Do you feel like you’re not getting the most out of your B2B webinars? You spend weeks preparing, only to have a handful of people show up, and even fewer turning into good prospects for sales. It’s pretty frustrating. Well, buckle up, because we’re about to flip the script on everything you thought you knew about webinars.
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Justin Zimmerman on the B2B Playbook podcast. Justin’s not your average marketing guru – he’s a partnerships expert who’s cracked the code on turning webinars into serious revenue generators. And let me tell you, his approach pretty damn interesting.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “George, I’ve heard all the webinar tips before.” But here’s the thing – Justin’s not talking about better slide decks or snazzier presentations. He’s talking about a fundamental shift in how we approach webinars altogether.
The secret? It’s all about data collection and attribution. I know, I know – not as sexy as “10 Ways to Boost Webinar Attendance,” but stick with me here. By the end of this article, you’ll understand why this approach could dramatically increase the ROI of your webinar efforts, even if only a fraction of your registrants actually show up live.
So, are you ready to revolutionize your B2B webinar strategy? Let’s dive in and explore how you can start turning your webinars into a powerful demand capture tool.
As per usual, you can watch, listen to, or read the episode below!
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Why Your Webinars Aren’t Delivering Results
If you’ve ever found yourself burning the midnight oil to perfect a webinar presentation, only to face disappointingly low attendance and engagement, you’re not alone. Justin Zimmerman, our webinar expert, paints a vivid picture of this all-too-common scenario:
“Raise your hand if you’ve been up at 12 o’clock at night, midnight, the night before a big webinar, busting your, you know what, to finish the slide deck… Then you do all that work and then 50 people show up, and you’re just like, oh, my God”
Justin Zimmerman – The B2B Playbook – [00:02:30, 00:02:50]
This frustration stems from what Zimmerman identifies as the two main risks in traditional webinar strategies: getting people to show up and delivering a compelling call to action. The problem? Even on your best day, you’re likely to see only 50% attendance, with the average hovering around 25%. This means that by focusing solely on live attendance and in-webinar conversions, you’re potentially missing out on 75% of your registered audience.
Zimmerman argues that this approach is fundamentally flawed. If you can’t get people to show up, they can’t hear your call to action. If you don’t know who is on the webinar and you have your call to action dialled in, you’re not going to get the follow up. In other words, by putting all your eggs in the attendance basket, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and missing out on valuable opportunities to engage with a significant portion of your interested audience.
Shift Your Webinar Mindset: Think Media-First
Most B2B marketers approach webinars as just another content delivery task. But to unlock their true potential, you need to shift your mindset and think like a media company. Justin recommends you should think of yourself as:
- A media company first
- A demand gen and advertising company second
That’s when you start to change the game and you attract partners who want to partner with you. I can say first hand that operating The B2B Playbook as a media company first has enabled us to attract partners with audiences and reach far more powerful than ours.
By treating webinars as media events, your focus shifts from simply filling seats to capturing attention and collecting valuable data. This approach allows you to engage with your audience in a more meaningful way, ensuring that your webinars do more than just deliver content – they build connections and drive business outcomes.
This shift in perspective also opens up new opportunities for growth. When you treat your webinars as media events, you create a flywheel of engagement, where partners and influencers amplify your reach, leading to higher registrations and greater impact.
The Power of Partnerships for Webinars – Leverage Influencers and Businesses
Partnerships are SO important when it comes to driving traffic, engagement and registrations for your webinars. Collaborating with influencers and complementary businesses allows you to tap into new audiences and increase your reach. As Justin Zimmerman explains,
“There are plenty of them [Thought Leaders and Influencers] out there who aren’t monetized, and if you can come up with a great value proposition… get four or five of them together because they have courses, they have consulting, they have side projects, they want to build their newsletter list”
Justin Zimmerman – The B2B Playbook – (00:16:50)
By offering these influencers non-monetary incentives, you can create win-win partnerships that amplify your webinar’s impact.
Interestingly, it’s often the smaller, more agile companies or mid-range influencers that deliver the best results. Justin shared that he’s done deals with really big companies, and thought they were going to drive hundreds and hundreds of people to the event. Turns out, it was the tiny founder-led, almost startup-size company that outperforms them all the time. Make sure you select your partners based on their audience engagement rather than just their size!
One particularly powerful example is when Justin partnered with a mid-range influencer, resulting in 1,500 new subscribers within 24 hours simply by leveraging the influencer’s LinkedIn audience.
Optimize Your Webinar for Registration – The Critical First Step
Too often we treat the registration process as a mere formality – but it’s actually one of the most crucial steps in a successful webinar strategy. Instead of focusing solely on sign-ups, Justin advocates for using the registration process as an opportunity to profile attendees.
