on a call with you where you can explore opportunities, or to sign up for a free customized demo of your product.
There are many ways to segment your audience depending on your business and event goals, your industry, your company’s offerings, etc. A basic audience segmentation includes parameters like age, demographic, profession/designation, location, and pain points.
Audience segmentation is crucial to post-webinar lead nurturing campaigns as it maximizes chances of success, which in this case is conversions, and also helps you convey the most relevant message to each attendee helping them build trust in your brand.
2. Deliver Continued Value
Now that you have segmented your webinar attendees into different buckets, your next goal should be to provide each segment with relevant value in your follow-ups.
One of the most effective post-webinar follow up channels is email. Remember to separate the ‘attendees’ from the ‘no-shows’ before you send your follow up emails, because your messaging will have to be different for each category.
Providing continued value, even after the webinar concludes, via your follow ups in a great way to communicate thought-leadership and professionalism to your attendees. This can be executed by including clips of the webinar, an infographic that summarizes the key webinar takeaways, exclusive free access to resources that are otherwise gated, a discount code for anyone that is ready to make a purchase, and many others.
Understanding your audience is crucial here because there is an ideal ‘value’ that each attendee seeks. Depending on your segmentation strategy, pick the one that they will appreciate the most and reach out to them with these exclusive post-webinar perks.
3. Include Relevant & Customized CTAs
When sending out your post-webinar lead nurturing follow up, don’t forget to include a Call-to-Action at the end of the email, customized to each one’s journey.
The trick is to be assertive without being pushy. Attractive but not spammy. Subtle yet inspiring action.
Make sure the CTA aligns with the segmentation bucket that each recipient falls under. Just like you cannot push a cold lead towards scheduling a demo, you cannot redirect a hot lead to download an ebook! Carefully worded and placed CTAs with the most relevant redirections can do wonders to your conversion rates – so use them wisely.
4. Post-webinar Surveys & Feedback Forms
Use post-webinar lead nurturing follow ups to also get invaluable feedback from your attendees. While this may not immediately lead to conversions, it surely can transform your understanding of your audience’s needs and the quality of your subsequent events.
Surveys and feedback forms give you access to things that you may not have considered in your post-webinar analysis. Your attendees will help you spot the areas that need improvement, so you can adapt your future webinars accordingly.
Don’t shy away from asking questions that will bring you genuine responses. Maintain a balance between open-ended and closed-ended questions, so your attendees don’t have to spend too much time or effort crafting their feedback responses.
Closing the loop on attendee feedback, by informing them when you fix or address a genuine concern raised by them, is sure to win their trust in your brand. Thanking them for their feedback which allowed you to improve the quality of your webinar can do wonders to your brand image.
As a lead nurturing tactic, this is an important one as it shows your leads, whether warm or cold, that you are a brand that values attendee feedback and that attendee experience is at the core of your webinars. This will encourage them to become repeat attendees, eventually giving you the opportunity to convert them at the right time.
Incentivize your attendees to complete the survey or feedback forms to encourage higher response rates, which in turn, will provide you with more valuable insights into their webinar experience.
Wrap Up!
These are some of the most effective webinar lead nurturing techniques, which can maximize your webinar conversions and ROI.
By segmenting your audience, creating personalized and valuable follow ups, including the most relevant CTAs in your follow up mailers, and seeking their feedback actively and incentivizing them for it, you can nurture leads effectively, increase conversion rates, and ultimately convert webinar attendees into loyal customers.
FAQ
Webinar follow ups are necessary for keeping the engagement going with your audiences, delivering continuous value to them, and moving them further towards becoming customers. Continuous interaction helps develop a strong business relationship.
A follow-up email should always start by thanking you, include the recording of your webinar, and provide extra resources including slides or relevant articles.
Effective promotion includes social media, email campaigns, blog posts, and paid advertisements. The messages should clearly show the benefits of attending the webinar.