So by asking the right questions in the registration process, Justin is able to gather enough data to have a targeted conversation and gauge where someone is at in their own buying journey. This will help you tailor your follow-up and engagement efforts, significantly improving your chances of converting the right attendees into sales opportunities.
Justin explains that the key to optimizing registration is in the details.
“The hard work is orchestrating that… coming up with language that then makes it a standard registration process that covers all the people’s profiling needs”
Justin Zimmerman – The B2B Playbook – (00:25:01)
This means designing your registration flow to capture vital information, such as pain points, roles, and company size, without overwhelming the registrants.
For instance, Justin built a six-step registration flow that not only captured the basic details but also profiled attendees thoroughly. The result? More personalized follow-ups and a higher conversion rate.
Focus Your Webinar on Data, Not Just Attendance
By now you’ve probably realised that Justin sees Webinars being all about the data you collect, not just attendance. This means that the success of the webinar is no longer that singular moment in time. It actually provides a much longer tail of value because of the data and the ability to continue to follow up with people and provide them value based on their actual pain points and problems.
This approach de-risks your webinars by ensuring that every registration is valuable, regardless of live attendance.
Stop Creating Webinar Content From Scratch
Most of us have felt the pain of having to constantly create fresh, high-quality content for every webinar. It’s exhausting and leads to burnout. I know it’s happened to me before!
That’s why I love Justin’s approach to content for webinars. Instead of constantly producing new material, Justin recommends focusing on curating content from partners and experts who already have valuable insights to share.
“Don’t kill yourself… Your job is to architect and orchestrate the best content”
Justin Zimmerman – The B2B Playbook Podcast – (00:08:20)
By taking on the role of a curator rather than a creator, you can ensure that your webinars consistently deliver value without overextending your team. We do this at The B2B Playbook all the time when we have guests on our podcast, or collaborate with another person or company to produce something of value. Kind of like what we did with our Sales and Marketing Alignment Workbook.
Once you select the right speakers, you don’t have to worry about the content so much. It’s implicit that the content is going to be good if you select the right person. By bringing in external experts and leveraging their knowledge, you can focus on delivering impactful webinars without the constant grind of content production.
This approach not only improves the quality of your webinars but also allows you to concentrate on what truly matters—capturing data and engaging your audience. When you know how to architect and orchestrate webinars, that frees you up to maximize the effectiveness of your webinars, ensuring they drive meaningful results without burning out your team.
Post-Webinar Strategy: Turning Data into Demos
The real value of a webinar often comes after the event, in how you follow up with your audience. Post-webinar actions should be laser-focused on converting the data you’ve collected into either sales opportunities or further nurturing.
To do this, he creates post-event follow-up sequences that are templatized based on the answers that you collect during the registration process.
Justin shares a powerful example of this approach in action. After one of his webinars, a targeted post-event sequence resulted in three weeks’ worth of group demo sessions being fully booked.
“In fact, actually we filled up three weeks’ worth of those spots… we gave people three options to book on these group demos”
Justin Zimmerman – The B2B Playbook – (00:40:10)
This strategy ensured that even those who missed the live event were still engaged through relevant follow-ups. The success of this method is evident in the fact that 15 to 20 people eagerly booked time slots for product demos, transforming what could have been lost opportunities into valuable sales conversations.
So there you have it – the post-webinar strategy is absolutely essential to make the most out of the activity. Make sure you leverage the data you collect before and during the event, and create follow-up sequences that effectively convert interest into actionable leads, ensuring your webinars continue to deliver value long after the broadcast ends.
Action Steps For You
We can all do so much more with the webinars we are running. But as Justin says, to do that we need to start thinking about it as a media company first, and demand gen and advertising company second. If we think like a media company, it makes it easy to attract the right people to create content for us.
And then that allows us to collect the information we need from all registrants, and have helpful, relevant follow-up post-webinar.
To summarise, here are the action steps for you:
- Adopt a Media-First Mindset: Shift your focus from just delivering content to creating engaging media events that capture attention and drive long-term engagement.
- Leverage Strategic Partnerships: Identify and collaborate with influencers and complementary businesses to expand your reach and attract more registrants.
- Optimize Your Registration Process: Design a registration flow that profiles attendees, collecting valuable data that can be used for personalized follow-ups and targeted marketing.
- Focus on Data Collection: Prioritize gathering actionable insights during registration and the event to drive personalized, data-driven follow-up strategies.
- Implement Targeted Post-Webinar Follow-Ups: Use the data collected to create customized follow-up sequences that convert registrants into demo bookings and sales opportunities.
A huge thank you to the Webinar guru Justin Zimmerman for sharing these insights with us!
